It’s no coincidence that the decline of unionization over the past 40 years has exactly tracked the parallel decline of middle-class wages, the disappearance of pensions, the increasing numbers of those who lack health insurance, skyrocketing executive pay, and vaulting inequality.

I welcome and endorse the AFL-CIO’s campaign to finally fulfill President Roosevelt’s 1944 call for a second, Economic Bill of Rights, including the rights to jobs, living wages, labor unions, voting rights, health care, education, and retirement security. As the Green Party candidate for President, my Green New Deal platform already has specific proposals to secure these rights. – Jill Stein

Labor Day 2012 comes at a turning point in American history. At a time when the wealthiest have prospered beyond the wildest of dreams, the vast majority of working Americans struggle to make ends meet. Millions have seen their incomes flatten, their jobs outsourced, and their hopes for retirement security put on hold, if not quashed completely. At the same time, Wall Street and the politicians who conspire with them have worked overtime to destroy the ability of American workers to join unions and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits.

The Democratic National Convention is less than a week away, and liberals are getting fired up. But at least one of the party’s key constituencies isn’t quite so excited.

That group is organized labor.

Last July’s announcement that the convention would be held in the staunchly anti-union city of Charlotte, North Carolina—the least unionized state in the country—set off a firestorm of protest in the labor movement. A year later, dissatisfaction still simmers, and there’s a case to be made for an unprecedented move. The message is simple: maybe labor should sit this one out.

Well, here we are once again. Labor Day weekend has rolled around; the time when all the politicians extol the virtues of the working man and woman. But as I pointed out last year, once a year praise by Beltway Village Idiots Politicians and Pundits or the local equivalent of same, does not actually make someone a friend of workers.

Two key steps have helped to ruin May Day in the United States. First, Labor Day was created at a completely different time of year — labor day without the struggle, labor day without the history, labor day without the labor movement. Second, Loyalty Day was created on May 1st.

Labor commentator, and former union staffer, Steve Early draws on years of trade union activism to shed light on labor’s troubled path over the last decade. His recent book, The Civil War’s in US Labor, examines the internal conflicts which have wracked the labor movement over the last decade: the 2005 split of several international unions from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win coalition, the subsequent fracturing of Change to Win, and the internal conflict within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Today is Monday, September 5, 2011. Since it is the first Monday of September, it is the national holiday known as Labor Day. Supposedly, it is the day when our politicians and pundits proclaim their unrelenting love for all things worker related – even as they spend the other 364 days a year doing all in their power to destroy the lives of workers by cutting salaries, limiting benefits. Just today, the Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson had a column decrying the state of labor in the US:

In a speech in Detroit tailored to the union audience, President Obama paid respect to the need for a strong American labor movement as a lever to move families into the middle class. He also previewed his jobs address coming on Thursday to a joint session of Congress, highlighting steps like “rebuilding roads and bridges,” which could put 1 million unemployed construction workers back on the job.

The stark realities of the American economy show the political and economic elites sending the country in the wrong direction, destroying the strongest economy and world history. The American people know better and could rule better than the elites. It is time for Americans to organize and mobilize to take power, http://october2011.org.