August 30, 2005
Labor Day: Why it Matters
By Kathleen Amoia and Michael J. Sanders

The uniqueness of next Monday's holiday lies not in parades or picnics, or in the unofficial end to summer and the return of our children to school. It is, quite simply, the one day set aside to honor the men and women who built this country and helped it achieve a prosperity and a middle class not dreamed about over most of the earth or for most of human history.

The holiday began in New York City on September 5, 1882 under the auspices of the city's Central Labor Union. By June of 1894 Labor Day was given national authenticity when Congress extended observance of the holiday to the District of Columbia and the Territories. But even as workers enjoyed their holiday and their recognition, they usually worked under conditions most of us have forgotten ever existed.

There were few if any child labor laws, no minimum wage laws, no workplace safety laws, and in many places, no basic hygiene facilities. Ten and twelve hour days and six day weeks were the norm. Job security and pensions were a part of no one's vocabulary. Women were relegated to a few job categories and most people could expect little or no advancement over their working lives. Employment benefits might mean you could live in a stable at the back of a shop if you were single, or you could take home a stale loaf of bread after ten hours in a bakery kitchen. Conditions relied solely on the temperament of the employer.

Early labor leaders faced ostracism, beatings, jail, and sometimes death. But gradually, at great sacrifice to themselves and their families, they made progress. In one of the worst economic decades of the twentieth century, the 1930s, labor continued to push for decent wages and working conditions .With an irony lost on few Americans, it was a president born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who provided American labor with the platform to make progress. And this was done even as America was on the verge of a World War that would see its labor force produce the greatest volume of war materials ever assembled.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 guaranteed the right of the worker to join unions without fear of managerial reprisals. It created the National Labor Relations Board to enforce that right and to prohibit employers from committing unfair labor practices that might discourage organizing or prevent workers from negotiating a union contract.
Out of those negotiations grew fair wages, safety nets like workmen's compensation and unemployment insurance, pensions and health benefits. Workers were able to keep their children in school, even send them to college. The middle class grew as did the nation's prosperity.

None of this should be taken for granted. Just as it was slowly and carefully built, it can be dismantled, one program at a time. Democrat, Liberal, Republican, we enjoy a standard of living today that was built on the sweat of the working man and woman of yesterday. Their courage to insist on a fair wage and descent working conditions made all of our lives better whether or not we ever belonged to a union. We should not forget where we came from and who got us where we are.

Sophocles summed it up perfectly long ago, "Without labor, nothing prospers." Happy Labor Day, America.

( For more about the Killingworth Democratic Town Committee visit our website at www.killingworth.dems.info)

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