Labor Day is a holiday with a forgotten history and a serious lack of modern-day meaning for most of us.

Blame its current status on the falling fortunes of the American labor union.

Between the black eyes of corruption and greed that labor and its leadership have given the movement over the decades, most Americans workers have forgotten just how big a debt they owe labor unions, even if they will never belong to one.

As most of us take a day off from work today, we should not forget that our standard of living, our decent wage, our safe working conditions, our fringe benefits - including the very paid vacation time we enjoy today - can all be traced back to the hard-won gains of workers who first organized into unions to bargain for fair treatment in the work place.

Labor Day began back in 1882 with a carpenters union parade in New York City. Twelve years later the federal government made it a national holiday to honor the trades and their unions, those workers who did the hard labor of the American economy.

Today, it has become just another amorphous national holiday whose name is more closely associated with one last long summer weekend and a backyard picnic before the back-to-school schedule begins.

Most of us work at computer screens now, not in coal mines, but today is still a good time to acknowledge the contribution of those who do the heavy lifting in our economy by harvesting our food, producing our energy, building our roads.

Unfortunately, it often takes a horrible mining disaster like that of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah to remind us of the everyday heroism of people who work in physically demanding or dangerous jobs.

This Labor Day seems an especially appropriate time for management, labor and government officials to commit to reviewing the laws and regulations governing safety and working conditions in U.S. mines.

Because, even though so many of us Americans live for our work, we shouldn't have to die for it.