(this is now a repost. I didn't want it gone forever, but the spam comments had gotten out of hand.)

funny isn't it, how labour day now seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with labour. I think it's part of a bigger *don't talk about labour* policy that has come from our closeting of class. We can talk about how evil all kinds of discrimination and intolerance are, but the poor are still, in many people's minds, supposed to pull themselves up by their boot straps. This, of course, is utterly ridiculous, since on some level all of the other problems we identify boil down to class.

We say it's so sad that single mothers are so likely to live in poverty - proof of discrimination against women - and the same for many ethnic groups - proof of racism. These people actually all belong to the same group, one that has alarmingly high probability of living in poverty - POOR PEOPLE. We just don't talk about it that way any more.

And what, you might be thinking, does any of this have to do with labour day? Labour day is now "back to school day" which could be a pertinent time to pay attention to the proportion of students without laptops, let alone lunches. It could be a time to consider whether we really still allow universal access to post secondary education. It could even be a time *gasp* to think about labour.

When we think of the word labour, it's not to the white collar professions that our minds go, but to the dirtier, harder, and on a far more basic level, essential tasks. Building infrastructure and homes. Manufacturing. Driving. So on. A whole lot of labour, and in those cases, a whole lot of unions to protect the labour. What about the jobs that our really essential to our 21st century lives though? Service jobs. Customer service. Food service. The terrain of exploited youth and minority groups aplenty. What labour movement there might have been has now been crushed by the service industry.

At the very least, look twice at the person who scans your pens through the till or serves your ikea lunch. It was supposed to be their day, but we don't talk about labour or class any more. Our discourse of consumption has made them invisible and labour day is now another day to buy stuff. Lots of it.