For most of us who lived in the blue-collar and lower socioeconomic areas bounded by Buckeye Road, 93rd Street, Lee Road and Miles Avenue (John Adams High School district) in Cleveland, Labor Day was a major holiday—a day filled with celebrations, fireworks, parades with marching bands, veterans and labor union members wearing their union logos (e.g., Teamsters, AFL-CIO, Steelworkers). 

Labor Day was a day for family celebration when unions paid entrance fees to Euclid Beach and Geauga Lake Amusement Park, and families and friends gathered around wooden park tables to feast on food. The food was not just hot dogs and hamburgers, but huge casseroles, pasta dishes, salads, baked hams, chicken, sausages and beer. All of these were home cooked, and they were devoured with no effort to clean hands or faces before or after. The adults would eat, play cards or take naps on large blankets; the kids would run to the amusement park rides.

At Geauga Lake, I remember the roller coaster, Dutch shoes, bumper cars, house of horrors and the beautiful carousel with its galloping steeds of every color and shape. For the few moments of the ride, we were all transported to a different magical place, limited only by our imagination. At the end of the exhausting day, everything was loaded back into the cars for the long drive back to our neighborhoods in the inner city.

My extended family never missed a Labor Day celebration for years. It was a day to be proud of belonging to a union, to be a worker, to have a job and to feel content and even grateful for the limits that life provided. For many of us, confined to our neighborhoods because we lacked transportation, we never considered ourselves poor. We were, for the most part, poor from a financial point of view. But we were not poor in terms of our identity, our pride and our attachments to family, friends and neighborhoods. Churches and stores were close by, people knew one another and we all looked after one another. We were rich in those aspects of our lives, and we coped with the many challenges life presented by a stoicism that required an acceptance of our circumstances.

Along the way, the traditions of Labor Day became lost. To some extent, unions brought problems upon themselves with corruption, favoritism and certain salary and retirement demands. I never considered the demands excessive because I saw how hard family and friends worked under conditions that were often harsh and dangerous. Indeed, I wrote a senior paper in college on “Why Unions Should Be Members of Company Boards of Directors.” That seemed logical to me— still does—but the wealthier kids at college thought I did not understand our capitalistic system. I did understand, and I still do, and I think capitalism—with all its potential to be a economic moral system—has failed our nation and the vast majority of our citizens.

Corporations and companies also contributed to the demise of unions in their relentless pursuit of profits and position. Robots and automatization replaced workers, innovation ceased, industries collapsed in the face of foreign competition, profits and executive salaries trumped worker loyalty, longevity and skills. Manufacturing in the United States, once a dominant industry for virtually every essential product, declined as other nations were able to make better products with lower costs and without the protections and privileges labor unions provided workers in the United States.

Labor Day today is still celebrated, but fewer workers belong to unions, and the politics of union-busting has damped union power and presence. Labor unions still constitute a strong lobbying group across the land, but the new knowledge industries do not require their services or benefits. We are witnessing the twilight of labor unions, although the need for employee protection is still a justifiable concern. Ask any teacher who has to work long hours under difficult circumstances and even pay for the materials needed to help her or him teach.

Our national economy is now part of the global financial system—a system that is itself facing serious problems because of its emphasis on “paper” financial systems. And to this must be added the endless corruption, collusion and deceit that is being uncovered each day by financial institutions (e.g., banks, investment companies, insurance) like the recent LIBOR scandal in which international banks colluded in “fixed” interest to increase their financial profits at the expense of borrowers around the world.

Today we also see the horrors and abuses of labor exploitation around the world in China, South Africa and India. The historic struggles workers—many of them new immigrants—in the United States fought to improve working conditions and to be treated with fairness and dignity. Many strikers and protesters were beaten and murdered as owners used violent means to prevent changes in working conditions. Those struggles are now buried in library archives and known only to those workers and their children who witnessed the need for unions for worker solidarity, protection and identity. The abuse of new immigrant groups in many industries (e.g., agriculture, meat processing, clothing manufacturing) still cries for reform. But our government—regardless of political party—is more loyal to political donations than to injustice, and corporate monopolies in mining, agriculture and manufacturing are able to escape legal prosecution because of political ties.

OK, enough said. In a few days, I will be 72 years old. The world of my youth was lived between 1940-1958, amidst the many ethnic enclaves of the John Adams High School district. Those years were a different era, and there was a different way of life. Unions were central, essential and respected. Those days have passed. Unemployment rates remain high, worker job security is low and working conditions for laborers, service and skilled workers and many others are dangerous to their health and well-being. Labor Day, as I knew it, is gone, but many of the needs unions served remain across our land, especially the need to honor work and workers.
 
Anthony “Babe” Marsella
Class of 1958, John Adams High School
Cleveland, Ohio