The Tribute To Labor

[electriklady]

The History of Labor Day

"Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Founder of Labor Day

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day

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.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Labor Day Legislation

Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

A Nationwide Holiday

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "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.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

[electriklady]

"History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them."
Martin Luther King Jr.
"Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts." Molly Ivins

Samuel Gompers: You can't do it unless you organize.
Jimmy Carter: Every advance in this half-century: Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education... one after another- came with the support and leadership of American Labor.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped. —Speaking on right-to-work laws in 1961

AFT - Hot Topics - Civil Rights - Martin Luther King, Jr ...

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

We must learn to live together as brothers or we are going to perish together as fools.

John L. Lewis:

Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

"The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society." Martin Luther King Jr.

—Speech to the state convention of the Illinois AFL-CIO, Oct. 7, 1965

Clarence Darrow:

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.

"Negroes are almost entirely a working people…. Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth." MLK JR

—Speaking to the AFL-CIO on Dec. 11, 1961 Dwight D. Eisenhower:
Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice.

Jimmy Carter:
Every advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another -came with the support and leadership of American Labor.
"All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other."
--*Abraham Lincoln*--
Wendell Phillips:

The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.

[topgroove]

anybody get the feeling the fortune 500 are hoarding cash and letting the workforce deplete in an effort to punish labor even at the cost of shareholder profit? It takes money to make money but the theme seams to be, let us ride this recession out till 2016 and the working poor will be so demoralized they'll give up their little expeirement with democracy and once again we'll reap unimagianable profit from the backs of labor.

[Highplains Drifter]

Some jobs are good others bad.....
Some jobs are long others short....
Jobs come and go.....

But the Brotherhood lasts for life...

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend...Drifter

[electriklady]

Labor Day Message

Happy Labor Day Brothers and Sisters.

This may be the most difficult Labor Day in the lives of most of our members. We are getting bashed from every angle by our opponents. In most of the commentaries that are written, the leadership of our Union from the officers at the Local Union level to the Office of the President are categorized as 'Union Bosses' when the truth of the matter known most of our leaders are their neighbors and are concerned citizens like those who are writing the items that are in the media. Those commentators are for the most part the same people who are advocates of less control over everything but Unions, over everyone but our members, and they insist that more control be put on the Trade Union movement and one has to wonder why. Let me give you a short synopsis of one man's opinion, mine. For the better part of the last century this country was influenced by the average working man and woman and what was best for the Middle Class, the middle class that in this country kept the United States from having a two class system, the haves and the have not's. The middle class was brought to this country and to Canada by the Trade Union Movement and as we are witnessing, the middle class is being destroyed by those who cannot get enough in their pockets, cannot own too many homes, cannot have too many steaks in the freezer, cannot enjoy too much of the fine things in life, too many cars, too many boats, well you get the idea. They resent that the average person who just wants sufficient work and compensation to be able to provide a few of the little enjoyments that life has to offer and is able to do so, thanks to their position in the great middle class. We and our way of life are now being challenged more than ever before and if has been going on unnoticed for the last 30 years. If truth were known it began just after a book was written called 'The North Shall Rise Again' and it called attention to the amount of wealth that was in the Defined Benefit Pension Plans influence by the Trade Union Movement. That is when the assault on the Pension plans that provided working men and women a reasonable and enjoyable retirement, after a lifetime of work making everything that made America great, began. We were told that we did not need anyone but ourselves, slapping at the basic premise of the reason for the Trade Union movement, we were told that we should have our retirement money in individual accounts and we were sold the statement that one should be solely responsible for one's own future. Those same people have been trying to privatize Social Security because they see another avenue to line their pockets, not taking into account that since they have weakened the Defined Benefit Pension system that the Trade Union negotiated years ago, that many of those who work every day making America what it is and should be, will be left without a reasonable income in retirement. That will create another issue in years to come. They scoffed at the lean on me premise that we worked with, each and every day until many of the working men and women bought it and ceased participating in the community and in their Union. Today too many of those who make up the middle class have lost a lot of that sense of community and the sense of Brotherhood, because of that constant drumming, unless it suits their immediate and personal needs.

Brothers and Sisters, not all is gloom and doom. We have a bright future, if and only if we recognize what needs to be done and that is, not bending to the desire to live with the past. The past is gone and while it was a wonderful time, most of our members are only familiar with what is expounded upon and much of that is slanted by ones personal opinion and based upon the best parts of the past and not the hardships that were endured during that same time. It is time to move on, it is time to embrace the future and the future will be what we make it. We will have to fight for our future just as those in the past fought for theirs. We will have to determine what is needed to make our Union secure and not be influenced by those who really do not want you to have a stable future, they do not want the middle class, and they want you to do what you are told and shut up. They want us at each other's throat so that we will be distracted by issues that do not have a direct bearing on our ability to make a decent living and to provide for our future. They do not want you to be able to afford to send your children to the best schools they want those spots reserved for those who can afford them and do not want them cluttered up with children of working families.

On this Labor Day in 2010 I would urge you to come together and work together to make the IBEW and all of the Trade Union Movement what we want it to be, not what someone else wishes it to be, and that desire would be for it to be gone. I would urge you not to let issues other than what is best for working men and women, you Brothers and Sisters, to take center stage so that we can make the future a good place. I would urge you to reject the petty innuendos, the tendency to denigrate your Brothers and Sisters because you disagree, but to work through the issues in the best interest of our Brotherhood. Remember whether we disagree or not, we are in this together and together we can bring our future to the right place and we will have to do it with our minds on the future and what we have to make of it.

Enjoy the day for it is a day that you have built.

Again Happy Labor Day Brothers and Sisters and God bless you all.

Ed Hill.

[Trbl639]

Some jobs are good others bad.....
Some jobs are long others short....
Jobs come and go.....

But the Brotherhood lasts for life...

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend...Drifter

Amen! Hope everyone is having a good one!