When Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, unions in the U.S. Such festivities aren’t practiced as much in regions where unionization has historically been eroded, Vachon said, or didn’t take a strong hold in the first place. New York and Chicago, for example, hold parades for thousands of workers and their unions. Whether celebrations remain faithful to the holiday’s origins depends where you live It’s become a long weekend for millions that come with big sales, end-of-summer celebrations and, of course, a last chance to dress in white fashionably. Cleveland soon made Labor Day a national holiday in an attempt “to repair the trust of the workers.” “The federal government intervened to break the strike in a very violent way - that left more than a dozen workers dead,” Vachon says. In the U.S., Vachon points to the Pullman Railroad Strike that began in May 1894, which effectively shut down rail traffic in much of the country. The national holidays were established during a period of pivotal actions by organized labor. Some 10,000 workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor.Ī handful of cities and states began to adopt laws recognizing Labor Day in the years that followed, yet it took more than a decade before President Grover Cleveland signed a congressional act in 1894 establishing the first Monday of September as a legal holiday.Ĭanada’s Labour Day became official that same year, more than two decades after trade unions were legalized in the country. Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on Sept. It’s a similar period of transition and change and also of resistance - of working people wanting to have some kind of dignity.” Today, we have the Musks and the Bezoses. “Then, they had the Carnegies and the Rockefellers.
“There’s a lot of historical rhyming between the period of the origins of Labor Day and today,” Todd Vachon, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, told The Associated Press. Like the late 1800s, workers are facing rapid economic transformation - and a growing gap in pay between themselves and new billionaire leaders of industry, mirroring the stark inequalities seen more than a century ago. The early-September tribute to workers has been an official holiday for almost 130 years - but an emboldened labor movement has created an environment closer to the era from which Labor Day was born. But the activist roots of the holiday are especially visible this year as unions challenge how workers are treated - from Hollywood to the auto production lines of Detroit. NEW YORK (AP) - Labor Day is right around the corner, along with the big sales and barbecues that come with it.
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