September 24, 2024 — When I was a younger man working for the Department of Corrections, I learned the importance of a union. Without unions workers have very few protections from abusive employers. I learned the value of uniting in a workplace. I believe our younger generations take many of our hard-fought gains for granted!
The history of the American labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land.
“America is a living testimonial to what free men and women organized into free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life, we ought to be proud of it.” – Vice President Hubert Humphrey
According to a poll by the independent Hart Research, 54% of adults said they know just a little or don’t know much about unions. They said their chief sources of knowledge were personal experience (37%), people in unions (26%) and the media (25%). Significantly, learning about unions in school was not even mentioned.
The implications of these numbers are clear. To a very large degree, Americans are uninformed or misinformed about the labor movement and the role that workers have played, and do play, in our nation’s economic, political and cultural life.
Academic standards and curriculum resources, such as textbooks, have historically ignored or been deficient in their treatment of workers and the labor movement. Significantly, there are several teachers who want to cover this history in their classrooms, but there has been no place for them to easily find materials. Until now!
The mission of the American Labor Study Center is to inform teachers about the rich and varied curriculum resources available to integrate into lessons, primarily through its website, www.labor-studies.org, but also through workshops, seminars, presentations, exhibits and personal contact.
I recently learned of the American Labor Studies Center at the annual New York state Alliance for Retired Americans conference. It has been my experience that the next generation of American workers have little or no knowledge of our labor history — our struggles to win hard-fought gains which benefit every American worker in today’s workforce, as well as our retirees who enjoy the hard-earned benefits of our labor.
Unions built the middle class, and the middle class drives the economy! Retirees know this because when we organize and work together, we enable our local chapters to show their strengths, and we know how to maintain economic security, health, and middle-class security. Protecting the things for which our union fought requires all of us pulling together. Retirees understand this because it’s how we helped build the union. We need to rise up and organize in support of our friends (Union Endorsed Candidates) in the November elections.
We may love or hate politics, but however you feel they are an integral part of our lives. It is necessary to do what we can to keep and improve our situation as retirees. We ask that you stay engaged and informed, whatever your affiliation may be. This will be a pivotal year with each of us having the obligation to vote in November. Ask yourself which side are you on, the side of corporations and a billionaire class or of unions and a middle class?
Labor Day is coming soon. Before it was a federal holiday, Labor Day was organized by labor activists and individual states. After municipal ordinances were passed in 1885 and 1886, a movement developed to secure state legislation. New York was the first state to introduce a bill, but Oregon was the first to pass a law, recognizing Labor Day on Feb. 21, 1887. In 1887, four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York – passed laws creating a Labor Day holiday. By the end of the decade, Connecticut, Nebraska and Pennsylvania followed suit. By 1894, 23 more states adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1984, Congress passed an act making the first Monday of September of each year a legal holiday.
Please have a great Labor Day and remember, when we vote our labor values, we help secure a more prosperous future!
Solidarity Forever
Jim Carr