Six reasons to kiss a union member
It's Labor Day weekend. Have you taken a moment to kiss a union member? (Or at the very least, thank one?)
There are dozens of reasons why you should. Here are six.
1. The 40-hour work week: Back in 1903 a labor organizer named Mary Harris "Mother" Jones led the "March of the Mill Children" over 100 miles from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt's Long Island summer home in Oyster Bay, New York, to publicize the terrible conditions of working children (unions ended child labor eventually, too) and to demand a 55-hour work week. Roosevelt refused to see them. It would take many more demonstrations, and many more lost lives, before unions won the 40-hour work week we all take for granted.
2. Workplace safety standards: In March of 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a notorious sweatshop located on the top three floors of a ten-story building in New York City, went up in flames. One hundred and forty-seven people, mostly women and girls were killed. About 50 died leaping from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death as they desperately tried to escape through locked exits. Unions fought long and hard to prevent such things from happening. And won.
3. Pensions: There was no talk of private pensions or Social Security or anything like that until there were unions. Go on the computer and search for Eugene V. Debs, Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph. Read about incidents like the Homestead Strike, when Pinkerton Guards opened fire on striking steelworkers. Or the "Ludlow Massacre" in Colorado. Or the "Battle of Matewan." What we take for granted is based on their sacrifice.
4. Health Care: Most company-offered benefits didn't exist prior to World War II. During the war the government set up the National War Labor Board. The board could cap wages but allowed companies to offer other benefits. Unions almost immediately began negotiating for health care coverage. It quickly became the norm for all companies, union or not. (Along with dental and vision care.)
5. Paid holidays and vacations: Roughly three-quarters of American workers have some form of paid vacation and holidays. Like Labor Day, which would not exist if the union workers who were responsible for America's industrial revolution didn't put such benefits on the negotiating table. You could add pregnancy and family leave. Military leave. Workman's compensation. Unemployment insurance. The minimum wage. And on, and on.
6. Respect: By this I mean, with the growth of unions came respect for work – real work – and for the men and women who do it. Both of my Italian immigrant grandfathers worked in the steel mill. My father did. My uncles. My cousins. My brother. Me. As did just about all of the adults in the town where I grew up. They were proud of their labor, skilled at their jobs and protected from workplace abuse by their membership in a union. Over the years they have reminded me, again and again, that since getting into the news writing business I no longer "work" for a living. Or as one put it, "If you work for a living you take a shower after your shift. Not before."