Jim Goodman: Why Honor Organized Labor?
[x, a WK Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow, is an organic dairy farmer and farm activist from Wonewoc Wisconsin. Encouraging local food production and consumption in the industrialized north, allowing the global south sovereignty in food production and ensuring fair prices for all farmers are the goals of his work. Small farmers and consumers have little voice in these matters, so there is a need to look for the media outlets that let people communicate without being marginalized by the corporate food system.]
Labor Day, to most people, is little more than the end of summer. Labor Day commemorates the labor union movement, the demand for an eight hour work day, better working conditions, fair wages and an end to child labor.
In 1894 Labor Day became a federal holiday celebrated as a “workingman's holiday” on the first Monday of September honoring the contributions of working men and women to America.
While labor unions were organizing in the 1870's, small farmers, through the Grange Movement were trying to break the power of the railroads, the meat packers and the grain milling interests. Mary Elizabeth Lease urged the farmers to “raise less corn and more hell”, but farmers could never unite as the labor unions had.
In the mid-1960's, farm worker organizers Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta formed the United Farm Workers (UFW). When the UFW's table grape boycott brought the plight of the farm workers onto the national stage, Dolores Huerta connected the feminist movement and gender rights with the farm worker movement. And why not? Women worked the fields along side the men.
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) organized in 1925 became the first African-American union to join the American Federation of Labor. Many of those involved in BSCP became leaders in the civil rights movement.
Gender equality, racial equality, fair farm prices and farm worker rights were separate issues but all related to the struggle of the unions for a fair wage and decent working conditions. Labor unions may have initially been all white and all male but, that changed.
Unions were never about the individual, they were about everyone. If one is oppressed, all are oppressed. Labor unions recognized the need to bring everyone into the struggle regardless of color or gender, because the struggle was about everyone.
Now, generations after the early struggles of labor unions, corporations have done their best to de-unionize America. Exporting jobs, closing union factories and union busting have taken their toll on jobs, wages and the economy in general...
Read entire article at OpEdNews.com
Labor Day, to most people, is little more than the end of summer. Labor Day commemorates the labor union movement, the demand for an eight hour work day, better working conditions, fair wages and an end to child labor.
In 1894 Labor Day became a federal holiday celebrated as a “workingman's holiday” on the first Monday of September honoring the contributions of working men and women to America.
While labor unions were organizing in the 1870's, small farmers, through the Grange Movement were trying to break the power of the railroads, the meat packers and the grain milling interests. Mary Elizabeth Lease urged the farmers to “raise less corn and more hell”, but farmers could never unite as the labor unions had.
In the mid-1960's, farm worker organizers Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta formed the United Farm Workers (UFW). When the UFW's table grape boycott brought the plight of the farm workers onto the national stage, Dolores Huerta connected the feminist movement and gender rights with the farm worker movement. And why not? Women worked the fields along side the men.
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) organized in 1925 became the first African-American union to join the American Federation of Labor. Many of those involved in BSCP became leaders in the civil rights movement.
Gender equality, racial equality, fair farm prices and farm worker rights were separate issues but all related to the struggle of the unions for a fair wage and decent working conditions. Labor unions may have initially been all white and all male but, that changed.
Unions were never about the individual, they were about everyone. If one is oppressed, all are oppressed. Labor unions recognized the need to bring everyone into the struggle regardless of color or gender, because the struggle was about everyone.
Now, generations after the early struggles of labor unions, corporations have done their best to de-unionize America. Exporting jobs, closing union factories and union busting have taken their toll on jobs, wages and the economy in general...