36 Reasons Why You Should Thank a Union

This past June as Tea Partiers in state governments attacked Union rights this list of 36 reasons why you should thank a Union was published here. And today it is Labor Day and I think it is appropriate to repost the list. Appropriate because I just watched my President address a Union audience in Detroit, Michigan, where he repeated several of these very same points: It wasn’t corporate America that came up with the 40-hour work week, sick leave and pensions. It was the Labor Movement.

A movement that has been increasingly attacked by the uberright.  

36 Reasons Why You Should Thank a Union

1. Weekends
2. All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
3. Paid Vacation
4. FMLA
5. Sick Leave
6. Social Security
7. Minimum Wage
8. Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
9. 8-Hour Work Day
10. Overtime Pay
11. Child Labor Laws
12. Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
13. 40 Hour Work Week
14. Worker’s Compensation (Worker’s Comp)
15. Unemployment Insurance
16. Pensions
17. Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
18. Employer Health Care Insurance
19. Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
20. Wrongful Termination Laws
21. Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
22. Whistleblower Protection Laws
23. Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
24. Veteran’s Employment and Training Services (VETS)
25. Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
26. Sexual Harassment Laws
27. Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
28. Holiday Pay
29. Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
30. Privacy Rights
31. Pregnancy and Parental Leave
32. Military Leave
33. The Right to Strike
34. Public Education for Children
35. Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
36. Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

It’s Labor Day

On Labor Day we celebrate the social achievements of workers. Not how many cars they built, certainly not how many bushels of grapes they picked. But how many rights they have won through the Labor Movement.

Because of the Labor Movement we have the 8-hour day, the 40-hour work week. We have overtime. We have healthcare benefits through our employers. We have those things and so much more.

All of this because of that dreaded concept here in Texas: labor unions.

Texas, like other socially repressive states, is a “right to work” state. This is a euphemism for a “right to fire you” state. Because in Texas, like all “right to work” states, workers have fewer rights and no power to fight for them.

But here we are in Texas, on Labor Day with the flags flying (even the Teabaggers down the street have their flag out) and barbecues fired up. Because here in Texas, Labor Day has lost its original meaning everywhere but at the union picnics that are taking place today. In Texas, like most other parts of America, Labor Day has come to mean these things:

The end of summer (although Earth has not yet reached equinox)

The beginning of school (although it has been in session for 2 weeks now)

The day when sailors exchange their white uniform for their blue uniform.

I think that last one actually does take place.

Anyway, in honor of Labor Day and the state of the labor movement here in the United States, I give you the unique wit and talent of Stuart Carson.

It’s Labor Day

Ever wonder how America got a holiday like Labor Day? After all, Labor, in America has been very much the underdog even in its heyday.

Labor unions, while still important in urban centers, have waned in strength nearly everywhere else.

So how did such a day become a holiday celebrated in 50 states?

It all started in Canada.

During a particularly difficult time in their history in 1872, known as the “Nine-hour movement,” an effort to limit the workday to nine hours, Canadian unionists fought hard to gain concessions from capitalists. The movement itself was a failure in that it did not attain its goals, but it did result in the passage of the Canadian Trade Union Act which legitimized unions and protected union activity.

Parades that were once protests against ill-treatment by management became parades in celebration of passage of the Trade Union Act.

And they became an annual thing.

These parades spread to New York, which held its first labor parade on September 5^th 1882.

A short 2 years later, in the aftermath of the deaths of workers at the hands of federal soldiers and US Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland took a page from the Canadian government playbook and pushed through a law proclaiming the first Monday in September as Labor Day. The bill passed 6 days after the end of the strike.

The 1884 Labor Day proclamation bill then, was literally written with the blood of Canadian and American workers.

And I find it particularly poignant, at this moment in history, that we Americans are again poised to adopt another Canadian tradition, something that they hold very near and dear to their hearts, despite what the healthcare and pharmaceutical lobby directed rightwing shrieking handwringers will tell you.

Yet another good idea from our neighbors to the north: Universal Health Care.

Leading me to wonder, for the umpteenth time, what is it in our history that has us so diverged from our Canadian neighbors?

I suspect you could write an entire book on that one.