TORONTO - Over the years, Labour Day has come to symbolize the last kick at the can for summer fun; picnics, cottage getaways and pool parties become part of the futile attempt to avoid the impending schoolyear and winter.
But this Labour Day may actually remind Canadians - still recovering from the year's news of closures, downsizes and layoffs - what the holiday actually means: a celebration of working people and the fights in the past that have enabled a satisfying work environment.
Instead of summer's final fling, organized labour sees this year's holiday as a day that will galvanize people into political action.
"I think you'll see bigger turnouts on Labour Day parades this year," said Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Autoworkers Union.
"You won't see demands for a shorter work week or more pay or larger pensions. Most of the signs will be centred on ... encouraging government to take a leadership role and finding ways to protect the gains we've made."
He said gone are the days of so-called freedom 55 where people could plan on an early retirement and have sizable pensions to rely on.
Labour Day is the perfect time to "remind people everything we've fought for can easily slip away if we don't get active and ensure the people we elect are there to represent our interests and not just the corporate or elite in our society," said Hargrove.
Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said Labour Day is one of the few days that recognize the hard work the majority of Canadians turn out.
"All people who work for wages are the most important aspect of Canadian society and the Canadian economy," he said during a phone interview from the organization's Vancouver office.
"The rich and famous get lots of television coverage, but the people that work for wages are the ones that make this country work."
On its website, the CLC's Labour Day greeting wished readers a happy holiday but only after a sombre reminder of what Canadian labour has gone through in the past few years.
"Canada's economy has lost 300,000 jobs ... fewer and lower incomes mean less money to pay for municipal services like roads, transit and social services ... how many of the country's best-paying and most-skilled jobs must we lose before the government wakes up and realizes its current employment policies are a failure?" read the message, posted Aug. 24.
After last week's news that General Motors was cutting 1,200 jobs at its truck assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said it was regrettable.
"On the positive side, we have the lowest unemployment rate in a generation in Canada. We have been losing manufacturing jobs...but people losing those jobs have been getting other jobs and that's why the unemployment rate has remained relatively low," he said on Thursday.
But CAW economist Jim Stanford doesn't see the relatively low unemployment rate as necessarily a positive.
"It's a strange juxtaposition ... the overall unemployment rate is low as Mr. Flaherty keeps telling us but that doesn't eliminate the fact that very important industries in Canada are going through the ringer," he said.
"The fact that those losses have been offset by new jobs at Tim Hortons or Wal-Mart doesn't leave anybody feeling any better."
Georgetti said many people, not just those in the automotive sector, have become very nervous about their employment and financial situation.
"It's really quite sad when we have such a rich country that people feel so vulnerable to poverty."
He said the only way this can be reversed is for Canadians to raise their voices and show our faces to the people who are making free-trade agreements.
