One of my favorite bumper sticker declares: “Unions: the folks who brought you the Weekend.” Unions also brought us this weekend’s holiday (for those who have Monday off, that is…).

Personally, I take Labor Day seriously, even though doesn’t have the same significance for me as it does for some people because I don’t own white shoes. But I like Labor Day for what it conjures up: images of hot-dogs, stoop-based Spauldings games, the day-before-school-starts, and ladies fanning themselves with folded paper plates.

I also like it because I am a working-class girl. It is a badge I wear proudly, along with “Union Made.” (And yes, “Union Maid.” That too.)

Soon after she got off the boat from Sicily, my grandmother started sewing buttonholes for the shirts of elegant, unknown men who worked in offices— while she herself, and her seven children, worked and lived in a tenement on the Lower East Side of New York City. They were not aware of the idea of a “weekend.” They were not aware of the power of organized labor. My grandfather, a tailor, was grateful for whatever income-producing labor he could find. A proud man, like most immigrants of his generation, my grandfather would have accepted employment of almost any kind rather than admit defeat in his profession. A hand-out was an admission that you had failed; a request for financial help was a white flag signaling “I surrender.”

Very few people from my old neighborhood held out their hands.

“You wanna eat? Your family wants to eat? You work,” was the inelegant motto of my neighborhood. We could have had the motto translated into Latin and embroidered on a flag, but that would have meant only more work because who would sew the flag and do the embroidery if not for us?

It has not changed very much in the course of the century. Working-class people work, even if they have fancier names for themselves these days. Actually, I’m not sure why anyone would change the name of the category.

Is there a problem with the term “working class”? Meaning you have to earn your keep? Meaning nobody provides you with a free ride? Meaning that you pay your own insurance, rent, tuition, and phone bills? Meaning that you don’t secretly long for a member of your immediate family to pass away in order to inherit some dough? Meaning you get up, get something done, and fall asleep knowing that you can list your accomplishments?

“Working Class” is one of the proudest things I call myself.

My own father showed up every morning at 6 a.m. to work to a loft on 24th Street and Sixth Avenue with his brothers, making bedspreads and curtains for people who could afford to spend money on such luxuries. He left home seven days a week when business was good. Only when business was bad did any of the Barreca brothers have “time off” for other activities. If any adult member of my family was idle, it didn’t signal “leisure time” or “relaxation.” Instead it meant that lean times were ahead and that compensatory activities would need to take place: harder work, another part-time job, or putting in time for somebody else “off the books.”

In my family, you considered yourself at your most fortunate when you were employed. A job—however hard or demanding the work— was NOTHING to complain about.

Does it surprise anybody, then, that I like my work? That I know how lucky I am to love my job?

I am grateful to be able to teach the literature that I love and I am grateful for the fact that I have an office to go to every morning.

The privilege of working in my profession is not something I take for granted, even after twenty-one years of teaching in the English Department at UConn. So even if I complain sincerely and constantly about the ridiculous rituals, meaningless meetings, and pathetic policies of where I work, if they told me “You no longer have your job” I don’t know what I would do.

Well, actually, I do.

Yes, I would collect unemployment and look for a better job, but I would sue for illegal termination of employment, and show up hoping they—the powers that be— would change their minds. Thank you, AAUP.

Lesson? Enjoy your work, be thankful for a chance to make a difference, and celebrate Labor Day with a sense of appreciation for all of us who have the right and the privilege to be the workers of this world.