For more than a hundred years, Labor Day has been a national holiday. Started by workers, it has celebrated, not just work, but the rights of workers to dignity, representation, and freedom. But in the last decade, we've seen the rise of "corporate rights," of "right to work" movements, and a shocking concentration of the country's wealth among a few investment barons. Worker rights are being challenged in the courts, and yet, just last month, our neighbors in Missouri rejected a right to work proposal that would have further curtailed the ability of workers to organize for their rights.

To be sure this is not a black or white issue. There are arguments to be made for individual freedoms within a labor collective. There are movements to increase the minimum wage, while also arguing for the preservation of lower wage jobs. Immigrants, often the workers with the fewest rights, are under renewed attack. And the evergreen idea of a "basic income" has resurfaced more and more frequently.

• What Is Labor Day? A History of the Workers’ Holiday - NYTimes
• Reassessing Organized Labor's Political Power After Supreme Court Ruling - NPR
• When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers - NPR
• The Economist explains universal basic incomes - The Economist

But, at its core, the labor question is a simple one. What MainStream returns to, on every issue, is the preservation of basic human dignity. We recognize the freedoms every individual deserves, while maintaining that to reach those freedoms, we cannot impinge on the rights of others. This is why we fight for the separation of church and state, not to denigrate anyone's religious views, but to ensure that nobody is required by the state to practice a morality they do not agree with.

This is why, on Labor Day, we urge you to remember that all workers have a basic right to a life of dignity.

It starts here. With you. Do more than vote.