PUBLISHED
August 31, 2019
Labor Day often gets short
shrift as a worker’s holiday. Marked primarily by sales on patio furniture and
mattresses, the day also has a more muddled history than May Day, which stands
for internationalism and solidarity among the working class. Labor Day, by
contrast, was declared a federal holiday in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland,
fresh off his administration’s violent suppression of the Pullman railroad
strike.
But Labor Day was first
celebrated twelve years earlier, when a coalition of socialists and
labor activists organized a mass march in New York City calling for shorter
hours, safer working conditions, increased pay and a labor holiday. On
September 5, 1882, 10,000 people took to the streets of New York instead.
That history, plus the simple
fact that workers deserve more than one holiday, makes Labor Day worth
celebrating. And this year, there are more reasons than usual for working
people to rejoice.
Bottom of Form
The Teacher Strike Wave Rolls
On
The wave of teacher strikes
that began in red states last year has continued apace in some of the biggest
U.S. cities. Earlier this year, Los Angeles teachers wrung a hard-won
deal from their school district through a week-long strike.
A first-ever charter strike in
Chicago last year kicked off a domino effect—more than 700 Chicago charter
teachers at 22 different campuses have walked off the job in the past year, and
they’re winning
things previously unthinkable in the traditionally union-free charter
industry.
An impending teacher strike in
Las Vegas is drawing some creative
solidarity from students, and the Chicago Teachers Union—whose 2012
walkout arguably laid the groundwork for renewed teacher militancy—could be on
the verge of
another massive strike.
Workers Are Winning Strikes in
the Private Sector, Too
There’s an important caveat to
statistics showing that the number of striking workers is at a two-decade high:
Most of this strike activity is still limited to the public sector.
In the private sector, there
is not yet an equivalent
strike wave. There are, however, some encouraging signs. A rare,
coordinated strike by workers at nearly 30 hotels in Chicago ended largely in
victory (workers at one hotel are still holding out). This spring, locomotive
plant workers in Erie, Pennsylvania staged a nine-day strike against the
company that purchased their facility and attempted to impose significantly
lower wages for new hires. Negotiations continued into the summer, and the deal
the union eventually accepted included
some concessions. But the strike against a two-tier wage system—long-ago
conceded by most manufacturing unions—was an important sign of life in the
once-militant sector.
Labor Support for Green New Deal
Is on the Rise
To hear the mainstream media
tell it, blue-collar workers are united in their opposition to climate action.
In June, Politico
published an article citing local labor leaders who leveled a dire
warning at Democrats: the Green New Deal is pushing members into the Republican
camp.
In fact, a survey released
this year from the think tank Data for Progress found that 62 percent of
current union members back the GND. That figure suggests that while climate
activists certainly can’t take labor’s backing as a given, there’s substantial
support from workers—and the biggest
factor in growing this support is organizing with labor to ensure that
the Green New Deal benefits workers, and that they’re at the core of the fight
to pass it.
This year, the Green New Deal
picked up major endorsements from the Service Employees International Union and
the Association of Flight Attendants led by president Sara Nelson. In May,
Nelson spoke to In
These Times about how Green New Deal advocates can engage labor:
Make labor central to the
discussion, including labor rights, labor protections and labor expertise. We
must recognize that labor unions were among the first to fight for the
environment because it was our workspaces that had pollutants, our communities
that industry polluted. Let’s not dismiss the labor movement. Let’s recognize
and engage the infrastructure and experience of the labor movement to make this
work.
Rank-And-File Reformers Are
Gaining Traction
Speaking of Sara Nelson, her
star has been rising since she called for a general strike to end the
government shutdown in January, and she could potentially end up succeeding
Richard Trumka as the next
president of the AFL-CIO.
While they’re still few in
number, it’s a breath of fresh air to see national labor leaders who come out
of the rank-and-file use their positions to encourage, rather than stifle,
independent action by workers, happily break bread with socialists and
readily draw connections between labor issues and those of climate change and
immigration.
Labor Could Actually Make
Gains Through the 2020 Elections
Let’s be honest: Presidential
elections have long been a dead-end for unions. Awarding early endorsements
without member input and spending millions of dollars on behalf of candidates
who won’t even talk about workers’ rights is not a winning strategy.
This year could be different.
With Democratic candidates
scrambling to tack to the left, the primaries are also putting important labor
policy ideas back on the table. As Jeremy Gantz reported in July, 2020
candidates are rushing to
embrace worker-friendly policies in order to win labor’s support.
Bernie Sanders’ Workplace
Democracy Plan, in particular, includes ideas that should get a full
hearing—ending “at-will” employment, expanding workers’ rights to strike and
permitting collective bargaining at the sectoral level.
Sanders is also using his
campaign infrastructure to turn supporters out for strikes and labor actions, another
welcome development for labor when it comes to presidential campaign season.
The U.S. labor movement may
still be under siege, thanks to powerful anti-union forces, including the Trump
administration. But with approval of
unions at a 15-year high, and a wave of labor militancy on the rise, working
people have plenty to celebrate this Labor Day.
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