This is the third time that my September 5 blog post has been made on Labor Day, but on this date in 2011 and 2016 I made no reference at all to it being a federal holiday in the U.S. But now I am sharing some reflections on the history and significance of Labor Day—and of labor unions.
On June 28, 1894, President Cleveland signed S. 730 into
law declaring Labor Day a national holiday. Since 1882, Labor Day had been
celebrated at local and state levels, and from 1887 to 1894, 23 states had enacted
a Labor Day holiday. Now it had become a nationwide observance.
It is highly ironic that the creation of Labor Day in 1894
came in the midst of the Pullman Strike, one of the most consequential strikes
in U.S. history.*
Just four days after Cleveland signed the Labor Day bill, the
U.S. Attorney General got an injunction against the strike, and on July 3 the President
dispatched federal troops to enforce the injunction. Then on the 7th,
the Guardsmen fired upon the strikers; 30 were killed and many more wounded.
What a sad start for the new federal holiday to honor the
nation’s working class!
Despite Labor Day becoming an official national holiday
in 1894, it took decades as well as much struggle and suffering for
laboring people to achieve the reforms they had ardently sought.
From long before 1894, the laborers clamored for an
eight-hour workday and a forty-hour workweek. They also called for safer
working conditions, a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, and the end to
child labor.
The appeals/demands of the labor movement were augmented by
some prominent religious voices. For example, in 1886 Walter Rauschenbusch
began his pastorate of a Baptist Church in "Hell's Kitchen," New York.
His first-hand experiences there led Rauschenbusch to lead
what became the Social Gospel movement, which was to a large extent the
struggle against systemic injustices foisted upon exploited laboring people in
New York and elsewhere.**
Then in 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued “Rights and Duties of
Capital and Labor,” an encyclical addressing the condition of the working
classes.
The Pope’s primary concern was some amelioration of “the
misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working
class,” and to that end, he supported the rights of labor to form trade unions
and to engage in collective bargaining.
Such efforts and support were still necessary for long after
1894. Finally in 1938, President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act
(FLSA). That law established a minimum wage (of 25 cents per hour!)
The FLSA also instituted a standardized 44-hour work week,
which later dropped to 40 hours, a requirement to pay extra for overtime work,
and a prohibition on certain types of child labor.
Even though it was forty-four years later, the dreams surrounding
the founding of Labor Day in 1894 were finally realized, and labor unions
experienced widespread growth and acceptance over the next 20+ years.
Support for labor unions was highest in the 1950s when three-fourths of USAmericans approved of them. According to a recent Gallup
Poll (see
here), now over 70% approve of unions, the highest point since 1965.
This is a good sign—as are recent initiatives by Amazon
employees and Starbucks baristas to form unions.
President Biden, thankfully, is a big supporter of labor
unions. In his remarks
in honor of labor unions last September, the President said that “a union
means there is democracy. . . . Organizing, joining a union—that’s democracy in
action.”
In his Labor
Day Proclamation last Friday (Sept. 2), President Biden said, “I call upon
all public officials and people of the United States to observe this day with
appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that honor the energy and
innovation of working Americans.”
No matter how, or whether, you celebrate Labor Day
today, remember those across the nation who are part of the laboring class, those
people who are working for an hourly wage including many who are still working
for a highly-inadequate minimum wage and still unable to form a labor union.
_____
* In May 2022, History.com (here) posted “10 Major Labor Strikes Throughout U.S. History.”
Following the disastrous Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, the Pullman Strike is
the second of those ten. For more about the latter, see “How a Deadly Railroad
Strike Led to the Labor Day Holiday” (here).
** See
here for my Sept. 30, 2021, blog post about Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel.
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