God Showed Up on Labor Day
i published a short story and we're all broke
Yesterday, my short story “God Showed Up on Labor Day” was published in the Lunch Ticket, a literary magazine that focuses on working bodies and labor. This short story has been through the submission rounds, and while it received positive responses from editors, it did not quite fit in other literary journals. Now I am confident in the knowledge that “God Showed Up on Labor Day” was always meant to be in the Lunch Ticket.
This piece is inspired by my own experience as someone loved and parented by blue-collar workers, who themselves were children of people who worked with their hands, and the alienation I felt at my first office job. I grew up seeing the impact of a lifetime of work on the human body, the callouses and early arthritis and an occasional missing finger. In an American working class household, there is pride in physical labor and disdain for “sitting on your ass” white-collar jobs.
I was not prepared for the death by a thousand cuts prevalent in the white-collar workforce. There is no employee handbook on the politics of office culture. No one explains its nuances to first-generation college graduates or those who slip past the college education barrier to salaried positions. Likewise, there are limited resources on coping with the accompanying stress. White-collar labor’s mental toll is as damaging to the body as blue-collar labor.
It’s just quieter - and in some ways, crueler.
Crueler because in blue-collar jobs, there is more camaraderie than competition. There is a shared goal of “getting the job done” instead of a ceaseless climb up a company ladder. In blue-collar work culture, it’s about getting home to your family at the end of the day - earlier even, if you worked hard enough. In the white-collar world, I found that it’s about looking busy by spending longer and longer hours at the office.
“God Showed Up on Labor Day” was written shortly after the body of Denise Prudhomme, age 60, was discovered in her cubicle at a Wells Fargo corporate office. She clocked in at 7 AM on a Friday, died from a sudden cardiac arrest, and was found 4 days later.
Denise is one of many who have died at work. She is also another worker quickly replaced. Whether you work in an office or a construction site, you can count on that: The company may briefly acknowledge your sacrifice to the god of profit, but it will replace you without pause.
My short story “God Showed Up on Labor Day” is about life as a working body in the United States, the land of opportunity.
Let’s talk a little about labor.
Work-Related Fatalities
Just before the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2019, the United Nations pinpointed stress, excessive working hours, and related diseases as contributors to nearly 2.8 million deaths. Another 374 million people were injured or fell ill because of their jobs.
A more recent 2023 report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) confirms that 3 million people die due to work-related accidents and diseases every year. The top 3 work-related diseases are heart disease, cancer, and respiratory disease. 1 in 3 fatal occupational injuries worldwide occur in the agricultural sector.
Workplace Stress
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 85% of the American workforce suffers from workplace stress. This has causes 120,000 deaths in the US each year.
This is in a country with no federally mandated sick time, vacation, or parental leave. Paid time off is a benefit given at the whim of companies and, more often than not, is “earned” after hours of work. Our federal minimum wage is only $7.25 per hour and has not increased since 2009. Inflation has increased costs by 36.5% in the past 16 years.
In a survey conducted by MarketWatch, in 2025, 57% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Oligarchic Plans for Working Bodies
A Congressman from Denise Prudhomme’s state, Rep Andy Biggs (R-AZ), introduced a bill to abolish OSHA.
The regime fired two thirds of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), an agency created to ensure safe and healthy working conditions.
While immigrant workers are kidnapped and trafficked by the state, Florida aims to roll back child labor laws to fill the labor gap. This sets a precedent for the rest of the United States.
The regime pulled the US out of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OCED)’s negotiations for a Global Minimum Tax which would tax global enterprises up to 15%.
Oh, and the tariffs - which we all know would ultimately fall on working people already struggling to get by.
This month, Microsoft (yes, that particular corporate overlord) released a report on a new thing called the infinite workday.
“This is about opportunity. We believe that work is transformative for the individual who moves from welfare to employment. […] Work also provides purpose and dignity. It strengthens families and communities as it gives new life to start-ups and growing businesses. It provides an example to our next generation. And studies have shown that work can improve physical and mental health.”
- “Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must,” New York Times’ Opinion section, written by millionaires Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Mehmet OzBrooke Rollins and Scott Turner
I’m not sharing anything new. Given how money and resources are (not) spread out, there is maybe an 81% chance that you don’t need me or a report to tell you that it’s hard. It’s been hard, and it is about to get harder. Our lived experiences are the data. Most of us are just trying to get by and take care of our families, our communities.
So, why do we simply die at our desks, in the field, at the oil rig, in classrooms, and, in debt, while oligarchs live long, rich lives with unlimited access to the best nutrition and medical care money can buy?
Why should we die by the millions for them when it’s our hands making their products in factories, cleaning their houses, raising and teaching their children, picking their food, and healing their bodies?
Why should a handful of greedy motherfuckers live off our labor at our expense?
There is no reasonable answer for mass compliance. They live, we die, because we are born into a system engineered by capitalists, imagined by colonizers. A system maintained by working bodies like you and me.
A system we can break.
Seeds for Change
In addition to Lunch Ticket, read and support other labor-focused literary journals such as Workers Write! and Prolit.
Solidarity Economy 101: The Kola Nut Timebank Story
Share the Economic Policy Institute’s article “100 Days, 100 Ways Trump has Hurt Workers” with that one weird conservative uncle on Facebook.
The Art of Organizing: 18 Tips from a Veteran Union Organizer
Covid is a Labor Issue! - Free & Available in English, Spanish, Italian, & Vietnamese
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