A Labor Day celebrated with gusto
This newspaper recorded the events of Labor Day 1904 with unusual enthusiasm, describing a parade of more than 2,000 union members in Bangor as with goodfellowship and triumph a potent example typified in thousands of silent, stalwart men, of the strength and force and dignity which labor organization brings. Sheehan of Massachusetts, who laid the groundwork for the development of unions:
is often said that the union men of America are discontented, Sheehan said. this be so and I deny it not then it is a virtue and not a vice. The discontent that urges a man to rise above the lowly station where his lot is cast; that makes more money, better homes, nobler men and truer women; that has shortened the hours of labor and improved the scale of pay; that has given the United States the political liberty and social equality which it enjoys now; and which lastly, the trade unions of the land are going to ferment until it has equalized the scale between employers and employed until the American working man can stand up to all the world and say: am a man, with a man feelings and a man rights; I will be the faithful employ of any; but the unconsidered slave of none' this discontent, I say, must be hailed as a glory rather than as a sin! since President Grover Cleveland signed an act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday to honor America workers, Labor Day has been a holiday of conflicting themes, an odd mixture of the somber and the frivolous. Even 19th century labor organizer Peter J. McGuire, credited with conceiving Labor Day, admitted the holiday designed to honor work was timed to at the most pleasant season of the year, nearly midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and would fill a wide gap in the chronology of legal holidays. is a gap filled with gusto. Americans, whether watching the Labor Day telethon, a worthy event to be sure, or stock car races or baseball or, better still, enjoying the last real summer weekend outdoors with family and friends, seem always to enjoy themselves. Where once there were parades, barbecues now rule the day.
Keeping in mind McGuire intent; today also provides the opportunity to assess how far the labor force has progressed, or failed to progress, over the years. The trend is not encouraging.
Unions today particularly those representing public sector workers are fighting a nationwide contempt. Organized labor has been demonized as the reason, at least in part, for the economic woes that still rule the nation.
The connection between organized labor and wages generally was made clear a few years ago in the annual report State of Working America by Women's Matt Flynn Jersey Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy Institute. They measured the decline of labor from about onefourth of the working population a generation ago to about oneeighth by 2004.
Their conclusion is worth recalling today:
falling rate of unionization has lowered wages, not only because some workers no longer receive the higher union wage, but also because there is less pressure on nonunion employers to raise wages, they wrote. The difference in wages and benefits between union and nonunion workers then was $30.76 an hour versus $18.11.
Overcoming nearly stagnant wages will take a lot www.raidersofficialnflstore.com/Authentic-Sebastian-Janikowski-Jersey more than the festivities planned for today, but helping workers to the fruits of their labors never has been a picnic.
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