Labor Day! Hooray!
Back to school for the kids. A long weekend to get the boat out one last time. A chance to barbecue and have the summer’s last batch of mojitos before the cool weather sets in.
When I was a child, it meant that the fashion seasons had changed. No white shoes allowed after Labor Day. It meant it was time to get out the new school clothes we had bought the week before.
RawStory looked back at the history of the holiday, to give us some gentle reminders about its purpose.
The first Labor Day took place on Sept. 5, 1882. It was actually a one-day work strike in New York City, organized by the city’s “Central Labor Union.” This group hoped to organize the many small worker’s unions of the day into a larger, more politically powerful force.
Labor Day, 1882, was meant to demonstrate the power and the importance of the labor force.
In the days of the Industrial Revolution, the power of capital had become greater than ever before.
The income disparity between the rich and the poor was growing wider, with the emergence of millionaires who financed factories and millionaires who owned them. This was the age of the American Industrialist, when families with names like Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan lived in extreme luxury uptown.
Their workers lived in dark, cramped tenements in the lower end of Manhattan.
The men who owned the factories where the laborers toiled had complete control over the lives of the workers. People worked up to 70 hours per week, and wages could be slashed at any time. Laborers lived in fear of being fired for any reason or for none. Young children were taken out of school and sent into the mills and factories.
Small labor unions had sprung up all across New York city, stages small strikes and protests. Most of those demands of fair pay and safe working conditions were squashed quickly.
This #LaborDay, 10 reasons you should thank a union #1u pic.twitter.com/1XSa9scjWC
— IBEW (@IBEW) September 3, 2016
In 1882, the Central Labor Union wanted to pull them all together in a show of solidarity and support.
Labor Day was born.
The day consisted of a large parade of workers through the city, followed by a picnic in the park.
Some of the signs on display during that first Labor Day parade read:
“Labor Built this Republic. Labor Shall Rule It”
“Strike with the Ballot”
“Eight Hours for a Legal Day’s Work”
Labor Day.
It isn’t about going back to school, or a last round of cheeseburgers on the grill.
It’s about the power of labor. It’s about addressing income inequality and demanding fair treatment for everyone in the work force.
If you enjoy your eight hour work day, your 40 hour work week, your weekends off, you should be celebrating Labor Day.
While we sip those last mojitos on Monday, let’s raise a glass. Cheers to the courageous factory workers who marched onto the streets of New York on Sept. 5, 1882.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrMuAtxsBlI
Featured image from U.S. Library of Congress. Available through Wikimedia Commons.
