Labour Day Weekend

The Labour Day weekend has become associated with back to school, Labour Day Classic football games, and the last weekend to go camping before the summer is officially over. Amidst all of this, the actual purpose and meaning of the holiday seems to get lost.
Labour Day was originally meant to be a celebration of workers and their families. It was conceived at a time when paid holidays, statutory holidays, safe working conditions, medical care, unemployment insurance, fair hours, union wages and weekends were not even heard of. These seemingly well established institutions are all recent phenomena. Until the twentieth century, workers had few rights, if any. Probably at no time in history, save some ancient slave societies, were work conditions more atrocious than in the nineteenth century industrial industries.
Prior to 1850, most Canadians lived in rural areas and worked as or for farmers, fishers, or craftsmen. Families were usually employed together in small family enterprises. After the explosion of the Industrial Revolution, factory towns began to spring up, and many rural people started to trickle into urban areas to find work in the new factories.
Most factory workers worked 12-14 hour shifts, six days a week in appallingly dangerous conditions. Maimings and deaths were very common, but there was no assistance whatsoever for the families affected. Children as young as eight went to work in these factories, and were beaten if they were late or fell asleep at their jobs. Wages were entirely at the discrimination of the factory owners. It was a desperate situation.
Small unions attempted to organize, but were usually squashed by the powerful factory owners or the police. Matters started to come to a head in the 1870's. An economic depression was sweeping the country, and factory conditions, which had always been grim, deteriorated. Workers were desperate for change, and on April 15, 1872 the Toronto Trade Assembly, the original central labour body, organized the first significant worker's demonstration in Canada, or North America for that matter.
The Assembly was an important force in Toronto, speaking out on behalf of working people, encouraging the organization of unions, and acting as a watchdog when workers were exploited, which was often.
One of the main triggers of the 1872 demonstration was the arrest of twenty-four leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union who had been imprisoned for striking to gain a nine-hour work day. Authorities could not ignore the parade which attracted a crowd of 10,000 unionists and supporters. The demonstrators demanded the release of the Toronto Typographical Union leader prisoners and better conditions for all workers.
The Toronto parade inspired leaders in Ottawa to stage a similar event. On September 3, 1872 seven Ottawa unions organized a parade which stretched longer than a mile and passed the home of Sir John A. MacDonald. The Prime Minister was hoisted into a carriage and taken to City Hall where, by torchlight, he made a rousing promise to "sweep away such barbarous laws" as those invoked to imprison the Toronto Typographical Union workers.
He kept his promise: by the end of the year, the hated laws had been taken out of the statute books of the government.
For the first few years, Labour Day was celebrated in the spring, as were similar holidays in Europe which evolved at the same time. On July 23, 1894 Labour Day was declared a legal holiday by Parliament, and the celebration was moved to early fall.
The first Labour Day parade was held in the United States in 1882, exactly a decade after the first Canadian demonstration, and was inspired by the events taking place in Canada. Labour Day was also officially made a holiday in 1894 in the United States. Labour Day is one of the only holidays that originated in Canada and then spread to the United States, not the other way around.
Although Labour Day was a step in the right direction and working conditions did improve for some workers, it wasn't until after the Depression of the 1930's that programs such as Unemployment Insurance and medical care were implemented.
Labour Day weekend will always be about camping trips, football games and end of summer parties, but this year, maybe take a minute or two and consider how far the workplace has come from a century ago, and give thanks to the thousands of men and women who fought to ensure fair working standards for all workers.
"Labour was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased." - Adam Smith.