Excerpt: One irony of Labor Day 2004 is that so much political oratory speaks of values and morality when the dignity of human labor is under relentless assault. The overriding manifestation of this -- affecting all levels of full-time workers, not just the working poor -- is the decline in wages, as shown by studies from both the U.S. Department of Labor and Internal Revenue Service documenting an increase in poverty during the first three years of the Bush administration.