Yesterday was Labor Day. It hasn’t always been a holiday in the United States. but it has been a holiday for as long as I can remember. I know it seems hard to believe, but there have been a number of detractors in recent years. Some have tied them to Labor Unions and others to socialism.  My parents began teaching in 1967. They were married at the end of college in 1966. Dad continued in graduate school, but we will treat them like they were both public school teachers in Texas. The beginning salary for teachers then would have been somewhere between 4000 and 5000 dollars. We know the average teacher nationwide was 7.423 dollars in 1967. That would be the midpoint after 15 to 20 years of teaching and we know that Texas has always lagged behind most states and beginning teachers for considerably less.

The national average in 2023 dollars would be 44,558 dollars. The current national average salary is 66,745. That is due mostly to labor unions. My parents salary would have likely been somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 in 2023 dollars. The average starting salary in the area is actually closer to 50,000 here and higher in most other states.

They would tell us stories of how they collected Coke bottles to pay for groceries and how different businesses in town would give teachers steep discounts. They just understood that teachers were dramatically underpaid. Starting teachers aren’t being underpaid anymore. That’s due to unions and teacher associations. Furthermore, every teacher gets s a 45 minute conference period every day and gets a duty free lunch. These are legally mandated benefits that teachers fought hard for.

I am probably leaving some things out because I started teaching in 1997. A lot of the things I got from day one were probably not available to teachers like my parents. These are all due to unions and teacher associations. These associations also give teachers legal advice and services that are invaluable. They continually lobby the state legislatures for additional benefits, salaries, and legal protections. This is something teachers can’t do on their own. This is true of dozens of major industries. Workers fought hard for the 40 hour work week, minimum wage, child labor laws, safety regulations, another other benefits. Labor unions were invaluable in these efforts. Workers couldn’t have done this without organizing and collectively bargaining.

They paint the picture of unions fighting for unnecessary regulations and benefits so their workers can sit on their ass and do nothing. They paint the picture of unions driving up costs for consumers unnecessarily. They are communicating one message to most of us out loud and communicating another one under their breath. Unions helped the U.S. build a thriving middle class. They did this without succumbing to socialism. That’s the irony of this whole deal. European nations don’t need unions. They have already legislated so many worker protections and benefits that unions are scarcely needed. Unions keep those “onerous” regulations at bay. They prevent worker uprisings. We’ve seen them around the world, but for the most part we don’t see them here.

We’ve seen the impact of union busting. The middle class is shrinking and billionaires have seen a windfall. The sad thing is that people notice the stagnating wages and erosion of benefits, but they haven’t made the connection. Instead they are fighting culture wars, blaming immigrants, women, and people of color. They are blaming everyone but the people actually doing it. Instead they allow them to disparage Labor Day and call it a socialist holiday.