By Flora Jaquez, a Warehouse Worker and member of the SEIU-Workers United Western States Regional Joint Board
On Labor Day, we normally celebrate the many achievements of the Labor movement, from the hard-fought weekend to safety standards to 8-hour workdays. For those of us lucky enough to have the day off (many more workers across industries still work to keep the country running), we often celebrate these wins through weekend trips, relaxing time with family, or barbecues. But there’s been a clear damper on our celebrations, and it all tracks back to the obvious difficulties working people all face right now.
The labor movement—through the daily work of shop stewards and rank-and-file union members and member leaders who bargain for strong contracts—has always been a necessary counterbalance to the unfettered power of the boss in America’s workplaces.
I know that well. I’m a warehouse worker. I’ve done it for more than 7 years, and I’m proud to say that my workplace has a union. As a shop steward, I know we're the defense against managers’ favoritism and other whims. The boss at my workplace knows he can't do whatever he wants because we're there to enforce the law: Our Contract.
Now think of a workplace without a union, a warehouse, or any other industry, where the boss can do whatever he/she wants and impose his/her own tyrannical rules. There are no checks and balances there; it's just absolute corporate power
And similar to how the unions we organize are checks against bosses, so can workers be the checks and balances on the power elected officials hold in shaping our lives.
Take a look at Congress these days. This administration behaves as if Trump were a king with absolute power, and the MAGA officials in Congress turn to look the other way. As we’ve seen at Amazon, this is a disaster for working people. It’s made food unsafe, wasted our tax dollars on vanity projects, put service members in harm's way, and made way for Congress to pass the ill-named “Big Beautiful Bill” that cut healthcare access for millions of people, slashed food assistance, and gave billionaires yet another big tax break.
Our country doesn’t need more mega-yachts; our country needs Money, Power, and Respect for working people. To do so, we must elect candidates in Congress who will provide effective checks and balances on this Bezos-inspired executive branch.
By electing candidates who stand with working people and share our vision of the future, we'll begin to mend the many harms workers have faced. It will allow working people of all backgrounds to lay the foundation of what we need and put money back in working people's pockets so we can live fully and not just survive.
We have the power to do it. Working people, uniting regardless of race, creed, language, and all the other ways they seek to divide us, have the power to send home corrupt politicians who are not serving their constituents. We have great power at the ballot box. Let’s use it.
Using our power at the ballot box, we'll also get the respect we deserve. Many of the politicians currently in Congress behave as if they can disrespect working people and hurt us day after day, one bill at a time. This November we'll show them how wrong they are.
I dream of a Labor Day where we aren’t just celebrating the past but what we’re building for the future. Already, working people are having conversations about how we all deserve money, power, and respect, and these conversations will continue through November—when we'll say loud and clear that we need a Congress that behaves like our unions, as checks and balances to the absolute power of the wealthy. Happy Labor Day!
