Opinion: This Labor Day, celebrate American workers and their unions
By: Jim Miller (San Diego Union-Tribune)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
While most of us of us have come to associate Labor Day with mattress sales, car deals and/or backyard barbecues on a three-day weekend, very few people make the leap to a celebration of workers, unionism or the American labor movement in any way. Nonetheless, today, more than at any time in recent history, according to a recent Gallup poll, most Americans support unions and would be eager to join one if their employer did not subvert efforts to organize, which is all too common in the corporate world.
The labor movement has waxed and waned throughout U.S. history, hitting a high-water mark in the 1930s with the Wagner Act and 35-40 percent union density. Since then, unionization has declined in the face of repeated assaults on workers' efforts to organize along with other internal and external barriers to union efforts. And not surprisingly, as union membership has decreased, so has the middle class, and economic inequality has climbed.
So the struggle continues to this day with the battle against unprecedented economic inequality and the continued bait and switch strategy of the American right, as too often a kind of backlash populism emphasis on culture wars rather than an emphasis on economic issues as they impact working people, and the vast majority of Americans have been put on the back burner for far too long.
In "The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor," longtime labor journalist Hamilton Nolan observes that unions are the best way for American workers to reverse our poisonous level of economic inequality. His sense is that unions are not just a vehicle for leveling the playing field economically, but the foundation upon which any thoroughgoing democracy should be based.
As he puts it: "When does the typical American ever experience democracy? As a child, they are told what to do. At school, they are told what to do. When they grow up, they get a job, and are told what to do. If they go to church, they are told what to do. And everyone with any common sense can see that voting, the one activity explicitly branding and participating in democracy, seems to change nothing, as power is concentrated, and decisions are made by unknown people in places remote from the everyday experience of a normal person. From this base of nothing, we expect Americans to treasure democracy as their greatest value. That is a hard ask, when it is something they have never seen in the wild … Unless — unless — they happen to be in a union. In a decent union, their opinion will matter. They can directly participate in discussions that lead to a set of demands. They can decide, collectively, to take direct action to win their demands. … It is not democracy as a slogan, but democracy as lived experience."
Unions are, for Nolan, the only tool the American worker has to make the "sham version of the American dream" real. In San Diego, many in the labor movement value the continuing power of unions and their ability to help improve the lives of workers.
Larissa Dorman, currently a lead organizer for my union, the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931, observes, "Being a unionist means combating the systems that oppress all people, standing in solidarity with the most precarious in our society and acting as an accomplice in the struggle towards liberation. The union movement has the capacity to be at the forefront of this work, however, it requires us to see our role of community building and coalition building in a different light. It's possible for our unions to act as communities of care for our membership and our community."
Brigette Browning, the secretary-treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, makes the case that, "Being a trade unionist means that I always put workers first. I joined the labor movement because I wanted to make the American Dream become a reality for thousands of workers who have been exploited by our capitalist society. I think the labor movement is the only real check on corporations and it is my life mission to know when I retire, workers are in a better place than when I started. They only way we can rebuild the middle class is through unions - not legislation."
So let's celebrate American unions as both the key to rebuilding the middle class and reinventing community in the United States.
Miller is a local author, professor at San Diego City College and vice president for the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931. He lives in Golden Hill.
Who is online
288 visitors
Happy Labor Day
Unions made America's middle class
True.
Today is an ironic holiday. The nation recognizes the day and most offices are closed to honor the dignity of labor. But it was not created in the late nineteenth century to honor labor in general but to honor labor unions.
Why ironic? Because right wingers have always hated labor unions. Today, unions represent about 10-11% of workers. Most unionized workers belong to public sector unions. In the 1950s, about one-third of private-sector workers belonged to a union; now only 6% do. Most people think that the decline in union membership has been bad for the country. They are right.
Why does it matter? Because unions were crucial in building the middle class. Because they have always been a stepping stone from low-wage jobs to better-paying jobs with benefits, including healthcare and pension. Because they promote better working conditions and higher salaries. Because unions are the answer to closing the vast gap between rich and poor. Without unions, there will be more super-billionaires and more living in poverty.
We need more unionized workers and workplaces.
The Department of Labor has a page about the day’s history.
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year a national holiday.
A Nationwide Holiday
Many Americans celebrate Labor Day with parades and parties – festivities very similar to those outlined by the first proposal for a holiday, which suggested that the day should be observed with – a street parade to exhibit “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day.
Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
American labor has raised the nation’s standard of living and contributed to the greatest production the world has ever known and the labor movement has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pays tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership – the American worker.
Having a nice holiday weekend? Thank the unionists, many who died for the cause, because without unions you'd be at work.
Who were the essential workers you relied on during the pandemic?
Doctors, nurses, hospital staff, firefighters, sanitation workers, grocery store employees, funeral homes, emergency services etc etc etc...
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) salutes the hundreds of thousands of military and civilian workers in the Department of Defense. Behind every good soldier is a team of DoD civilians who support our military at home and abroad.
Many of America's greatest rags to riches stories begin with a parent or grandparent getting a good union job that lifted future generations out of the working class by opportunities that one job afforded them!
My grandfather was a commercial construction plumber. He sent my father to be the first generation college graduate. My uncle became President of the UA local. They both did well.
My grandfather became a Teamster because his family was about to starve as an Oklahoma red dirt dryland farmer. All his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren graduated college...
Here is to The American Teacher's Association and The American Federation of Teachers and while we're at it, The Teamster and the AFL-CIO, the Carpenters, Cartage and Sanitation Workers and all the other industry specific or Federal and State Workers Unions!
Kudos to the ILWU, the longshoreman that work the WC docks.
Bloody Thursday 1934: The strike that shook San Francisco and rocked the Pacific Coast
Two longshoremen killed hundreds hurt. ''Bloody Thursday'' is a legal holiday for longshoremen on the WC. It is a NO WORK day.