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While Labor Day continues to serve as the end-of-summer holiday (it was moreso when the schoolchildren returned to the classrooms on the day after the first Monday in September) it should be about more than firing up the grill one more time.
As we prepare to celebrate that holiday on Monday, it's appropriate to take a moment and remember that people fought for protections for workers in a time not so long ago. Those battles led to safer workplaces, the rise of the middle class and benefit packages that helped build a nation.
In our region, it is clear that change has arrived for the workforce. Gone are the days when a person could graduate from high school and find a job that would last for his or her lifetime at the steel mill or the coal mine. Gone are the community supports those industries provided, through pay to the workers and direct community donations.
Labor Day thus should be about reflection, about the basic human decency of having a job, working well at it and living in a nation where we're free to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
While the key parts that helped to build the region's economy are changing, there are new jobs that are coming to take their place. In Mingo Junction, for example, JSW continues to make steel and has plans to expand its rail yard system to make it easier to get its product out to customers.
Weirton might have been dealt a blow earlier this year when Cleveland-Cliffs closed its finishing mill, the last working remnant of what had been the Weirton Steel Corp., but there's the promise of new industry coming to region -- the company announced on July 22 it would be bring a state-of-the-art electrical transformer assembly facility to the Half Moon Industrial Park.
That's in addition to the Form Energy battery plant that is nearing completion on former Weirton Steel property in the city's North End.
Bully Tools, meanwhile, is seeing its operation in the Jefferson County Industrial Park grow and is getting increased national attention for its American-made products.
Labor Day is a chance to remember that all Americans continue to seek the opportunity to have a decent job that pays a decent wage and allows them the chance to seek the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It's a chance to reflect on the words of Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor, who said, "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation."
All of which means the pride of being able to work a full day and enjoy the fruits of that labor can become an opportunity for more people in the area and those who who will be come to the region looking to make a new home while finding opportunities for themselves.
It's something to think about and hope for on Labor Day 2024.