Thoughts for Labor Day

“I say the labor movement is a fixed fact. It has grown out of the necessities of the people, and, although some may desire to see it fail, still the labor movement will be found to have a strong lodgment in the hearts of the people, and we will go on until success has been achieved.”-- Samuel Gompers, speech on the necessity of the eight-hour day, in Louisville, Kentucky, May 1, 1890, reprinted in The American Reader: Words That Moved a Nation, edited by Diane Ravitch (2000)

When Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, said these words, the union movement was embattled but on the rise, strengthened by solidarity. Today, it is merely embattled.

In retrospect, we can see that its period of greatest influence lasted from 1935, when the Wagner Labor Relations Act was passed, to around 1973, when union membership declined due to competition from abroad, corporate moves to Sunbelt states that permitted “open-shop” rules, and the catastrophic collapse of “rust-belt” industries such as auto and steel.

Once, Labor Day parades were important; today, they may be even more of a relic of the past than Easter Parades. The day has become an excuse for shopping at the mall, for FM radio “workforce blocks” of songs, for backyard cookouts, and for last chances at the beach before the start of the school year—anything except what Peter McGuire had in mind when he came up with the concept in 1882. In New York, for instance, which is holding its Labor Day Parade on Sept. 6 so as not to compete with the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade in Brooklyn, organizers are expecting 50,000 marchers—less than one-third what they regularly had decades ago.

All this at a time when the movement has been set back on its heels. Sprawl-Mart—excuse me, Wal-Mart—has been warning store managers and department supervisors that a pro-Democratic vote this fall means that federal laws will make it easier to organize unions—with dire consequences for workers. A high school classmate tells me that his two attempts to help unionize airline flight attendants have been unsuccessful, undone by anti-union consultants adept at the black arts of disinformation and intimidation. And, of course, you can forget about the GOP--which might as well advertise itself as a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--ever coming to the movement’s aid.

(By the way, did you notice the interesting discussion going on at the Prawfsblog on McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin, whose husband Todd is a member of the Steelworkers Union? Or the news that Todd, along with 19-year-old son Track, is an independent voter? I don’t think the two items are entirely coincidental!)

As a son and grandson of union members, I can’t help but watch this adverse climate with dismay. I carry their belief in the dignity of work as surely as I do the Roman Catholic faith, the Irish heritage, and the first and middle names that I share with them. It is inconceivable to me that they could raise their families without strong unions that won them the right to safe working conditions, a decent wage, and an eight-hour day.

For all the real failings of unions over the years—the featherbedding, the corruption, the hostility to immigrants—I believe they are a necessary counterweight to multinational corporations that play fast and loose with their accounting ledgers and their employees’ retirement money, as well as play off workers on one continent against another to see who’ll accept lower wages. So today, I hope for a revived union leadership and membership, with greater awareness of the challenges facing workers all across the globe.