Labor Day

One morning in 1948 my father got up, shaved, got dressed and ready to go to work. By noon, he was dead of tetanus. He had been going to work for several days with swollen lymph nodes and in pain.

He was working for Bethlehem Steel, in Antioch, California. He had stepped on a rusty nail at work and been given a tetanus booster that day. The doctor who saw him at the hospital wrote cerebral hemorrhage on his death certificate. The only reason we ever knew the truth was that his body was shipped to Modesto, my parents' home town. My Great-aunt Julie had been friends with the mortician since they had gone to school together. He called her and told her that "this boy's death certificate is wrong. The company is trying to cover this up." In 1948, the company owned the town and the doctor. Protecting the company from a lawsuit for dispensing out-of-date tetanus booster came before serving the powerless widow who paid your bill.

When people hear this story, they can't understand why on earth a man who was that sick would get up and try to go to work. Or how a company could own a town, control a physician in private practice. And the reason that they can't understand it is labor unions. It is because of labor unions that when you and I are sick, we can stay home and our families don't have to make do without that day's income. In 1948 people didn't get "paid for not working". There were no sick days. There was no health insurance. There was only the simple, stark reality of a day's pay for a day's work. It is only because of labor unions that towns in the United States are rarely owned so openly by corporations these days.

Today, when you celebrate Labor Day in whatever way you do, be grateful for labor unions. When you barbecue for your relatives or go to that sale or just take a picnic to the park with your kids, remember that all of the benefits you and I have as workers are due to the work and persistence of labor unions.

They didn't just make changes for their members, but for all of us. I have never belonged to a union and yet I have all of the benefits that they have fought for. And none of the benefits that I have were given without their struggle.