Of all the official U.S. holidays whose meanings have become muddled by the passing of time, Labor Day has become one of the most obscure. That’s partly because many businesses have their workers labor on the one holiday meant to recognize them.
U.S. President Grover Cleveland established Labor Day as a federal holiday in 1894, largely due to mounting pressure from labor unions that had been growing in power and pressing for better working conditions, including more reasonable work hours. With a stroke of the president’s pen, those labor leaders achieved their goal, but only in a symbolic sense.
Officially, Labor Day is meant to celebrate the social and economic achievements of American workers, but most Americans associate it with end-of-summer barbecues, parties and parades — most of which are, ironically, made possible by American workers who put in hours on a holiday in order to keep grocery stores, restaurants and essential services open.
Federal holidays only apply to federal employees, and individual states get to choose whether to recognize federal holidays or not. For its state employees, New Mexico recognizes the following 11 federal holidays: New Year’s Day; Martin Luther King Jr. Day; Presidents' Day; Memorial Day; Juneteenth; Independence Day; Labor Day; Indigenous Peoples' Day; Veterans Day; Thanksgiving; and Christmas Day. Of course, these paid holidays for government workers are funded by taxpayers, many of whom have to work those holidays.
Even when a state does officially adopt a federal holiday, that doesn’t mean every worker in that state gets the day off. That’s due to a mix of both public safety realities (police, fire and EMS, for example, still need to operate), as well as economic pressures.
Unfortunately, many private businesses trying to keep their doors open and have a positive bottom line can’t afford to be closed on so many holidays. For example, if a New Mexico business with 20 employees earning an average of $20 per hour at eight hours a week were given all 11 federal holidays the state recognizes off, that business would pay an additional $35,200 annually. Some businesses can afford to shoulder that cost burden. Others can’t. Others simply choose not to.
Private businesses also aren’t required to give their workers holiday pay in enterprises that need to operate seven days a week, or they might offer a different day off. Instead, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 only guarantees overtime pay for hourly (non-exempt) workers. The act was established to create worker protections that early American unions first advocated for all those years ago, but there are still omissions in these protections. One of those oversights, arguably, is the ability of businesses to forgo holiday pay.
For now, as ever, Americans get to choose where they work when it comes to private business: Some work for good employers, some work for bad employers and many more work for business owners who fall somewhere in between. Due to any number of extenuating circumstances, certain workers don't have the ability to job hop to find better employment. Still, many do, and it's these workers who ultimately determine the quality of employment they will tolerate — or they find better employment elsewhere. And the search is on: Based on recent economic data, unemployment in the U.S. is the highest it’s been since 2021.
If you’ve found a position working for a business owner who recognizes holidays and operates their business soundly enough to be able to reward holiday pay, you’ve probably landed in a decent spot. It might not be the law of the land just yet, but rewarding workers for their labor on a major holiday sure seems like the right thing to do, and, after all, is what this particular holiday is all about.
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