Syracuse, N.Y., in the mid-1950s; a steamy Friday mid-afternoon in July. I had just climbed up for a water break from the manhole I was digging beneath the pavement when a little brown man approached — brown suit, brown shirt and tie, tobacco-brown teeth and fingers. “Hey, Whitey!” he hollered over the noise of the machines. “Gimme five.” That expression didn’t mean then what it does now.

“Five what?“

“Five bucks. Union dues.”

“I don’t belong to a union.” He assured me I did. We argued a bit, and he left. Five minutes later Dave, the job boss, came over.

“Hey, Whitey! You owe me five bucks. I just paid your union dues.” Again I remonstrated. But he took me by my belt and turned me to face the rest of the job. “You see all those lovely machines?” he asked. Yep, there was Ralph (operating engineer), leaning against a tree next to his roaring Ingersoll-Rand air compressor. He pointed at the backhoe working on a trench beneath the asphalt (another operating engineer), and then the line of dump trucks waiting to be loaded (teamsters). “If you don’t join the union, there won’t be any of ’em here Monday. And Mr. Ballard ain’t gonna be very happy.” Mr. Ballard owned the company. So I joined perforce the International Hod Carriers and Building Trades Union (which it then was) and as long as I had that job, paid the little man my five bucks a week.

I never told my parents. They were from generations of staunch Republican stock who preached the love of Jesus, but deplored the existence of Irishmen, Roman Catholics, Democrats and labor unions (the source, no doubt, of my initial resistance to joining one). I was delighted to discover that dues weren’t payable during the down time I wasn’t employed on a union project. There was an agent whose job was apparently to keep tabs on us during our unemployment. I happened to tell him one day that my wife and I had just had a baby, and shortly afterward found that the union had covered all costs of the pre- and post-natal care, as well as the delivery. I remained a labor union member long after I had joined the National Teachers’ Association (again, reluctantly, as a matter of principle).

Labor Day has just come and gone again. I’m writing this on the evening of the holiday. The evening news is full of candidate Kamala Harris’ stem-winder of an address to a labor gathering in Pennsylvania, attempting to secure for the Democrats the support of what used to be their natural constituency.

The labor movement has, like Rodney Dangerfield, long found it hard to get any respect. Part of that is no doubt the influence of classism, which exiles plain-speaking blue-collar workers to the fringes of polite society. Add to that the work rules that often seem to verge on the absurd, and the suspicion of corruption of its leaders (as if such a thing didn’t exist in, for example, the church, law enforcement, corporations and other institutions), and it’s clear why labor is often not taken seriously. But it’s given a voice and influence to a vast number of citizens who might otherwise be — and have been — exploited in their efforts to secure a decent living.

A quick google of the Ludlow Massacre will acquaint people unfamiliar with the history of the labor movement with the now-unbelievable abuses of coal miners by the corporations that owned and operated the mines. Men like Samuel Gompers and John L. Lewis became national figures for their willingness to end negotiating impasses with fierce strikes. Lewis’ heavy-browed features decorated many a newspaper front page in my boyhood. As I said earlier, he remained a renegade among the staid members of our (non-union) family. But his battles for better wages, hours and working conditions and safety regulations saved many a miner’s life and provided for the families of miners killed in accidents.

There’s always been a soft spot in my heart for Labor Day and the union movement. It was the unions gave us, among other things, the 40-hour work week, and will likely be involved in its next evolution, to an even shorter one. I raise a toast to all the nameless heroes in denim overalls and steel-toed boots who carry lunch boxes and thermoses of coffee to work for all the years of their working lives.