The first Labor Day was celebrated Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, thanks to the efforts of that city’s Central Labor Union.
Leading up to that first Labor Day, there was a massive march by sweatshop workers in New York. They demanded a shortening of the 12- to 14-hour workday. The workers’ chant was, “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest. Eight hours for what we will.” The demand for an eight-hour workday was considered radical and outrageously unreasonable by politicians and industrial leaders alike.
Laura Mayo
Labor Day was held again the next year, and by 1885, the idea of Labor Day had spread throughout most of the industrial centers of our country. The shouts for justice, fair wages, a reasonable work day and more were heard in the Haymarket Square riot in Chicago in 1886, in the Pullman strike in 1894 and in multiple other strikes spawned by these two.
U.S. President Grover Cleveland and the U.S. Congress were so concerned about the rising tide of discontent among working people that on June 28, 1894, a law recognizing Labor Day was approved. And still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
What makes a sabbath?
Labor Sunday. Labor Sabbath. What makes something sabbath: sacred, holy? What makes something else labor: work? The idea of Labor Sunday seems to ask these questions with some urgency. Those of us who gather for worship on the Sunday before Labor Day will do so in preparation for a holiday — a word that literally means holy day. So if the holiday on Monday makes it holy, what is Sunday?
We read in the Ten Commandments: “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.” What makes a day sabbath? What makes one thing holy and another thing profane?
“What makes one thing holy and another thing profane?”
Is the work a minister of music does on Sunday morning sacred? What about the hours she works preparing, considering music, searching for hymns, encouraging musicians and the rest of us, rehearsing with the choir? Are the hours a minister spends preparing for a sermon work? What about the time spent delivering it? What about the time spent drinking coffee and connection? Is the effort of the organist sacred when he’s in this building by himself getting ready for Sunday morning? Or is it only sacred when the rest of us are able to hear it? Is the church committee meeting sacred? What about the boardroom meeting or the university committee meeting? When is it sacred and when is it work?
Is the poet’s work sacred while the copywriter’s is not? Social worker, yes; sanitation worker, no? The stay-at-home parent, yes, but the retired volunteer at the library, no? What about the work that never ends, the relationship and self-work that is never done or the work that is completed only to begin again with the next meal, the next doctor’s visit, the next diaper?
How many hours of work does it take in a day to transform the day from a holiday — a holy day — into a workday? What’s the difference? Where is the balance?
Bread and roses
An old labor song, made famous in the 1912 women’s textile workers strike in Massachusetts, “Bread and Roses,” calls for not only enough labor that we might provide bread; it also calls for roses, for beauty and dignity, for the sacred:
As we go marching, marching
In the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens
A thousand mill lofts gray
Our lives shall not be sweetened
From birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies
Give us bread but give us roses
“Hearts starve as well as bodies. Give us bread but give us roses.” Perhaps we cannot parse out what is sacred and what is profane in our labor because we all need bread and roses. We all need money to care for our basic needs, and we all need dignity.
Respect those who labor for us
I remember hearing a story of a woman getting a manicure at a place she had been going to for years. She knew her manicurist, knew her name and stories about her life. In the chair next to her, another woman was having her nails done. The woman spoke on the phone the entire time — using gestures, eyebrow raises and pointing to specify nail length and select her nail color.
A head tilted toward the phone talker and a whispered, “What’s up with that?” caused the manicurist to look down and then finally say, “She doesn’t think we’re real people.”
The battle for worker’s rights in this country has been of epic proportions. It has been fought in picket lines and song lyrics. And yet, so rarely do we stop in our Labor Day leisure to celebrate the efforts of the generations before us or to consider current-day labor practices.
“The struggle for labor rights is not over.”
The struggle for labor rights is not over. There are still masses of people working with no benefits, no schedules, not enough money for secure housing or food. There are still atrocities being committed in the fields where people dig and plant and pick with no benefits, no breaks, no security, in sweatshops, in stores that don’t pay living wages, in jobs where real time off exists only in theory.
Labor Sunday invites us to see each person as a real person. The people long ago striking for a reasonable workday, those people clamoring now for a living wage — they are asking to have their humanity recognized. They are asking for dignity. Bread and roses, work and sabbath, these are the combinations that create worth and dignity and value in our lives.
We need to see and hear each other. We need to put down our phones and lift our eyes; we need to connect with one another. We need to acknowledge the worker across from us at the checkout or the drive-through window.
When we can see each other, when we can open ourselves up to being known and recognized, and to knowing and recognizing another, we create dignity. Dignity is something we have to offer every worker we encounter — ourselves included.
How to celebrate
What if we decide that each day is both labor and holy? What if we decide that Labor Sunday/Labor Sabbath will be the mindset for everything we do, that we will seek bread and roses in all our efforts? And not just for ourselves but for everyone?
Not sure how to do this? It seems to me that thank you goes a long way. Labor Day reminds us there are a lot of people who play important roles in our lives who are often taken for granted or completely forgotten. This is a good time to intentionally acknowledge and honor them with eye contact and words of gratitude.
It is easy to lose sight of these things in the frantic pace of work — work at job and work at home and work at church. If we try to keep a work/life balance by separating work from life — separating work from leisure, from spiritual practice, from our true identities, from sharing — we will no doubt be perpetually frustrated and always feel something is lacking or getting slighted.
I am not suggesting we must meditate at our desks or while we do the dishes, but actually, I don’t think that’s a terrible idea. I am suggesting we find ways to bring the spiritual to our labor and that when we must bring work home, we find ways to acknowledge that work in our sabbath. Maybe this means giving that work a certain amount of time and no more and then being very intentional about how we use our free time. Are we connecting with others, are we learning more about ourselves, are we feeding our souls, are we finding ways to help, to share, to be part of the solutions?
Where can we bring sabbath, sacred, holy, spiritual into our labor? Where can we bring dignity to ourselves and others by connecting with those we encounter — workers and family members and friends.
“Hearts starve as well as bodies. Give us bread and give us roses.”
Laura Mayo serves as senior minister of Covenant Church in Houston. She is a graduate of Carson-Newman University and Wake Forest Divinity School, with additional studies at Regent’s Park College of Oxford University. She is active in various interfaith projects and organizations in Houston.