EDITORIAL - Another Labor Day

Today we celebrate another Labor Day with our laborers still facing the same issues; the biggest of which is that they want more in terms of take-home pay.

There is no doubt that they need it; considering how much inflation has hit us over the decades, every price and cost has gone up considerably, practically everything from basic necessities, the cost of education, as well as all the necessary utilities.

Even the cost of dying, as opposed to living, has gone up.

However, what has remained constant, or seen little to no change, is the pay laborers get. And with the heat wave being experienced by the entire country, we can even say that for many of our laborers working conditions are now more difficult or even downright unbearable.

Again, there is no doubt that our laborers need a wage increase and that they also deserve it because of the value they add to whatever company they work for. But this really isn’t an easy thing to solve, because employers will always say that higher wages will force them to cut back on the number of employees, which is certainly something that we don’t want.

It remains a fact that being a laborer isn’t as glamorous as being someone behind a desk. Those who are paid more for their educational attainment will always hold some unjustified contempt for those whose work they see as merely manual.

However, the fact also remains that our country would grind to a halt without laborers. Keeping the streets clean, keeping highways functional, feeding the population, and constructing edifices, among others, is just as important as keeping the books, lawyering, doctoring, making sense of code, among others. So laborers are just as important as those with a white collar around their work uniform.

This Labor Day spare a thought for those whom ordinary people and the country cannot really do without. Even as many jobs have crossed over into the digital realm, they are here to stay. We will always need those who work on the sweat of their brow.