Celebrate Labor

 Celebrate Organized Labor

Labor Transformed America

 

This weekend we take time to celebrate Labor Day. For many, this just means a three-day weekend. For those of us who are children of the Labor movement and a vibrant middle class, Labor Day means a lot more. 

 

The labor movement in the United States started in earnest in the early years of the 20^th century, growing out of protests over working conditions imposed by robber barons in the coal, steel, and transportation industries. Soon, garment workers, printers, brewers, auto workers, electricians, iron workers, newspaper workers, teachers and other laboring people joined up to demand safe working conditions and living wage. 

 

Through collective action, organized workers transformed American labor practices and forced changes in laws governing the workplace. 

 

The Labor movement was directly responsible for overtime pay, the weekend, sick leave, parental leave, domestic partner benefits, child labor laws, Social Security, paid vacations, pension benefits, the 40 hour work week, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), employer paid health benefits, worker compensation programs, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, equal pay for equal work, farm labor rights, grievance procedures, the right to organize in a workplace, and living wage laws. Labor has always been a major player in the passage of civil and voting rights legislation.

 

Early labor leaders also recognized that their movement needed to look beyond wages and working conditions to help create time and support for the families of working people. Some of those early pioneers, my grandfather was one of them, created schools for the children of working people and colleges to train union organizers. Unfortunately, with the creation of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the movement lost sight of these broader goals and shifted the focus to wages and working conditions. 

 

At the height of the union movement in post-World War II America, union membership reached 35 plus percent of the work force. This helped build the post-war vibrant middle class of my parents’ generation. This enabled folks to make it on a single income, to buy houses, educate their children and live more comfortably. Workplace excesses were exposed and corrected. Labor was recognized as the backbone of a Democratic society and corporations paid their fair share of the tax burden.

 

As with most societal movements and pressures, the gains sought and achieved by the Labor movement were resisted by financiers, business owners and corporate stockholders as they saw wealth created by their companies being redistributed to the very people who created most of that wealth. This pushback led to so-called “right to work laws,” restrictions on union organizing, limitations on the powers of government labor regulators and in, Republican controlled administrations, anti-labor activists being put in control of government regulatory efforts.

 

The push backs, combined with a rising economy and the movement of industrial activity overseas to avoid the costs involved in maintaining a unionized workplace, led to a decline in union membership and a weaker Labor presence.

 

The Labor movement is at cross-roads on this Labor Day. The newly elected leadership of the AFL-CIO with its first woman President and African American Vice President, has an opportunity to re-invigorate a movement of working people that will continue to grow with more service and health care workers, office workers, retail and restaurant employees and a host of others who have not been part of the unionized workplace historically. Recent polling shows union approval ratings at their highest levels since the 1960s. A new Labor movement, allied with other progressive organizations can again transform America into that “more perfect union” envisioned by the founders of the republic.

New organizing efforts will do well to not only celebrate the Labor movement’s past successes but return to those early roots where Labor leaders embraced support for working families that included education, healthcare and voting rights for all. 

 

Celebrate this weekend. Be proud of what organized Labor has achieved. When you go to work on Tuesday, help your working brothers and sisters by helping to organize them into an effective and strong voice for all.