I get where this comes from (look up why USA and Canada celebrate Labor Day rather than International Worker's Day) but it's just symbolism, a frivolous issue. Pushing frivolous issues reinforces one of the negative perceptions of the American left common among both centrist Americans and international leftists. People want healthcare, vacation days, material improvements. Not a debate over when a national holiday is.
Everytime an American on the left does this, they just set back their own cause. It's enough to make you believe a conspiracy theory of some powers on the right actively encouraging it.
You make it sound like the American left pushes a lot of symbolic issues. Which ones are you thinking of?
Hot take: the American left loses on the material issues because it has lost on solidarity, symbolism, ideology. Don’t you know that healthcare and vacation days will “hurt the economy”? There are many poor working class people who still oppose Obamacare even though they directly benefit from it. The material gains matter a lot less if people reject the ideas behind them.
I’m not sure if the timing of Labor Day is important, but I wouldn’t underestimate the power of symbols.
No, that's too close to Memorial Day. And without Labor Day being in September the gap between July 4th and Thanksgiving is too wide to not have a holiday where the majority of workers get time off from work
In Italy we have Liberation day on April 25th and labor day on 1st May and nobody ever complained.
You celebrate certain days in specific dates for a reason, not because they fit nicely with other holidays
A lot of American systems are very broken, including our vacation opportunities from work. We get significantly less paid time off compared to most European countries and it can be nice to have them spread out so that there is a chance you get the day off (not all companies here recognize things like labor day anyway).
There's been proposals that 9/11 become a federal holiday. That would probably fill the gap between Labor Day and Veterans Day. Speaking of Veterans Day, it's about two weeks before Thanksgiving, yet both are federal holidays. May 1st wouldn't be too close to Memorial Day by comparison.
It's not just about time off or celebrating. It's more about sales, special events, traveling, eating out, getting gas, airline tickets, hotel rooms, etc, etc. In other words, stimulating the economy on a regular basis.
I don't rrally care when or if we have labor day as an official holiday. Seems like a pointless token gesture, considering the lack of labor rights and protections in the US.
Yes but keep the September day as another holiday for workers. Maybe one to celebrate living workers and one for those who died to get us worker protections, like we have Veterans Day and Memorial Day both.
No, we don’t know why this date was chosen and don’t much care. Memorial Day is the symbolic start of summer fun and Labor Day is the symbolic end. It’s a great bookmark for kids summer vacation (even if many schools start earlier now) for anyone with a cottage, or even scheduling a vacation.
Having a holiday as the “last hurrah” of summer is more important than which date it falls on. Plus we get all the conservatives on our side by saying May 1 is not ‘murican, it’s international, even commie
Edit: I never knew May 1 had an American origin, nor that the first Monday in September was chosen for convenient timing of holidays
Why does it matter when different countries have different holidays?
I prefer it on a Monday so that I get a long weekend. If it's a specific date all of the time, then if get a random day off in the middle of the week instead which I don't care about. I always prefer to extend my weekend instead.
I actually really dislike that Thanksgiving in the US is always on Thursday. It means I can't travel very far to see family because I always work the day immediately before and after Thanksgiving. So I just have a random day off in the middle of the week.
We should add May 1st as an additional federal holiday to celebrate labor. We have too many holidays dedicated to the feds celebrating themselves. Surely we can drop at least one to celebrate workers more than we currently do.
It's named for the Labor movement. maybe you're joking and I'm just dense but... yeah.
"Beginning in the late 19th century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, diverse groups of trade unionists chose a variety of days on which to celebrate labor. In the United States, a September holiday called Labor Day was first proposed in the early 1880s."
I am alright, it is pretty much the last day of the year you have shorts temperatures which if nothing else is a reminder of that fact. Maybe have two days off instead?