ptbuilding It’s appropriate on Labor Day—or even the day after—to kick off any story about business with a story about labor. That’s what President Barak Obama did during his speech at an AFL-CIO rally in Milwaukee on Monday, an address that called attention to the nation’s shrinking and embattled middle class.

While the problems facing working-class Americans are “nothing new,” Obama said, referring to the Great Depression of the 1930s, he acknowledged that “they are more serious than ever.”

The President continued:

“That makes our cause more urgent than ever. For generations, it was the great American middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It’s got to be that way again. It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today—the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label.

“America cannot have a strong, growing economy without a strong, growing middle class, and the chance for everybody, no matter how humble their beginnings, to join that middle class. A middle class built on the idea that if you work hard and live up to your responsibilities, you can get ahead—and enjoy some basic guarantees in life. A good job that pays a good wage. Health care that’ll be there when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. An education that’ll give our kids a better life than we had. These are simple ideas. American ideas.”

These “American ideas” can sometimes stir something up in those of us who both embrace the wealth and benefits the business world can bring us yet have strong feelings that unions must survive to for our middle class to survive. Being a business reporter for many years, I’ve had affinity and awe for what’s done on Wall Street and in the meeting rooms of businesses both big and small. Those people literally make something out of nothing. They create jobs and generate wealth that helps pave roads, keep schools open and give people opportunities to improve their lives.

But growing up in a union family—my grandfather was a Teamster in the early 1940s who met Jimmy Hoffa on several occasions, and my father was a member of the Millwrights union for over 40 years—and having served as a union steward myself, I also know the importance of the labor movement. And I can tell you it’s beyond the petty squabbling of Democrat versus Republican, conservative or liberal.

At the Press-Telegram, I was a member of the bargaining team, which fought for two years to secure a successful union contract. It was a long and bitter fight that led me to seek employment elsewhere as soon as the contract was at a point of being achieved.

It was a successful contract in that it guaranteed, for the next few years at least, that the editorial employees got the representation they deserved. It was also a success because the contract got a two-percent pay raise for employees—and what makes that so much of a success is that a raise of any kind at all was secured during a crisis in the newspaper industry. Additionally, it flew in the face of a hard-hitting management proposal that called for across-the-board takebacks, including wage freezes, layoffs and loss of benefits in several categories.

But it was a failure when viewed in another light: those hardworking reporters, photographers, designers, copy editors and web workers got an increase that didn’t even begin to keep pace with the increased cost of living. It was an increase that, ironically, barely put editorial employees back on par with what employees at the Press-Telegram were earning a dozen years earlier. That was right before William Dean Singleton, a newspaper mogul and self-stylized Charles Foster Kane, purchased the P-T and gutted it.

Those are one guy’s thoughts for Labor Day. Please keep in mind what it’s all about.

To read the full text of Obama’s speech, click here (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/09/06/obamas-remarks-at-labor-rally-in-wisconsin/).

[ Port of Long Beach’s Newest Shipper]

Last week P O Shipping’s vessel Suzhou Dragon entered the Port of Long Beach, marking the beginning of new trans-Pacific Ocean containership service between Long Beach and ports in China.

The new service offered by P O Shipping (the P O stands for Pan Ocean) will add another 150,000 TEUs (20-foot-equivalent) of container capacity per year through Long Beach, according to a release issued by the Port of Long Beach.

“The ‘CAE Express’ connecting central and north China to Long Beach and select intermodal gateways is the next step in the development of P O Shipping’s commitment to meeting the growing needs of the market and our customer base,” K.K. Chan, President of P O Shipping USA, said in the statement.

In that same statement, Richard D. Steinke, the Port’s Executive Director, noted that the start of the new service is further evidence of resurgence of the international shipping industry. “We’re delighted that P O Shipping, as a new ocean carrier, has chosen Long Beach as its gateway to the United States,” he said.

P O Shipping’s new regular weekly service will call at Pier J’s Pacific Container Terminal with five ships ranging in capacity from 2,700 to 3,500 TEUs. P O is a state-owned carrier backed by the Hainan Province government in southern China.

Trade valued at an estimated $100 billion per year moves through Long Beach,