The true “labor day” remains May 1st: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2007/05/may_day_the_tru.html#comments

The following handful of titles is selected from my bibliography, “The World of Work & Labor Law:

A Basic Bibliography.” I think a good way to celebrate the holiday would be to promise oneself to buy and/or read some of these books. (One also might have a look at the New Labor Forum: http://www.newlaborforum.org/)

Alston, Philip, ed. Labour Rights as Human Rights. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005.

American Social History Project. Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 2. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.

Basu, Kaushik, et al., eds. International Labor Standards: History, Theory and Policy Options. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001.

Elster, Jon and Karl Ove Moene, eds. Alternatives to Capitalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Estlund, Cynthia. Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Freeman, Richard B. and James L. Medoff. What Do Unions Do? New York: Basic Books, 1984.

Gross, James A., ed. Workers’ Rights as Human Rights. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Harrod, Jeffrey and Robert O’Brien, eds. Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Hepple, Bob. Labour Laws and Global Trade. Oxford, UK: Hart Publ., 2005.

Levine, Bruce, et al. Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 1. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.

Moody, Kim. Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy. London: Verso, 1997.

Polin, Bob and Stephanie Luce. The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy. New York: New Press, revised ed., 2000.

Schor, Juliette. The Overworked American. New York: Basic Books, 1991.

Sevais, Jean-Michel. International Labour Law. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2005.

Wright, Erik Olin. The Debate on Classes. London: Verso, 1990.

See too, in your leisure time:

AFL-CIO: http://www.aflcio.org/

American Rights at Work: http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/

Center for Labor Research and Education, University of California, Los Angeles: http://www.labor.ucla.edu/

Coalition of Labor Union Women: http://www.cluw.org/

Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, University of Washington: http://depts.washington.edu/pcls/

International Labour Organization: http://www.ilo.org/

Jobs With Justice: http://www.jwj.org/

Justice for Janitors: http://www.seiu.org/property/janitors/

Labor Blog (Nathan Newman): http://www.nathannewman.org/laborblog/

Labor Net: http://www.labornet.org/

Labor Notes: http://labornotes.org/index.shtml (the links are indispensable)

Labor Party: http://www.thelaborparty.org/

LabourStart: http://www.labourstart.org/

School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University (ILR School): http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/

United Professionals (UP): http://www.unitedprofessionals.org/

Only if one includes government employees, which demonstrates precisely why the modern collectivist bargaining system is such a farce: If labor unions were meant to protect workers from “big, evil employers,” then does the rise of government employee unions mean that government — the same government that spawned labor unions in the first place — is also “big and evil”?