The AFL-CIO Labor Day Missive Interpreted - A Wobbly Perspective
Submitted on Sun, 09/03/2006 - 4:06am
By richard myers - [email protected]
Happy Labor Day. In Denver, this will be a day of Wobbly laboring- a little organizing for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who are coming to the mile-high ciudad. There's a labor concert in Lafayette on September 14th. Immigrant workers in Denver hope to reprise their May Day success on September 30, and i'm one member of the outreach committee. It looks like an entire weekend of laboring.
Denver Wobs are in a curious historical circumstance, at least compared to recent decades when a regional director of the AFL-CIO lectured strikers to ignore the radicals among them. (In one example i was present at said lecture; the strikers later lost that strike.)
How times have changed. Today Wobblies are respected participants in Denver's vibrant Jobs With Justice coalition, and ATU bus drivers recently paid tribute on their website to a "Wobbly" who, in some small way, helped them to win their strike. It's even more exhilarating than discovering the AFL-CIO selling "I'm a little Wobbly" T-shirts for children.
While checking for emails relating to ongoing actions, i've encountered an article from the AFL-CIO website which gives me an OMFG moment. The article's title enticingly inquires: Labor Day-A Poor Cousin to May Day?
Perhaps i should resist the temptation to clinically appraise this missive by the AFL-CIO. It isn't exactly ground-breaking that someone speaking for the staid old federation publicly utters the word "proletarian," especially when they're quoting someone else. Yet this article was written by an "AFL-CIO managing editor," and i believe it is noteworthy that a federation long intent on legitimizing the global power of the United States, collaborating with the CIA to subvert radical unionism in Latin America and elsewhere, and willfully adopting September's Labor Day as a bulwark against the radicalism that May Day represents, should markedly change its own interpretation of May Day (see the AFL-CIO article, below.)
The article admits, "the symbolism of May Day-working people challenging corporate power-still causes fear among the top elite." And, "...just when you think historical events are just that-they come back stronger than ever."
I take issue with a couple of points. Describing May Day 2006 as a day that "...hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters took to the streets..." is a curious example of a labor organization downplaying the numbers in an action by working people. I marched- and saw the photos. Across the country, there were millions.
Is the AFL-CIO embarrassed that Labor Day parades have been cancelled (in Denver, for example) for lack of interest, yet an upstart mass movement of mostly un-organized working folk dares to appropriate entire city boulevards as the cops watch helplessly?
For those of us known to describe the AFL philosophy as selling labor peace to the bosses for the life of the contract, there is no marked sea change in the tendencies of mainstream labor. In a federation that derives financial benefit from business activities- selling insurance and issuing credit cards- the ethic of business unionism undoubtedly remains intact. More specifically, the AFL-CIO writer sees promise not so much in massive organizing, but in "political action on the way to the November elections."
Such tactics may endear labor officials to elected leaders in a pale imitation of their corporate counterparts, but they have brought mainstream labor to the present crisis. Ties to the Democratic Party are more albatross than auspicious fortune. At the merging of the AFL and the CIO, one in three workers in the U.S. was organized. Today it is fewer than one in ten. Union dues should build unions, not line the pockets of politicians.
Meanwhile paychecks diminish, prices rise, and pensions disappear. Union members remain isolated due to organization by craft, and workers are sometimes forced to cross picket lines or be fired. Unions compete for members, and membership raids are all too common.
Borders are barriers to workers, but not to corporations. Jobs are off-shored, visas bring guest workers, and working people have no say in the immigration policy that directly affects their jobs.
AFL-CIO constituent unions may describe themselves as "international," but cross-border ties between the AFL-CIO and foreign unions either remain an illusion or are prone to fail due to AFL-CIO control issues. We live in a global Enron economy, and workers of the world are uptight.
In such times, one cannot help but wonder what crisis mentality- or dare we hope? what spark of awareness- globalization and the AFL-CIO / CTW split may have wrought upon mainstream labor. Forgive us if we're prone to snatching at snippets. In "Labor Day-A Poor Cousin to May Day?" the first sentence that caught my eye includes this observation: "the radical origins of May Day are not contested." There is no immediate distancing to unequivocally protect a respectable mainstream federation from the "R" word. This suggests that, in the opinion of at least one important AFL-CIO writer, the federation may have become comfortable with- indeed may even value- the idea of radical unionism.
And then there's the conclusion to the article, which suggests a rough equivalence between the September holiday sanctioned by the conservative AFL-CIO bureaucracy and the U.S. government, and May Day- the International Labor Day, celebrated by mainstream labor organizations everywhere in this globalized world except in the United States. OMFG.
Let us hope it is more than a spark. But let us also observe whether, next May Day, the AFL-CIO seeks to bask in the bright shining light cast by a real mass movement.
The writer was a member, officer, steward, and safety rep in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for 33 years, and served briefly as an executive delegate to the Denver Area Labor Federation. He first joined the Industrial Workers of the World as a dual-carder in 1991.
Labor Day is more than just a Monday holiday marking the end of summer.
At least it should be. For many of us in the union movement, it's a time to hold Labor Day picnics and rallies and often, as this election year, move full-speed ahead in political action on the way to the November elections. It's also a time to reflect on the sacrifices of those U.S. workers who came before us-especially those who lost their lives in the fight for justice at the workplace.
While the radical origins of May Day are not contested, as labor historian David Montgomery notes:
Labor Day is more a complicated affair.
Only the United States celebrates Labor Day in September. Elsewhere around the globe, nations honor workers on May 1-May Day.
And that historical quirk is no accident.
Ironically, "May Day" was founded by U.S. workers-and taken away from them as a day to celebrate by a federal government fearful of the wave of large demonstrations for the eight-hour day and massive strikes for justice on the railroads, in the mines and factories that had begun in 1877.
Such an action may seem quaint now. But the symbolism of May Day-working people challenging corporate power-still causes fear among the top elite.
Just ask George W. Bush and the Republican extremists in Congress.
In 2003, Bush proclaimed May 1 as "Loyalty Day" when U.S. citizens should express allegiance to our nation and its founding ideals, we resolve to ensure that the blessings of liberty endure and extend for generations to come.
That same year, Congress, designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day."
Proclaimed Bush:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day.
And while hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters took to the streets for justice May 1, 2006-as did their symbolic forbearers in the 18th century-Bush again proclaimed May 1 Loyalty Day.
Just when you think historical events are just that-they come back stronger than ever.
May Day was officially founded in 1886, during a Chicago strike for the eight-hour workday. In 1889, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) delegate to the International Labor Congress in Paris proposed May 1 as international Labor Day. Workers were to march for an eight-hour day, democracy and the right of workers to organize. Delegates approved the request and chose May 1, 1890, as a day of demonstrations in favor of the eight-hour day.
On a separate track, U.S. labor leaders had agitated for creation of a labor holiday years before the Chicago rally. Among them, Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and labor union leader, had proposed his idea for a holiday honoring America's workers at a New York labor meeting in early 1882. (Others say the "founder" of Labor Day was Matthew Maguire, a machinist who served as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York.)
Either way, New York's Central Labor Union began planning labor day events for the second Tuesday in September. McGuire (one of them) had suggested a September date to provide a break during the long stretch between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.
Today, the union movement marks Sept. 5, 1882, as the first Labor Day, when 20,000 working people marched in New York City to demand an eight-hour workday and other labor law reforms. In the parade up Broadway, they carried banners reading, "Labor Creates All Wealth." About a quarter million New Yorkers turned out to watch.
In 1887, Oregon became the first state to establish Labor Day as a holiday, which it put on the first Saturday in June. Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York observed Labor Day on the first Monday in September that year.
The remainder of that decade and the early 1890s saw massive strikes, often put down with brutal violence by government troops. In the 1894 Pullman strike, led by the American Railway Union leader Eugene Debs, workers demanded lower rents (Pullman was a company town) and higher pay after massive wage cuts and layoffs. Railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, Ill., and the strike was crushed.
But 1894 was an election year. As workers protested Cleveland's harsh methods, legislation was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress to create a holiday for workers. Yet the symbolism of May Day was too strong for U.S. politicians. In creating an annual Labor Day holiday in September, Congress at the same time declared May 1 to be "Law Day"-paving the way for the Bush administration's Loyalty Day.
Cleveland signed the bill creating Labor Day six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike.
Writing of this year's May Day protests by immigrant workers, historian Nelson Lichtenstein says:
These May Day demonstrations and boycotts return the American protest tradition to its turn-of-the-20th-century ethnic proletarian origins-a time when, in the United States as well as in much of Europe, the quest for citizenship and equal rights was inherent in the fight for higher wages, stronger unions, and more political power for the working class.
Meanwhile, Montgomery points out that the day created in September to honor America's workers was established precisely because of workers' demands.
First state governments and then the federal government adopted the day in response to workers' demands. The government did not create the holiday.
Some call May Day the real Labor Day. But workers in this nation shed their blood for a day of honor. And no matter what the date, they deserve our memory.
By Tula Connell