The folks who brought you this weekend

WEST VALLEY CITY — It's Labor Day, and as you head to the lake, or the trailhead, or the ballpark, or you lie in your hammock and contemplate the cosmos, Jim Judd suggests you might pause to raise a toast to the people who made it all possible.

Jim is president of the Utah chapter of the AFL-CIO, and he knows that if it wasn't for the collective efforts of America's working men and women down through the years, we'd all be so busy working we wouldn't have time to contemplate anything, let alone enjoy the day off.

Give him, oh, half a second, and he'll give you a list: Child labor laws. The 40-hour work week and mandatory overtime. Breaktime. Summer vacation.

"I give talks in schools and ask the kids how many of them went on vacation this summer," says Jim. "When they raise their hands I tell them it's because the labor movement fought for that. And then I point out that they might not be in school at all if it wasn't for the child labor laws."

He dusts off the old union cliche that will never go out of style:

"We're the folks who brought you the weekend."

Labor Day celebrates all that, or at least it used to. The holiday originated in the late 1800s as a tribute to labor unions and laborers. There were parades down Main Street and speeches and tributes to the working man (and woman).

Over time, it has devolved into more of just a party.

"In many people's minds, it's the last hurrah of summer, that's all it is," says Jim.

Utah has very few civic-sponsored Labor Day celebrations anymore. The biggest Labor Day-oriented party in the entire state is held every year at the city park in Magna and it's put on by the Central Labor Council. It's like throwing your own birthday party.

But that's OK with Jim. Let people enjoy Labor Day when, where and how they please.

What worries him is what he sees as a continuing erosion of labor's voice as the country settles into what's being called the great recession.

"Business models want to drive out so much of what we've fought for," says Jim. "Benefits, retirement, decent wages. If we're not diligent, we're going to lose what we've already gained."

He speaks of what he calls "the Walmart model" of businesses hiring part-time employees who work for less pay and no benefits.

"We're seeing a slide," he says, "rights are being eroded, there's an attitude that workers are expendable rather than a company's greatest resource."