Labor Day 2020 In Bel Air: What's Open, Closed

BEL AIR, MD — The holiday that celebrates American workers will look different in Bel Air and everywhere else in the United States this year, with the coronavirus pandemic in its sixth month.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said the holiday weekend will be key in determining if the country gets a “running start” at controlling the virus in the fall. He stressed the importance of preventing surges that occurred after Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

Labor Day — the holiday that marks the unofficial end of summer and the start of the school year — is among the busiest travel holidays of the year.

Even as the coronavirus plays spoiler to many plans, a number of them are still on. A Travel Pulse report citing numbers from Tripit from Concur shows Las Vegas, Denver, Orlando, Chicago and Seattle are the most popular big-city American destinations for the weekend.

Check the forecast for Bel Air from the National Weather Service.

The nation’s largest yearly Labor Day parade, held in downtown Pittsburgh, was canceled in July due to coronavirus concerns. In 2019, the parade featured about 10,000 marchers.

Here is what's opened and closed around Monday's holiday in Bel Air:

Harford County Government Offices: County government offices will be closed on Monday.

Courts: Courts are closed Monday.

Humane Society of Harford County: The shelter is open to the public by appointment only for adoptions and owner surrenders. Visitors must wear masks inside the building. Email adopt@harfordshelter.org or call 410-836-1090 with the name of the animal(s) you’re interested in — view adoptable animals. An adoption counselor will provide more info for scheduling an appointment.

Parks: All parks will be open.

Libraries: All Harford County Public Library branches will be closed Monday, Sept. 7.

Post Offices: Post offices will be closed Monday.

Trash: Trash in Bel Air that was to be picked up Monday will instead be picked up on Wednesday. Bulk pickup this week is canceled.

Dropoff: The Harford Waste Disposal Center and Tollgate Yard trim drop-off facility will be closed Monday.

Buses: Harford Transit Link is not offering service Monday for Labor Day.

Trains: The MARC train and Light RailLink will operate all weekend. All MARC schedules are listed on its website. The Light RailLink's schedule is posted at this link.

History Of Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated in 1882, with a parade in New York City, but the question of who first proposed the idea of a holiday to honor workers is in dispute more than a century later.

Congress didn’t recognize the holiday until what History.com calls a “watershed moment” in American labor history: the 1894 Pullman Palace Car Company strike in Chicago. The strike led to sending federal troops into the city to quell rioters.

Days later, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making Labor Day, the first Monday of September, a national holiday.

Over the past year, the unemployment rate has nearly tripled due to the pandemic. Numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported the national unemployment rate in July was at 10.2 percent. That’s down from the earlier months of the pandemic but still far higher than the 3.7 percent rate the bureau reported in July 2019. About 30 million American jobs have been lost, a June U.S. Department of Labor report details.

See Also:

• New Low For First-Time Unemployment Claims Reported In Maryland