In honor of the holiday given to us by UNIONS

Not the government, not the employers, this holiday was not 'given' but rather TAKEN.

Schools so not teach this; history books ignore it. The day we take to our barbecues one last time was created by Matt McGuire, in New York City, by the Carpenters Union in 1882. On September 5th (The first Monday of September that year), McGuire proposed that all labor unions make a show of strength by parading through the nicest neighborhoods in NYC. The New York Central Labor Committee declared September 5th, 1882 to be a workers holiday UNILATTERALLY.

Thier Call to Arms was this:
"We are enterning a contest to recover the rights of the workingmen and secure henceforth to the producer the fruits of his industry".

Defying bosses, risking thier jobs and personal safety, the unions of New York marched, with bands and bannners, from City Hall up Broadway to Union Square, where they turned north and marched through the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country. Reporter Rich Hunt described the scene:
"They passed August Belmont's house, they trudged on past the tonish Brunswick Hotel; Past the uptown Delmonico restaurant; past the elegant new Union League Club; past the mansion of Vincent Astor. Mrs. Astor - along with many of here neighbors - was in Newport for the season. Nonetheless, if the consciousness of capitalism was not penetrated, its precinct was."

The spirit of the day was so powerful and the march a success, that New York's Labor Committee resolved to observe the first Monday of every September as "Labor Day".

Bosses objected to this 'usurpation of authority', and attempted to forbid it.
Newspapers called the marchers 'ruffian anarchist'.
Politicians denounced it as 'rank ingratitude' to employers.
Still, the workers took the day off.

Twelve years later, in 1894, giving in to reality, Congress declared (and the President signed) that the first Monday in September would be a official holiday in honor of Labor.

The people had taken their own day off.

Paraphrased and plaguerized from Jim Hightower and others who I don't remember.

This is nominated for homepage. Let us not forget what workers faced - private armies, getting paid in company scrip instead of money, etc
We are making a return to those bad old days.

The real labor day is 'May Day'; workers of the world united. September labor day is a distraction, pap for the unions. As "The New World Order" grows stronger and stronger so must the labor unions of the world grow stronger and stronger.

IMHO

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Celebrate riots instead of peaceful protest?

A day the Russian Communist Party celebrate their totalitarianism?

No, thank you. I'd rather have Democratic Labor instead of Totalitarian Corporations OR Totalitarian Socialism, thank you very much.

four May Days in Japan early fifties. Nothing violent about them. Workers demanding fair wages for fair work. An ideal of mine for all of my working life, including my eight years in the Navy. Socialist? Of course. Modern day unionists are considered socialist and/or communist; anything to dissuade workers from organizing. And by the way, as a veteran I am a recipient of the socialized medical program known as the VA Hospital System to which many veterans are eligible, especially those retired veterans?

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and have written favorably of socialism earlier this year, especially socialized medicine.

I merely object to the use of the May Day celebration by the communist totalitarians, who encouraged workers to overthrow the corporate dictators in favor of the communist dictators.

Violence should be the last resort.

(strange side note: David Horowitz went from being a Stalinist Totalitarian 'for the peoples own good' to a NeoCon Totalitarian 'for the peoples own good' without blinking. It seems totalitarians don't care who the dictator is as long as they have one.)

May Day workers unions. You will see May Day as a labor movement started in United States, the first of the labor movements. The movement was co-opted by unionists in other countries. May Day became a BAD COMMIE word promoted by the anti-union movement here. A diversion. Modern labor day was GIVEN to labor to remove the movement from world wide (May Day) brotherhood of workers.

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Where I found my memory correct, with the Haymarket Riots occuring during the first May Day. Add the taint of the Comunists...

I'll stick with Labor Day, taken from the bosses peacefully, so they couldn't call out the soldiers on them.

Too bad for P.J. McGuire. He must be turning over in his grave, what with his carpenters union being bought and paid for by Team Bush. Everytime Bush needs a photo-op with people in hardhats, he now turns to the carpenters union. Bush has even lost the Teamsters, who were big photo-op supporters of Ronald Reagan.

If it wasn't for them, employees would be nothing but slaves to their employers.

To Unions and Union members, I salute you! :toast: :thumbsup:

As Treasurer of my AFSCME Local, I take my position very seriously and I consider it an honor to serve my local and my Union brothers & sisters :toast:

We need many more Labor members and leaders here at DU.

Welcome!!

It is wonderful to be here - DU is an awesome and special place :bounce:

And it started here in Motown. Three of the main proponents were named "Reuther."

Let's honor how Reuther advanced worker power, social change

By George Weeks / The Detroit News
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“Every time the UAW takes a stand against injustice of any kind, we honor the life and legacy of Walter Reuther.”
— President Ron Gettelfinger, United Auto Workers

Labor Day is about more than what unions have done for their members. It’s also about labor activism that helps improve life beyond the workplace for all.

No one, especially in Michigan, more deserves recognition on this day for advancing worker power and social change than Walter P. Reuther, the late president of the United Auto Workers who was born on the eve of the 1907 Labor Day.

Time magazine, in listing him in 1998 among “The 100 Most Influential People of the Century,” said: “He built the benefits package workers now take for granted, from health care to pensions. But his agenda was bigger than unionism.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.detnews.com/2004/editorial/0409/05/a13-263540.htm

Never thought I'd post one of this guy's columns. Guess it shows there are plenty of good Republicans left.



OTOH: Many of today's pukes support fascism.

I was surprised when I read it. I suspect Weeks to be more of a Milliken Republican than anything.

Side note: I am honored to befriend a man who worked with Walter Reuther. He went very high in the world of labor and was a District chair in the Dem party here in MI. He's in his eighties now, chairs the UAW retirees (a few thousand members storng) and is a powerful ally to my local Dem party. He still speaks today of Reuther and some of their shared experiences.

Fortunate in my allies--

Julie

My personal union hero though he was a republican was this man.
He was head of the CIO and a long time president of the United Mine Workers of America, being descended from Coal Miners on my mom's side, I have often heard about this man in gloating terms from my grandparents.

You're too cool, John. Nice story, too.

:hi:

They love that guy almost as much as they do FDR.

They were neighbors near Goodison, north of Rochester, Michigan. I remember summer cookouts when they'd show up (with bodyguards) at my family's property (a three-home 'estate'/acreage) along Silverbell Road. I remember once going to the Reuther property on a errand when I was a young fella. They were really quite decent people, and interesting to be around.

in school. Everyone should see what happens when corporations are given free reign and folks just hope they meet some social obligation. It is so very sad how many are brainwashed into thinking that organized labor is a bad thing when it is against their own best interests.

Thanks for posting this well paraphrased, well plagerized work from JH and others. ;-) I think it's great, nice tribute to workers across the nation.

:toast:

Julie

by Howard Zinn. It was on my list of must-reads forever, but I just
got to it lately. Give this book to every young person you know!

These people laid their lives on the line, over and over, the miners, the railroad workers, the garment workers, the farm laborers and on and on. They won the 40-hour week, worker's compensation, child labor laws, pensions and other small victories with their blood and sweat. It is clear that these things must be fought for anew with each generation. We should be telling their stories, not just on Labor Day but at every opportunity.

Here are two of the labor stories in A People's History of the United States:

In 1900 there were 500,000 women office workers--in 1870 there had been 19,000. Women were switchboard operators, store workers, nurses. Half a million were teachers. the teachers fromed a Teachers League that fought against the automatic firing of women who became pregnant.

The following "Rules for Female Teachers" were posted by the school board of one town in Massachusetts:

1. Do not get married.
2. Do not leave town at any time without permission of the school board.
3. Do not keep company with men.
4. Be home between the hours of 8 PM and 6 AM
5. Do not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.
6. Do not smoke.
7. Do not get into a carriage with any many except your father or brother.
8. Do not dress in bright colors.
9. Do not dye your hair.
10. Do not wear any dress more than two inches above the ankle.

{and we think Afghanistan could not happen here?}
*************

Shortly after Woodrow Wilson took office there began in Colorado one of the most bitter and violent struggles between workers and corporate capital in the history of the country.
This was the Colorado coal strike that began in September 1913 and culminated in the "Ludlow Massacre" of April 1914. Eleven thousand miners in southern Colorado, mostly foreign-born--Greeks, Italians, Serbs--worked for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation, which was owned by the Rockefeller family. Aroused by the murder of one of their organizers, they went on strike against low pay, dangerous conditions, and feudal domination of their lives in towns completely controlled by the mining companies. Mother Jones, at this time an organizer for the United Mine Workers, came into the area, fired up the miners with her oratory, and helped them in those critical first months of the strike, until she was arrested, kept in a dungeonlike cell, and then forcibly expelled from the state.
When the strikes began, the miners were immediately evicted from their shacks in the mining towns. Aided by the United Mine Workers Union, they set up tents in the nearby hills and carried on the strike, the picketing, from these tent colonies. The gunmen hired by the Rockefeller interests--the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency--using Gatling guns and rifles, raided the tent colonies. The death list of miners grew, but they hung on, drove back an armored train in a gun battle, fought to keep out strikebreakers. With the miners resisting, refusing to give in, the mines not able to operate, the Colorado governor (referred to by a Rockefeller mine manager as "our little cowboy governor") called out the National Guard, with the Rockefellers supplying the Guard's wages.
The miners at first thought the Guard was sent to protect them, and greeted its arrivals with flags and cheers. They soon found out the Guard was there to destroy the strike. The Guard brought strike-breakers in under cover of night, not telling them there was a strike. Guardsmen beat miners, arrested them by the hundreds, rode down with their horses parades of women in the streets of Trinidad, the central town in the area. And still the miners refused to give in. When they lasted through the cold winter of 1913-14, it became clear that extraordinary measures would be needed to break the strike.
In April 1914, two National Guard companies were stationed in the hills overlooking the largest tent colony of strikers, the one at Ludlow, housing a thousand men, women, and children. On the morning of April 20, a machine gun attack began on the tents. The miners fired back. Their leader, a Greek named Lou Tikas, was lured up into the hills to discuss a truce, then shot to death by a company of National Guardsmen. The women and children dug pits beneath the tents to escape the gunfire. At dusk, the Guard moved down from the hills with torches, set fire to the tents, and the families fled into the hills: thirteen people were killed by gunfire.
The following day, a telephone linesman going through the ruins of the Ludlow tent colony lifted an iron cot covering a pit in one of the tents and found the charred, twisted bodies of eleven children and two women. This became known as the Ludlow Massacre.
*************

Let us honor their memory today.

The whore media hasn't changed much. Reminds me of Carol Lin on CNN (she mocked the protestors in NYC last week as a joke, and she SMILED throughout damage stories on Frances), and scads of others in their ranks.

Hawker, if you haven't already, try Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States", especially the chapters on our labor history.

Thanks for posting your piece!

A quote from the liar & thief.

:kick:

The rightwing decry "socialism." But they drive down a socialist highway to a socialist park where they can spend their socialist holiday thanks to their socialist standard of living.

The alternative to socialism is serfdom.

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spent 2 weeks at Black Lake in the '70s.....beautiful place, fantastic Union....

It's what I think of as having a Union persons mind-set....if you haven't got one, then work on getting one. I worked in non-union and company union shops....as a Boilermaker in a small local, etc....

But when I hired in at West Pullman I found true Union people, Union people wanting to be and proud to be Union....and vertually 100% of the people in our UAW local took Union very seriously....and the contract showed it....

We had great pay, 100% health/dental care to 4 hr min report pay, time and half for anything over 8 to a piece-workers right to refuse another piece-work job assignment....

.....and Stewards, if on the clock, that would stand along side you all day if necessary, to keep you from being harrassed or fired by a thug foreman or GF.

Old 'tangled-eye' Joe was the top Committeeman and I wittnessed him and the plant manager greet like old friends only to have Joe rip him a new-one....'your boy in such-and-such department weren't no damn good when he was on the floor and he ain't no goddam good now as foreman either'....

They'd kick it around for while, work it out most of the time, and then part like old gladiators to war again.

Anybody working with Union minded people in a good Union shop, knows what I'm talking about....the closest thing to economic democracy you'll ever experience....

Start a Union, build a Union and take charge of your economic future....