Labor history was rammed down my throat during my first year at Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations.  We learned in excruciating detail how labor relations developed, from the guilds to the Knights of Labor to Samuel Gompers (“short, fat and incredibly ugly”) and those merry anarcho-syndicalists.  It was a heady time, turning many an avaricious young person into a Seeger-singing Wobbly wannabe. (See, I can alliterate too!)

Labor day developed from Union-inspired recognition of the contributions of the working men and women to the strength of America in the face of management abuse.  These were times when the power of unionization was critical to the development of parity between the overwhelming strength of capital and the shocking weakness of the individual worker.  There’s nothing like a Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to clarify the issues.

But even then, I saw a problem that would eventually develop.  Unions, by definition, cannot exist unless they continually provide more and more for their members.  There had to be a tipping point where the relative balance between labor and management went the other way.  Capital eventually had to reach the point where it could no longer support the weight of labor.  But that was some day in the future, and for the time being, unions were needed.

Fast forward to today.  Ford is drowning in pension costs.  Airlines are renegotiating downward their contracts to survive.  Old industry is gone to cheaper labor markets, leaving America a land of service workers.  We have priced ourselves out of the labor market, as had to eventually happen.

So what are we celebrating this Labor Day?  Layoffs, outsourcing, plant closings?   What would Eugene V. Debs say if he were alive?  When goods and services cost more than anyone is willing to spend because the cost of labor exceeds the value of their efforts, we need to step back and rethink the problem. 

The arguments for ever-increasing wages and benefits can be heard publicly whenever public employees, the last bastion of dyed in the wool unionists, are due for a new contract.  They invariably talk about how hard they work, how difficult their job is and how they deserve more and better.  These arguments compel the comparison between public and private sector employees, with the latter countering that they work hard too, yet have been suffering wage compression, if they have a job at all, for years.  It’s a clash of ideology.

Unlike private sector, where the tipping point has quietly happened and the jobs have wandered away to cheaper markets, the public sector is immune from market forces.  They have a never-ending well of available funding, from the pockets of adoring taxpayers who have only a vote with which to fight the battle. 

Today, the primary beneficiaries of the years of labor strife are police and teachers, both serving fundamental and critical public purposes.  Both enjoy a level of public support that could never be achieved by a steel worker in Pittsburgh, a rubber worker in Akron or an auto worker in Detroit. 

Are police and teachers more worthy than any other worker?  Sure, they provide crucial services.  But all workers contribute to the existence of our nation as we know it.  Think about America without transportation or heavy equipment.  Has there been a shortage of qualified people interested in jobs as cops or teachers, driving the price of labor up year after year?  If wages and benefits were frozen, would police and teachers flee their jobs in favor of some other? 

It’s hard to blame anyone, teachers and cops included, for wanting better wages and benefits.  Other than a few investment bankers I know, everyone thinks they should earn more than they do.  But that doesn’t mean that they are entitled to a never-ending spiral of increases, or that their labor is any more deserving than anyone else’s.  They are one part of a symbiotic system, but the rest of us are part of it too.  We could all use a boost, but scarce resources preclude that from happening. 

What should we celebrate this Labor Day?  Perhaps the day off is reason enough to celebrate.  We have young men and women in Iraq who will not have the day off, and may well die on this day.  Americans are struggling across the country to pay off the next mortgage bill that tripled from the year before with wages that still can’t keep pace with inflation.  People who should be tightening the lug nuts on new Chevys are asking if you want that “supersized”.  And a young woman named Sue in India is chatting with a young man named Bill in China to find out when the next shipment of laptops will go out.

This Labor Day could provide an opportunity to step back from our competition for scarce resources and consider how we could create a rising tide that lifts all boats.  It’s not that the problems confronting America are unsolvable, but that we lack the leadership and will to seek a comprehensive vision of how our economic welfare can be secured, how this symbiotic relationship can be improved.  We’re all in this together.  We’re all workers (other than those investment bankers), and we need to stop fighting each other for the scraps left on the American table.  Enjoy your barbecues.