The States and the Unions

It's May Day. To me, an American, it is a very strange day. We are very confused about it. Where the rest of the world seems to have figured it out somewhat, we don't seem to know what to do with ourselves on this day.

I guess it has something to do with unions and our ambivalence towards them.

Looking it up on Wikipedia, it looks like May Day is used synonymously with International Workers' Day or Labour Day, in those misguided countries where they use an extraneous letter U in everything. Yes, Wikipedia's going to be my only source tonight --I've been at work all day. Anyway, somewhere along the line, we diverged from what everyone else does and began celebrating Labor Day in September, which is interesting because according to Wikipedia (who is on the Internet, and is therefore never ever wrong), May 1st was selected as the date because of a labor-related tragedy that happened in Chicago. In the United States. Go figure.

May Day is celebrated in Communist-led countries like the People's Republic of China and North Korea and was celebrated in the former Soviet Union. Traditionally, the U.S. has been at odds with Communism. Perhaps that's the problem. That's often the argument that comes up when Americans discuss the issue of unions and workers' rights --inevitably, the S-word is used, which leads people to refer to the dreaded C-word, and the conversation dies a horrible death. Maybe that's it. I don't know.

What I do know is that I like the idea of a day that celebrates workers that crosses borders. We live a rapidly shrinking world, where everything is becoming more and more interrelated. Multinational corporations exist, so why wouldn't you want something out there that balances that? And if workers in different parts of the world, particularly those parts of the world where there are labor abuses like we saw at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution or worse still going on, had access to other people who were sympathetic and asking for fairness in their treatment across borders, why wouldn't that be a good thing? I don't know the answer to this --I'm asking.

Some people in the United States marched today, although May Day is not an official holiday. I applaud them for doing this. I would have liked to have joined them. Instead, I am writing this blog post to say Happy May Day and to say, to all of you who work hard for a living for a boss who isn't you, I'm glad to be one of you. We make a good team.