It was never Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July or even Halloween.
Be that as it may, the nation’s working men and women once got their due on the first Monday in September with well-attended parades and testimonials celebrating the strength of the middle class.
Today, labor leaders acknowledge, Labor Day is little more than the opposite bookend to Memorial Day, bracketing a summer season that, by the calendar, technically begins and ends about three weeks later.
For Mark Staffne, the annual Labor Day parade through downtown St. Louis has been a ritual for the better part of 47 years.
"I can’t say it was huge," said the business representative for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1439 in St. Louis. "But people used to watch it. Many people. Now, it’s dwindled down to union members sitting on the sidelines, watching it go by."
The meaning of Memorial Day has the benefit of patriotic reminders from educators and veterans.
Not so Labor Day which, in the estimation of University of Missouri-St. Louis business school lecturer Joy Dakich, "is lost on a population that has no connections to unions anymore."
The reasons start with the shift of the work force from union-held manufacturing jobs to nonunion jobs in the service sector.
In its latest monthly unemployment report, issued Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 2 million manufacturing jobs have been lost just since the start of the current recession.
Close behind has been the depletion of the ranks by outsourcing, automation and exporting labor to offshore factories and offices.
Finally, blue collar workers themselves weakened the movement with good intentions.
"You had guys who worked in the factories for 30 years saying to their high school kids, ‘I don’t want you to go to the factory every day. I want you to go to college.’ They wanted something better for their kids. And something better never translated into a union job," said Paul Cole, executive director of the American Labor Studies Center in Troy, N.Y.
Dakich, active in the labor movement when she worked with the airline industry, has taught college-level courses on labor relations for 27 years.
She says labor’s failure to burnish its own image is pushing the movement toward irrelevance.
Students in Dakich’s classes are often surprised when she identifies Albert Pujols, Brad Pitt and Madonna as union members.
The idea that entertainment and sports icons are union people, Dakich says, runs counter to negative public perceptions about labor unrest, unruly picket lines, work slowdowns and notorious tales about James Hoffa, the late International Teamster’s Union president.
"If the unions are going to utilize Labor Day effectively, then they need to talk about people the average citizen recognizes and then bring it down to scale," said Dakich.
"They should show people like Albert Pujols and then show a union guy who has been (driving a truck) for 20 years and making $60,000 a year and a (nonunion) driver who isn’t making that kind of money."
Hugh McVey, president of the Missouri AFL-CIO, takes exception with Dakich and others who contend that time, economics and perception have diluted the importance of organized labor, and along with it, Labor Day.
"Perhaps you should talk to someone about trying to build in St. Louis without (organized labor)," McVey said. "They’ll tell you we’re relevant."
Still, McVey acknowledges labor has fallen short in promoting its attributes, particularly to young people.
"I didn’t even do a good enough job of telling my own kids what labor did for them," he admitted.
Cole says the younger generation needs to be told and the older generation reminded that without labor, the middle class as we know it would not exist.
A discussion that starts at home, Staffne maintains, should continue in history and current events classes and in counseling offices that guide high school students toward appropriate careers.
"Somehow, we have to make people know it’s not a disgrace to say, ‘Hey, I’m a blue collar worker,’" he said.
Dakich cautions that — whether in school or educating the general public about the reason for a federal holiday on the first Monday in September — labor needs to resist the temptation to live in the past.
"They shouldn’t use Labor Day to talk about old-time history, Mother Jones and people no one knows anything about today," Dakich said.
"They should talk about the true benefits of being represented (by organized labor), issues of due process and actual job protection" in dire economic times.
Or, perhaps, labor should start letting young people such as Terral Henderson do the talking.
Along with most of his classmates at the Construction Careers Center, a St. Louis charter school for young people interested in the trades, Henderson thought of Labor Day — if he thought of it at all — as the first three-day weekend of the academic year.
That changed after Henderson earned a diploma in 2007 that led to an apprenticeship with Local 1396 of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Ironworkers.
Ask Henderson, 20, what he’s doing now and the quick response is accompanied by a bright smile.
He’s helping to rebuild Highway 40.
Last year, at the behest of his new co-workers, Henderson attended his first St. Louis Labor Day parade as a spectator.
In 2009, he won’t be on the sidewalk.
Henderson may not have known what Labor Day was about before. But as he prepares to march through downtown Monday morning, he understands what it means now.
"It represents what I do," he said. "I labor every day."
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