Labor Day Isn’t About the Past, It’s About Today

September 05, 2011

AFSCME New Mexico members and their fellow public service workers spoke out today in the pages of the Albuquerque Journal about workers’ rights and a bright future for all working and middle class Americans:

Labor Day isn’t at all about the past, it’s about today. It’s about working hard to level the playing field to keep our state’s middle class healthy, to keep it a reality and not just a dream that lower-income families may only aspire to reach. It’s about building on a vision for New Mexicans and our families.

Labor Day is every day and every tomorrow.

Cayetano Trujillo, Connie Derr, Robin Gould and Jana Smith-Carr, and David Heshley remind Americans everywhere that our rights as workers need constant vigilance and action. They offer powerful words that should stir each of us, at parades, barbecues or wherever we find ourselves, to speak up for the middle class and to stand up to those who would attack us.

We’re not Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida or Michigan. But the idea that everything middle-class families have strived for needs to be attacked and restrained hasn’t been limited to those states. It’s a growing agenda and apparent in the actions of our state at the bargaining table today.

Ask someone who works to improve the lives of New Mexico’s families in any way, in any fashion, whether Labor Day or any other day representing the civil and human rights of our communities is a day that is past, and they will say no. Labor Day is every day and every tomorrow.

Read the full column (reposted from the Albuquerque Journal by Democracy for New Mexico).