It’s been accept­ed as gospel that the great­est eco­nom­ic engine in Amer­i­ca is small busi­ness – a myth start­ed more than a gen­er­a­tion ago by groups such as the US Cham­ber of Com­merce and prop­a­gat­ed by politi­cians who want to cul­ti­vate a ‘pro-busi­ness’ reputation.

In fact, the great­est force in the Amer­i­can econ­o­my for much of the past cen­tu­ry has been con­sumer spend­ing dri­ven by the abil­i­ty of work­ers and their fam­i­lies to afford more than the basic neces­si­ties of food, cloth­ing and shelter.

When work­ers were unor­ga­nized and had to stand up as indi­vid­u­als to their employ­ers, they had no pow­er to bar­gain for bet­ter wages or work­ing con­di­tions – and were paid and treat­ed accord­ing­ly. Many work­ers earned just enough to make ends meet, and endured work­ing con­di­tions that often result­ed in poor health or career-short­en­ing injuries.

Once work­ers orga­nized, their abil­i­ty to col­lec­tive­ly nego­ti­ate pro­vid­ed them with a greater sense of secu­ri­ty. They knew they were less like­ly to be arbi­trar­i­ly fired, had enhanced work­place safe­ty to help pre­vent them from being injured on the job, and could rely on a set hourly wage. The result was a greater con­sumer con­fi­dence that encour­aged work­ers and their fam­i­lies to spend more freely on a wider vari­ety of non-essen­tial goods and ser­vices than ever before, and the Amer­i­can econ­o­my was grew.

A con­sumer-dri­ven econ­o­my didn’t always exist – it was a byprod­uct of the labor move­ments push for fair wages, work­place safe­ty, and oth­er ben­e­fits that most Amer­i­cans today take for grant­ed. The emer­gence an eco­nom­i­cal­ly-enabled work­ing class pro­vid­ed a cus­tomer base for the entre­pre­neur­ial class – not the oth­er way around.

Most of what the labor move­ment won for work­ing Amer­i­cans is now guar­an­teed by fed­er­al law – but those pro­tec­tions are being assault­ed in a two front war waged by both Wall Street investors and Tea Par­ty rad­i­cals. On the one hand, they say we need to lessen gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions so that busi­ness­es can cre­ate jobs and grow the econ­o­my; on the oth­er hand, they say we don’t need orga­nized labor because we have laws that pro­tect workers.

In oth­er words, the right wing wants to get rid of both the laws that pro­tect work­ers and the unions that fight to ensure that those laws are enforced – and they want to do it under the guise of ‘grow­ing the economy.’

Adding insult to injury is the degree to which con­ser­v­a­tives bash orga­nized labor while tak­ing advan­tage of the ben­e­fits estab­lished by the labor move­ment – includ­ing cel­e­brat­ing Labor Day with­out acknowl­edg­ing every­thing that the labor move­ment has done for the Amer­i­can econ­o­my. They preach that we should “keep Christ in Christ­mas” and “remem­ber the rea­son for the sea­son” every Decem­ber, but man­age to for­get labor on Labor Day.

If the Teabag­gers had any integri­ty, they wouldn’t be tak­ing a day off from labor­ing on Labor Day. They’d go to work – and not claim over­time for work­ing on a legal hol­i­day. If their employ­er is closed, they’d use their day off to per­form the kind of pub­lic ser­vice they claim we don’t need gov­ern­ment for.

Instead, we’ll see news footage of Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial con­tenders – anti-labor apos­tles one and all – giv­ing speech­es to crowds of peo­ple who wouldn’t even have the day off if it weren’t for the labor movement.

It’s time for pro­gres­sives to call these hyp­ocrites out for who they are, and to renew our nations pride in its labor her­itage – begin­ning this Mon­day, by wish­ing every­one you see a Hap­py LABOR day!