LABOR DAY

How much thought, I wonder, do most of us who celebrate Labor Day with a trip to the beach, a late summer barbecue in the park, a hike in the mountains--how much thought do we give to the actual reason for the holiday: to celebrate the contribution of the American worker?

Since Ronald Reagan faced down the air traffic controllers in 1981, it has been downhill all the way for unions in this country.  Republican governors like Scott Walker of Wisconsin feel free to use their powers to disempower the unions that champion the rights of teachers and other public workers, and the corporate powers-that-be wage a vigorous war against unions with everything in their arsenal, including their formidable army of lobbyists, their purchase of legislators through contributions to campaign funds and their "super pacs."  The result is a weakening of the unions that contributed significantly in the last century to the creation of the great American middle class, and diminishment of the middle class itself.

With the disempowerment of the unions, the American worker is deprived of the most basic tool to seek that upward mobility of which the country has long been justifiably proud.  Along with continually increasing cuts in state and federal education budgets, this assures the creation of a permanent, and to many inescapable underclass and the further enrichment of those who profit from their plight.

We have little to celebrate this Labor Day, unless it be a rededication to the struggle of equality of opportunity and workers' rights.  If the Republicans prevail, we shall have even less to celebrate next year.  It's hard to envision anything more inimical to the workers of America, the under-privileged, the under-paid and the unemployed, than the Republican platform and the Romney/Rand economic plans.