Last week while reflecting on the fact that my university is open on Labor Day, my philosophy professor stated that Labor Day is, in his opinion, the most important holiday in the U.S. Without the laborers, he argued, there would be no Fourth of July or Memorial Day or President’s Day. Workers–and he meant the ones who actually labor, not the ones who funded or managed labor–made possible everything that is American, from cities to food to weapons of liberation. And yet, he lamented, more and more businesses and schools are increasingly neglecting to commemorate this solemn celebration of the sweat, hands and hearts of the laborer. This forgetfulness of labor effectively detaches us from our past, creating a conspicuous void in the virtue of patriotism.
Whatever the merit of my professor’s reflection may be–and I leave that to you to decide–there is no question that we are losing a sense of what work truly is. By this, I refer to the most basic and natural forms of work: physical labor. Heck, even those who labored in such industries as the steel mills and mines hoped for something more for their progeny–education, careers in law, business, or medicine, financial freedom. These things are good and ought to be desired, but certainly not at the expense of the authenticity of work. So it’s a bit paradoxical to at once celebrate industrial labor, yet desire that our children end up laboring in the most pristine and physically effortless venues out of a conviction that industrial labor is “beneath” them. It could not be that arduously physical labor is shameful or unfulfilling in itself–quite the contrary if we pay any attention to the Catholic tradition on the dignity and value of work. Perhaps the diminishing of the sense of the sacral nature of physical labor is threefold: 1. One who performs physical labor in the U.S. has tended to be a wage slave who, though doing the most essential tasks within a given industry, has historically been alienated from the final product of his work which is owned and distributed by those in managerial positions; 2. The laborer was had to fight an uphill battle for workers’ rights in the U.S., having to fight for healthy and safe work conditions and battling the systemic structure of sin known as worker exploitation; 3. Within the context of a quasi-capitalist market, the laborer increasingly finds his position less and less secure as managerial positions seek to maximize profit through job outsourcing that tends to be unrestricted and as technological advances render labor positions more and more obsolete. It is hard to imagine that without these challenges manual labor would still be considered so base.
With this three-fold threat to the laborer firmly entrenched within the market zone of the U.S., it is little wonder that labor jobs in the country have historically diminished in respectability, prestige and security. This is not to say that there are laborers in the U.S. who are not respected or secure, but one would be trapped in self-delusion to think that traditional forms of labor in this country are generally respected or even desired. Salary and socially constructed prestige tend to strip industrial labor of any decor while enshrining “white-collar” positions with mystique and status. All work, mind you, is dignified and sacred insofar as that work discloses the value of human agency and contributes to the good of all; social and economic structures, nevertheless, are capable of eclipsing the dignity and sacredness of certain types of work. This is perhaps what has taken place in the U.S. in terms of the relation between work, rights and wage.
And so on this Labor Day, let us not forget the intimate connection between true labor and the expression of human dignity so splendidly outlined by the late Pope John Paul II in his frequent addresses on the merit and worth of work. Consider the following words he spoke in 1979 to the working families of Guadalajara, Mexico:
I wish to express to you, right away, how happy the Pope is that this is a meeting with workers, with working-class families, with Christian families which, form their places of work, know how to be agents of social welfare, respect, love of God, in the workshop, in the factory, in any house or place.
I think of you, boys and girls, young people of working-class families; there comes into my mind the figure of Him who was born in an artisan’s family, who grew in age, wisdom, and grace, who learned from His Mother human ways, and who had His teacher in life and in daily work in the just man that God gave Him as father. The Church venerates this Mother and this man; this holy worker, model of a man and, at the same time, of a work.
Our Lord Jesus Christ received the caresses of his strong worker’s hands, hands hardened by work, but open to kindness and to needy brothers.
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Friends, worker brothers, there is a Christian conception of work, of family and social life. It contains great values, and demands moral criteria and norms in order to direct those who believe in God and in Jesus Christ; in order that work may be carried out as a real vocation to change the world, in a spirit of service and of love for brothers; in order that the human person may reach fulfillment here and contribute to the growing humanization of the world and its structures.
Work is not a curse, it is a blessing from God who calls man to rule the earth and transform it, in order that the divine work of creation may continue with man’s intelligence and effort. I want to tell you with all my soul and with all my might that I suffer at the lack of work. I suffer at the ideologies of hate and of violence that are not evangelical and that cause so many wounds in mankind today.
It is not enough for the Christian to denounce injustices; he is asked to be a real witness and promoter of justice. He who works has rights that he must defend legally, but he also has duties which he must carry generously. As Christians you are called to be architects of justice and of real freedom as well as forgers of social charity. Modern technique creates a whole set of new problems and sometimes produces unemployment. But is also opens great possibilities that ask of the worker increasing qualifications, as also the contribution of his human capacities and his creative imagination. For this reason, work must not be a mere necessity, but it must be considered a real vocation, a call from God to build a new world in which justice and brotherhood dwell, a foretaste of the kingdom of God, in which there will certainly not be shortages and limitations.
Work must be the means in order that the whole of creation will be subjected to the dignity of the human being and son of God. Work offers the opportunity to commit oneself with the whole community without resentment, without bitterness, without hatred, but with the universal love of Christ that excludes no one and embraces everyone.
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