LABOR'S DAY -- AND YOURS

LABOR'S DAY -- AND YOURS
By Dick Meister

Labor Day. Time once more for politicians and union adherents to speak
of the greatness of organized labor. Time once more for the rest of us to
ignore the speechmakers, as we mark the end of summer with yet another
three-day weekend.

The general public indifference is understandable. After all, only 12
percent of the country's working people are in unions these days.

But even if you are not a union member -- even if you do not approve of
unions -- consider this while you're enjoying the long Labor Day holiday:
There wouldn't be any three-day weekends if it wasn't for those unions.
None.

If unions hadn't done what they did -- and continue to do -- it's highly
unlikely that anyone outside the executive ranks would be getting a paid
holiday on Labor Day, or on any other day. (Or even, of course, that
there would be such a holiday as Labor Day.)

Nor is it likely that those who are required to work on such holidays
would be getting the pay of two to three times their regular rate that
unions have made the standard for holiday work in most areas -- or get
premium pay for any other work, at any other time.

Holidays meant very little to most working people in the days before
unions became effective. They meant only an unwelcome day off and loss of a
day's pay or, at best, a day of work at regular wages.

Those were the days when unions still were struggling primarily for nothing
more than legal recognition. It wasn't until World War II that unions were
able to go beyond the fundamentals and make negotiation of paid holidays a
common practice, a concession employers made in lieu of the pay raises
federal wage controls prohibited during the war.

The paid vacations so many working people took as usual this summer also
were very rare until unions demanded and won them. So were employer-financed
pensions and medical care and other fringe benefits, health and safety
standards, job security and other things now commonly granted most workers,
union and non-union alike.

Thus without unions, we should not forget, there would be no paid holidays
for most people, no premium or overtime pay, no paid vacations, few fringe
benefits and little protection against job-related hazards and arbitrary
dismissal.

Without unions, as a matter of fact, the standard work day might very well
still be 10 to 12 hours, the standard work week six to seven days, and
working people would have few of the rights so many now take for granted.
That includes the overriding right of having a genuine voice in determining
their pay and working conditions.

You doubt it? Consider the recollections of Mark Hawkins, who worked in the
warehouses along San Francisco's busy waterfront in the 1930s, before the
coming of effective unionization.

Hawkins remembered men wrestling with crates, bundles, cartons, merchandise
in all sizes, shapes and weights, 10 hours a day, often every day of the
week, for a mere $60 a month. They worked as many hours on as many days as
the boss demanded, at whatever pay he offered, lest they be replaced by
others clamoring for jobs in those dark days of the Great Depression.

Hawkins especially remembered a fellow worker who failed to raise his hand
one Saturday when the boss made his usual Saturday afternoon request for
"volunteers" to work Sunday. The reluctant warehouseman pleaded that his
wife, undergoing a complicated pregnancy, was seriously ill and would need
him at home to comfort her.

"Okay," said the boss -- "but don't you think she'll feel even worse if you
have to tell her you don't have a job anymore?"

The man worked that Sunday. When he got home, his wife was dead.

Very few of today's employers would even consider acting in such a manner.
It would be virtually unthinkable, given the firm standing gained for all
workers by the country's now solidly entrenched unions. That alone is more
than enough reason to honor organized labor on the holiday it won for us
all.

IT ALL BEGAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

By some reckoning, this is the 113th Labor Day, since it was first
observed as a national holiday in 1894. But the observance actually began
a quarter-century earlier in San Francisco.

It was on Feb. 21, 1868. Brass bands blared, flags, banners and torchlights
waved high as more than 3,000 union members marched proudly through the
city's downtown streets, led by shipyard workers and carpenters and men from
dozens of other construction trades.

"A jollification," the marchers called their parade -- the climax of a
three-year campaign of strikes and other pressures that had culminated in
the establishment of the eight-hour workday as a legal right in California.

New York unionists staged a similar parade in 1882 that is often erroneously
cited as the first Labor Day parade, even though it occurred 14 years after
the march in San Francisco.

Honors for holding the first official Labor Day are usually granted the
state of Oregon, which proclaimed a Labor Day holiday in 1887 -- seven years
before the Federal Government got around to proclaiming the holiday which is
now observed nationwide.

But Oregon's move came nearly a year after Gov. George Stoneman of
California issued a proclamation setting aside May 11, 1886 as a legal
holiday to honor a new organization of California unions -- the year-old
Iron Trades Council. That, said renowned labor historian Ira B. Cross of the
University of California, was "the first legalized Labor Day in the United
States."

San Francisco also played a major role in that celebration of 1886. The city
was the scene of the chief event -- a march down Market Street by more than
lO,OOO men and women from some 40 unions, led by the uniformed rank-and-file
of the Coast Seamen's Union. Gov. Stoneman and his entire staff marched
right along with them.

The procession was seven miles long, took more than two hours to pass any
given point and generated enthusiasm that the San Francisco Examiner said
was "entirely unprecedented -- even in political campaigns."

Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister

Story ID:	2774
Written by:	Dick Meister (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Location:	San Francisco CA USA
Year:	2007