MANKATO — Ask 100 people the meaning of Labor Day and they’re apt to return blank stares.

Conventional wisdom says it’s about beer, brats on the grill, and a holiday marking summer’s swan song.

All that is true, but Paul Marquardt has a more authentic take, as befits a labor union official.

“I’d like people to think of the struggles that our grandparents and great-grandparents endured to create a middle class in this country,” says the local AFL-CIO president.

“Without unions, we wouldn’t have a middle class in this country. You’d have the rich, and you’d have the poor.”

What many American workers take for granted — the 40-hour work week, unemployment insurance, pensions and workman’s compensation — are the fruits of a 19th century labor movement that led to a federal designation:

The first Monday each September shall be set aside to celebrate the workingman and the social and economic achievements of American workers.

“People should take the day to reflect and be proud of what they do. Without the union movement, we’d all be working longer hours for less pay and less fringe benefits,” says Mark Maguet, business agent for Electricians Local 243, which has 980 members in southern Minnesota.

Some say those conditions are filtering back into the American workplace.

Marquardt, for one, sees a lot of similarities now between employers, immigrant workers, and the exploitive working conditions that spawned most of our nation’s labor laws in the 1930s.

“It’s basically 1938 all over again,” he says. “And we have corporate America shipping our jobs to communist countries. We’re supposed to feel good about it?”

John Nowak, area field agent for United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, says the current issue of Hispanic rights in the workplace hearkens to earlier eras when immigrant workers proliferated.

“Every 30 to 50 years you’re fighting the same battles we did early in our history,” Nowak says.

If union polemics such as these carry a note of defensiveness these days, it’s because unions’ once-strong grip has loosened in the decades since their high-water mark in the late 1970s.

The power of union-aversive corporations, plus the missteps of unions themselves, have kept unions treading water.

Maguet says the gist of opposition to unions is greed.

“A lot of employers just like to look at the bottom line. They think employees are making too much,” he says.

Then there is a common perception of unions as robber barons pillaging their own workers — a perception not without elements of truth in American history.

This past week the union-watchdog group Center for Union Facts launched a national ad campaign targeting labor leaders for turning their backs on the interests of employees.

The ads criticize labor leaders by alluding to instances of embezzling members’ dues, using the money to advance political agendas, and alienating workers through mismanagement of dues.

The ads’ verbiage includes words such as “corrupt” and “power-hungry” in their portrayal of union leaders.

The painted-with-broad-brush tone of the ads makes Maguet see red.

“That’s a bunch of hogwash. Yeah, there are isolated cases, but that’s true in any business,” Maguet says.

But union officials stress that Labor Day isn’t a time for strife but for an appreciation of the big picture of American workers’ contributions, and how the labor movement improved the lives of all workers.

“Labor Day isn’t a union/non-union issue. It’s a worker issue,” Marquardt says. “Unions represent all workers, and that’s what gets lost in the shuffle.”