by Ravi VS
What you’re about to read may upset you. It’s meant to. Posters, parades, speeches, and social media tributes. The same tired rituals on May 1.
Yet behind the hashtags, a silent hypocrisy persists: we glorify labour while systematically devaluing the labourer.
The irony is staggering — Labour Day, once a call for dignity and justice, has been industrialised into a ceremonial placebo. We don’t honour labour anymore. We commodify it, algorithmically optimise it, and celebrate its absence when machines outperform it.
Let’s be clear: Labour Day as we know it is obsolete. What we need is Human Value Day.
Section 1: We No Longer Work — We’re Extracted
The original spirit of Labour Day was resistance. Workers rallied against 18-hour shifts, child labour, and corporate exploitation. Fast forward to 2025 — exploitation is back, but it wears a different face:
Gig work without protection. AI replacing minds, not just muscles. Corporate “well-being” policies masking burnout factories.
The modern worker is no longer just employed — they’re extracted. Every click, breath, and brainwave is data for productivity optimisation. Our labour isn’t respected; it’s measured, mined, and monetised. Even sleep is now a KPI.
So what are we celebrating? The persistence of this new exploitation?
Section 2: Labour Has Been Decoupled from Value
Ask yourself: Why is a hedge fund manager worth 1,000 times more than a nurse who saves lives? Why does a footballer earn more in one week than a teacher does in 10 years?
Because labour, today, is no longer linked to value — it is linked to visibility, virality, and velocity. Value is not what you create — but what you manipulate. Labour isn’t noble — it’s expendable. Work ethic is outdated — replaced by attention metrics.
This is not capitalism. This is theatre. And Labour Day, in its current form, is the opening act in a play where workers still die unseen, unheard, and unpaid.
Section 3: The Robots Won’t Take Jobs. The System Already Did.
We fear AI will replace us. That’s a distraction. The system replaced us long ago.
Meaningful work has been replaced by meaningless tasks. Craft has been replaced by compliance. Autonomy has been replaced by algorithmic surveillance. We didn’t lose our jobs to robots. We lost our identity to systems that no longer see us as human — just as units of input.
On Labour Day, instead of asking for better jobs, we should be demanding better definitions of what being human means in the first place.
Section 4: From Labour Day to Human Value Day
It’s time we end Labour Day. Because labour is not the sacred thing — human value is. Let’s imagine a new kind of day. Human Value Day would:
Celebrate unpaid caregivers, not just corporate employees. Honour the dignity of rest, not just the pride of hustle. Acknowledge those displaced by automation, not shame them for not upskilling. Embrace the right to meaning, not just the obligation to earn.
Conclusion: Dismantle the Myth of the “Good Worker”
Labour Day once stood for rebellion. Now it’s a corporate photo op. Let’s stop glorifying the “good worker” who endures silent suffering, endless tasks, and shrinking wages. Let’s start celebrating the human being — the thinker, the dreamer, the caregiver, the rebel, the artist.
Because in an age of machines that can do everything, our only real job is to remain deeply human. So, no — don’t wish me Happy Labour Day.
Wish me a Happy Human Value Day instead. That’s the revolution we owe the future.
WE