On Labor Day, we honor all workers, but especially those workers who shed their blood and gave their lives to bring about the eight hour work day, the right to organize, and other labor reforms.

 

For more than 100 years, every Labor Day, our nation has celebrated the creation of the labor movement and economic and social justice accomplishments of American union workers who struggled to achieve a living wage, safe workplaces, pensions, and health care benefits.

 

But this Labor Day, 2008, the struggle for justice and safety in the workplace is far from over and the hard won victories by labor unions are being erased by seven years of the anti-worker criminal Bush regime.  After more than a decade of disastrous Republican Congressional control and the horrific policies of the Bush administration: good paying American jobs have been offshored and health care and pensions lost; wages are stagnant; economic inequality is widening; the middle class is shrinking; health care for almost 50 million peopleis non-existent and those that have health care find the increasing cost of even minimal coverage too expensive to maintain; food, utilities, and energy costs are rising; the mortagage debacle has caused more housing foreclosures; and the economic catastrophe brought about greedy corporate financial institutions Bushite cronies made possible by deregulatory and non-regulatory Bush policies have caused more and more hardworking Americans

to struggle to support themselves and their families.