Happy Labor Day

 Posted by at 12:20 am  Politics
Sep 022013
 

Labor-day2012

May each of you enjoy the day, while giving thanks and appreciation to our labor movement, because we owe them so much.

ThinkProgress has assembled just five of the many things that Americans can thank the nation’s unions for giving us all:

1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now. Yet in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.

2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. It is also true that at the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940′s and 1950′s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.

3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.

4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”

5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”…

Inserted from <Think Progress>

Share

  21 Responses to “Happy Labor Day”

  1. Pat A says:
    September 2, 2013 at 2:07 am

    Happy Labor Day everyone!

  2. Lynn Squance says:
    September 2, 2013 at 2:18 am

    On Huffington Post, there is an article about a new union, Unifor, which is the amalgamation of the CAW and CEP.  At the bottom of the page, the following slide show about labournand the start of Labour Day in Canada.  Sometime later, the US adopted Labour Day.  There is no doubt that labour and unions have made things better for everybody, even those not in unions.  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/08/31/unifor-caw-cep-merger_n_3847388.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-business

    1) Few Canadians realize it, but Labour Day is as Canadian as maple bacon. It all began in 1872, when the Toronto Typographical Union went on strike to demand a nine-hour workday. When Globe and Mail chief George Brown had the protest organizers arrested, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald passed a law legalizing labour unions. Thus, a Conservative prime minister became a hero to the working class, and Canada became among the first countries to limit the workday, doing so decades before the U.S. The typographers' marches became an annual event, eventually being adopted by the U.S., becoming the modern day Labour Day.

    2) The end of World War I brought social instability and economic volatility to Canada. On May 15, 1919, numerous umbrella union groups went out on strike in Winnipeg, grinding the city to a halt. Protesters were attacked in the media with epithets such as "Bolshevik" and "Bohunk," but resistance from the media and government only strengthened the movement. In June, the mayor ordered the Mounties to ride into the protest, prompting violent clashes and the death of two protesters. After protest leaders were arrested, organizers called off the strike. But the federal mediator ended up ruling in favour of the protesters, establishing the Winnipeg General Strike as the most important strike in Canadian history, and a precursor to the country's modern labour movement.

    3) During the Great Depression, the only way for a single male Canadian to get government assistance was to join "relief camps" — make-work projects set up by the federal government out of concern idle young men were a threat to the nation. The relief camps, with their poor work conditions, became breeding grounds for communists and other radicals. The "On-To-Ottawa Trek" was organized as a protest that would move from Vancouver across the country to Ottawa, to bring workers' grievances to the prime minister. The trek halted in Regina when Prime Minister R.B. Bennett promised to talk to protest organizers. When talks broke down, the RCMP refused to allow the protesters to leave Regina and head for Ottawa, and on June 26, 1935, RCMP riot officers attacked a crowd of protesters. More than 100 people were arrested and two killed — one protester and one officer.

    4) n May, 1938, unemployed men led by communist organizers occupied a post office and art gallery in downtown Vancouver, protesting over poor work conditions at government-run Depression-era "relief camps." In June, the RCMP moved in to clear out the occupiers, using tear gas inside the post office. The protesters inside smashed windows for air and armed themselves with whatever was available. Forty-two people, including five officers, were injured. When word spread of the evacuation, sympathizers marched through the city's East End, smashing store windows. Further protests against "police terror" would be held in the weeks to come.

    5) In 1992, workers at Royal Oak Mines' Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories went on strike. On September 18, a bomb exploded in a mineshaft deep underground, killing nine replacement workers. Mine worker Roger Warren was convicted of nine counts of second-degree murder. The Giant Mine closed in 2004.

    6) The Canadian Labour Congress, representing numerous labour groups, participated in protests in Toronto during the G20 summit in June, 2010. When a handful of "Black Block" anarchists rioted through the city core, it brought an overwhelming police response that resulted in the largest mass arrests in Canadian history. More than 1,000 people were arrested, with most never charged with any crime. Numerous allegations of police brutality have been made, and the Toronto police are now the target of several multi-million dollar lawsuits. So far, two police officers have been charged with crimes relating to G20 policing, and charges against other police officers are also possible.

    7) When Vancouver-based magazine Adbusters suggested the public "occupy Wall Street" to protest corporate malfeasance, New Yorkers took the suggestion seriously, and occupied Zuccotti Park in Manhattan. Canadians followed suit, sparking copycat occupations in all major Canadian cities in September, 2011. By December, most of the occupations had been cleared, all of them non-violently. Though the protests achieved no specific goals, they did change the political conversation in North America. What their long-term legacy will be remains to be seen.

    I can remember when Canadian bank workes started to unionise in BC in the mid 70's.  I was deemed management and some of the management shenanigans were incredible, certainly not to my liking.  In my bank, if a union bargaining unit was certified, management was deemed ineffective and your career was toast. A number of years later, I was managing pro tem a unionised branch in the north.  Where I was accustomed to using discretion with staff, no more.  We went by the collective agreement.  Period.

    We owe a lot to unions, but in both the US and Canada, conservative forces have and are eroding unions.  Dias, the new head of Unifor, was very passionate on this point when he accepted the position of President of Unifor.  Canada has always been more social minded with universal healthcare etc so it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few years, especially as we approach 2015.

  3. Patty says:
    September 2, 2013 at 5:30 am

    Remember those who paid the ultimate price for what was achieved by labor unions. Protesters were beaten and killed.

    All hese benefits and more are the reason RepubliCons want to destroy them. They worked for the workers and against management..

    • TomCat says:
      September 3, 2013 at 2:26 am

      Well said, Patty.  I saw a pritestor killed by police in Chicago, 1958, at the Democratic Convention.  I still have nightmares about it.

  4. Patty says:
    September 2, 2013 at 5:30 am

    Remember those who paid the ultimate price for what was achieved by labor unions. Protesters were beaten and killed.

    All these benefits and more are the reason RepubliCons want to destroy them. They worked for the workers and against management..

  5. Arielle says:
    September 2, 2013 at 8:11 am

    You're spot on, Patty – we have many reasons to be grateful to unions.  Terrific post, Tom!

  6. SoINeedAName says:
    September 2, 2013 at 2:18 pm

    Just another reason to admire Abraham Lincoln:

    Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

    ~ Abraham Lincoln

    http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin395631.html

  7. Rixar13 says:
    September 2, 2013 at 5:56 pm

    Happy Labor Day

    At the bottom of the page, the following slide show about labournand the start of Labour Day in Canada.  Sometime later, the US adopted Labour Day.  There is no doubt that labour and unions have made things better for everybody, even those not in unions.

    Lynn Squance

    Thank you for sharing, I didn't know that Unions actually started in Canada… I worked for the Shipbuilders Union in Bath, Maine many moons ago… Unions are the only safe-guard keeping for profit business HONEST.

    • Lynn Squance says:
      September 2, 2013 at 9:21 pm

      Richard, unions did not start in Canada.  They came out of Europe during the Industrial Revolution.  This from Wikipedia:

      The origins of unions' existence can be traced from the 18th century, where the rapid expansion of industrial society drew women, children, rural workers, and immigrants to the work force in numbers and in new roles. This pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labour spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout its beginnings, and would later be an important arena for the development of trade unions. Trade unions as such were endorsed by the Catholic Church towards the end of the 19th century. Pope Leo XIII in his "Magna Carta" – Rerum Novarum – spoke against the atrocities workers faced and demanded that workers should be granted certain rights and safety regulations.

      Actually, it was Labour Day that began in Canada.  A little bit of history for North America from Wikipedia:

      Labour Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September in Canada since the 1880s. The origins of Labour Day in Canada can be traced back to December 1872 when a parade was staged in support of the Toronto Typographical Union's strike for a 58-hour work-week. The Toronto Trades Assembly (TTA) called its 27 unions to demonstrate in support of the Typographical Union who had been on strike since March 25. George Brown, Canadian politician and editor of the Toronto Globe hit back at his striking employees, pressing police to charge the Typographical Union with "conspiracy." Although the laws criminalising union activity were outdated and had already been abolished in Great Britain, they were still on the books in Canada and police arrested 24 leaders of the Typographical Union. Labour leaders decided to call another similar demonstration on September 3 to protest the arrests. Seven unions marched in Ottawa, prompting a promise by Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald to repeal the "barbarous" anti-union laws. Parliament passed the Trade Union Act on June 14 the following year, and soon all unions were seeking a 54-hour work-week.
       

      The Toronto Trades and Labour Council (successor to the TTA) held similar celebrations every spring. American Peter J. McGuire, co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, was asked to speak at a labour festival in Toronto, Canada on July 22, 1882. Returning to the United States, McGuire and the Knights of Labor organised a similar parade based on the Canadian event on September 5, 1882 in New York City, USA. On July 23, 1894, Canadian Prime Minister John Thompson and his government made Labour Day, to be held in September, an official holiday. In the United States, the New York parade became an annual event that year, and in 1894 was adopted by American president Grover Cleveland to compete with International Workers' Day (May Day).

      Europeans and others of the international community, often celebrate May 1st as International Workers' Day.  Some others, like Australia, have various dates depending upon what state they live in.
      From Wikipedia: International Workers' Day is the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. The police were trying to disperse a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday, when an unidentified person threw a bomb at them. The police reacted by firing on the workers, killing four demonstrators. "Reliable witnesses testified that all the pistol flashes came from the center of the street, where the police were standing, and none from the crowd. Moreover, initial newspaper reports made no mention of firing by civilians. A telegraph pole at the scene was filled with bullet holes, all coming from the direction of the police."
      In 1889, the first congress of the Second International, meeting in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and the Exposition Universelle, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne, called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests.[5] May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891.

    • TomCat says:
      September 3, 2013 at 2:31 am

      Thanks Richard! 🙂

  8. Rixar13 says:
    September 2, 2013 at 6:05 pm

    Just another reason to admire Abraham Lincoln:

    Thumbs up ^… Thank you Nameless.

  9. Edith Belcher says:
    September 2, 2013 at 9:43 pm

    Thanks, TC.   shared this on Facebook.  So many of my friends have forgotten how much they owe to the UMWA since they hold jobs that are not union.  They needed a reminder.

     

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.