Americans today celebrate Labor Day — grateful for some time off and the chance to soak up the last bits of summer.
But the holiday once was known for its greater significance — as a high-profile tribute to labor’s honorable history.
And the movement remains formidable.
But its prouder days are long behind it.
Its numbers have dwindled — falling 17 percent in just the last 20 years.
And, notably, more union members today hold jobs in the public sector than the private sector (7.6 million versus 7.2 million) — even as non-government workers outnumber public employees more than 5 to 1.
Most important, though, is the considerable pain public-sector unions have caused Americans by putting their interests uncompromisingly above everyone else’s.
In New York, the teachers unions have a hammerlock on the schools, fighting long-overdue reform — and denying far too many kids a shot at a decent education.
Take a new labor front group called New Yorkers for Great Public Schools.
The organization’s very name is a lie: Its members aren’t everyday New Yorkers — but union tools.
Its principal funding comes from the teachers unions, directly or otherwise, and its foot soldiers are supplied by activist not-for-profit organizations that themselves are lavishly funded by the taxpayers.
It was formed specifically to combat a group that promotes public-school reform in New York: the independent, privately funded StudentsFirstNY.
The union front isn’t the least bit subtle about its strategy: Any politician who accepts help from StudentsFirstNY will pay a severe price come campaign season.
The threat is credible. The Post’s Carl Campanile last week reported that the state and city teachers unions funneled some $250,000 in recent years to pols who are now standing with them against StudentsFirstNY — and steadfastly against reform.
Meanwhile, the group’s nonprofit allies are growing fat at the public teat. Since 2009 alone, these groups have scarfed down some $37 million in government “grants” for services rendered.
Included among them are ACORN (or its splinters, the New York Agency for Community Affairs and New York Communities for Change), Make the Road New York and various local branches of the NAACP, among others. And every single one marches to the unions’ drum.
Some 46 elected officials and wannabes have now vowed to reject donations from StudentsFirstNY; at least 33 of them, as Campanile reported, chose instead to take cash from the unions.
Roll that one over for a minute: The unions, and their hydra-like “nonprofits,” feed off taxpayer cash and then turn around and buy off the pols — in an effort to control New York schools and school policy, for the benefit of their members.
At the expense of students.
And it’s perfectly legal.
Surely, all this is sharply at odds with the more noble history of the labor movement.
Millions of Americans owe labor for having paved a pathway into the middle class, for winning strong laws that ensure safe workplaces and fair treatment on the job.
But with the rise of public-sector unions — with their perverse grip over the political class, especially in New York — those days seem long gone.
Yes, teachers get to enjoy ironclad job protections, good pay and perks (whether or not they’re effective or, heck, even sexually abusive). But the kids suffer.
Taxpayers bleed, and schools rot.
As New Yorkers today celebrate labor’s long, proud history and offer thanks for its hard-won triumphs, they might also consider what the movement has become, particularly in New York.
And wonder whether, on balance, it remains a force for good — for everyone.