Labor Day is one of those holidays few in the U.S. seem to appreciate. We turn it into yet another mindless excuse to grill, without stopping to appreciate the importance of the labor movement in our nation's history. But Labor Day is even more significant this year, a year characterized by Republican attacks on organized labor.

Here's how Sarah Jaffe put it in a recent post at AlterNet:

As the ongoing economic crisis and policies that favor the rich hollow out the middle class, working families in the US (and around the world) are remembering what solidarity looks like. We are slowly coming to realize that we have to stand together or continue to suffer at the hands of the top 1 percent.

On this Labor Day, let us remember how labor has fought for us and where we would be without unions. Jaffe writes:

We had a minimum wage, child labor laws, the eight-hour work day and the weekend, overtime pay, pensions, and health benefits not because benevolent bosses handed them over, but because union workers struck, fought and died for them.

And labor continues to fight for us. We owe far more to labor than one federal holiday a year. With Republicans pushing the most extreme political agenda we've witnessed in decades, the future of the American middle class is at stake. Now is the time to stand with labor.

Subscribe to Red State Progressive