“I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand, that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.” – John D. Rockefeller
Striking Union Workers Turned the First Labor Day into a Networking Event
The end-of-summer holiday was designed to spur overworked Americans to meet up, picnic and call for fairer labor laws
Labor Day is a U.S. national holiday held the first Monday every September. Unlike most U.S. holidays, it is a strange celebration without rituals, except for shopping and barbecuing. For most people it simply marks the last weekend of summer and the start of the school year.
The holiday’s founders in the late 1800s envisioned something very different from what the day has become. The founders were looking for two things: a means of unifying union workers and a reduction in work time.