The Bloody Origin Of Labor Day

WASHINGTON -- Most people know Labor Day as an extra day off of work. Fewer know the holiday comes from a time when the government was offing workers.

It all started with a bad recession in the early 1890s that reduced demand for railway cars, prompting Chicago railway magnate George Pullman to lay off workers and reduce wages. Many of his workers went on strike. The sympathetic American Railway Union refused to handle Pullman cars, hampering commerce in many parts of the country.

Jobless on Labor Day

On Labor Day we celebrate with barbecues, baseball and beer. But the original idea was to celebrate the contributions working people make to our country. And work is a crucial part of our identity as Americans. In fact, the United States is home to some of the most productive people on the planet, and apart from Korea, we put in more hours at work than every country in the world.

Top 5 Reasons ‘Labor Day’ Isn’t for Laborers Anymore

Calling the bottom of a river a “bed” is a metaphor.  Imagine the river restlessly sleeping on its muddy mattress.  But when we’ve so internalized a metaphor that we forget it is a figure of speech, as with the phrase “river bed,” it is called a “dead metaphor.”

Labor Day is, alas, akin to a dead metaphor in contemporary America.  There was a time when, as in 1936, the unionized auto workers could make effective demands from their employers, for higher wages and better working conditions.  Workers no longer get better off in today’s U.S.A.  They are often summarily dismissed if they try to unionize.  They are badly paid.  Good jobs have been switched out for bad jobs.  Tax policy has been manipulated by the wealthy and corporations, who have bought Congress and state legislatures, so as to ensure that the rich get richer, and richer and richer. 

An Open Letter to International Garment Brands Sourcing from Cambodia

May 1, 2013‐ On this International Labor Day, we, the undersigned civil society groups call upon all international garment brands sourcing from Cambodia to publicly denounce two recent baseless judicial decisions related to the garment sector. The first is the recent imprisonment of Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun. The two men were scapegoated and wrongly convicted in the 2004 murder of labor leader Chea Vichea. The second is the government’s failure to appropriately prosecute Chhouk Bandith, a well- connected former town governor who shot and severely injured three female garment factory workers. Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun were imprisoned for Chea Vichea’s murder in 2004, convicted in 2005 after spending a year and a half in pre‐trial detention, and courageously released by the Supreme Court in December 2008. The high court ordered further investigation into the killing amid extensive evidence of their innocence. But on December 27, 2012, Appeals Court Judges Chhoun Sunleng, Seng Sivutha and Khoun Leang Meng shocked observers by reinstating the previously vacated, grossly unfair verdict.

The weakening state of Canadian labour unions

Although four million Canadians are members of unions, organized labour is nonetheless facing shrinking coverage across Canada’s work force.

Unions are coping with growing pressure from employers and governments to accept wage freezes and reduced benefits, while they are also being asked to become active partners in boosting company productivity and improving work processes.

Labour Day pressures burden unions but workers are marching on

Unions are staggering, rather than swaggering, this Labour Day. They’ve been pummeled by governments, squeezed by employers, and are going through tough times. But some are also reinventing themselves, to carry on the fight.

Traditional collective bargaining has been brushed aside not only at the federal level but also in Ontario where Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government, with Tory support, is struggling to tame the deficit by forcing teachers to take a two-year wage freeze, three unpaid days off, and benefit cuts.

Labour Day 2012: Get ready to rumble

The Labour Day picnics and parades might be the calm before the storm for the labour movement this fall. On top of terrible job losses in manufacturing and resource industries, governments in Canada are sharpening their swords, preparing to do battle with the country's trade unions.

It's not just unions that should be worried. The lagging economy is failing all Canadians, whether in unions or not. Historically, the trade union movement has played a pivotal role in turning things around and raising living standards for everyone. But the political and bargaining strengths of unions are at one of the lowest points in decades, and opponents are preparing to take advantage of this weakened state.

Labour Day: The struggle continues for democracy in the workplace

In recent months Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall have begun a new wave of attacks against unions. They've put forward various proposals that make it a great deal more difficult for workers to bargain collectively.

Notwithstanding Wall and Hudak's ideologically tinged view that unions are too strong, in actual fact the deck is heavily stacked against those who want to assert their right to bargain collectively.

Labour Day reminder: Harper's EI changes hit immigrants hardest

For more than 130 years, workers have celebrated Labour Day in Canada to recognize the hard fought struggles that women and men have undertaken for better working and living conditions.

As we celebrate our past accomplishments, the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance (ACLA) reminds us all that the struggle for dignity and respect in the workplace is an ongoing process. Recent changes to our Employment Insurance will have a tremendous impact on all workers: and we all need to resist these changes.

Happy Labour Day! Push-polls prove it … Canadians hate unions … really, really they do!

Some of my younger readers may not realize this, but when I was a kid growing up in British Columbia in the 1950s, there was a holiday at the end of the summer called "Labour Day" on which Canadians celebrated the vast contribution of working people to the past, present and future of our great country.

Unions, groups of working people who pooled their modest individual strength to bargain collectively and ensure that a fair share of the great wealth they created ended up in the hands of ordinary families, would sometimes gather for picnics on this holiday, which was tinged with true patriotism, and sing songs.

Thousands take to Toronto streets in annual Labour Day parade

It may look like your typical parade — marchers marching, flags flying and pipers piping — but Toronto’s annual Labour Day parade is a unique blend of celebration and protest.

“These people have come out to show pride in their movement and the contributions it has made,” said John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, which helped organize the event.

Labour Day: Are Unions Antiquated Or Poised For A Revival?

OTTAWA - Labour historian Mark Leier has an interesting perspective this Labour Day weekend on anti-union rhetoric and the prospect of a post-unionized Canadian economy.

The labour-friendly academic at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University recalls combing the archives of the Globe and Mail as he researched attitudes toward organized labour.

Why we need unions

Happy Labour Day. Or not.

In these anti-labour times, the latest salvo comes from Ontario’s Liberal government, attacking both teachers and collective bargaining.

True, the province’s teachers are well paid — average for average, better than journalists, for example — although most people understand that well-compensated teachers providing good public education are a sound social investment. And true, the austerity measures Dalton McGuinty’s government has in mind for teachers, particularly with regard to banked sick days, are not entirely unreasonable.

Our Vanished Civil Liberties

Caricatures created by politics never fit comfortably into the Oval Office. Eisenhower was less deferential to the military than he seemed likely to be, Kennedy was not at all beholden to the pope, George W. Bush was smarter than portrayed and Barack Obama has not led a charge from the left—least of all on behalf of the civil liberties that have eroded since September 11, 2001.

In pursuit of both terrorists and common criminals, Obama has perpetuated so many of the Bush administration’s policies that even Republicans might take heart. Granted, he triggered an outcry on the right when he attempted to close the Guantánamo prison and try the accused 9/11 plotters in federal court, and he repudiated the Bush/Cheney torture policies by ordering interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual. His moderately liberal judicial nominees, including two for the Supreme Court, have not won him points with the Federalist Society, which grooms young conservatives for the bench.

Otherwise, though, there has been little in his civil liberties record to bother nonlibertarian Republicans. Data collection on individuals has flourished without judicial oversight. People under no suspicion are still monitored clandestinely with Bush-era legal tools. State secrecy is invoked to thwart lawsuits by victims of government abuse. Leakers and whistleblowers are aggressively prosecuted, and federal agencies vigorously resist inquiries made under the Freedom of Information Act. Last spring the hard line against defendants’ rights reached into certain criminal matters that have nothing to do with national security.

Obama's Labor Day Speech

WASHINGTON -- Less than a week ahead of a critical address before a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned defense of the labor movement and the benefits of union organizing to a fired up audience of Detroit workers.

The tone of the Labor Day speech indicates advisers inside the White House pushing for a jobs agenda to trump talk of debt and deficits have momentum going into Thursday's speech. That address, a White House spokesman told reporters, will only make glancing reference to the long-term nation's debt, and will instead lay out an ambitious plan to get millions of people back to work.

Obama's speech before the workers in Detroit did not include the words debt or deficit, nor did it include admonitions that people ought to "eat their peas."

Instead, the president stood up for the besieged labor, quoting Harry Truman from a Labor Day speech 63 years earlier, which said, "the gains of labor were not accomplished at the expense of the rest of the nation. Labor’s gains contributed to the nation’s general prosperity."

Labour Day warning: If you want your union and your rights in the workplace, you'd better be prepared to fight to keep them

This Labour Day in Canada, unions and the fundamental right of working people to be represented by them face an existential threat. Elected union leaders seem for the most part not to be prepared for this reality.

As in southern Europe and the United States, the people who have in the past decade brought us bank failures, recession and declining economies are massing their not inconsiderable forces to further weaken the union movement in Canada.

If you think blatant and vicious attacks on the rights of working people and the social programs that support them are just a phenomenon that happens south of the Medicine Line, you've been smoking the peels of U.S.-grown bananas!

The ultimate goal of these people is to destroy the union movement and the ability of working people to bargain collectively, hence to act in their collective interest.

Promises, not only condolences for Jack

Literally seconds after the news of Jack's death hit the stands, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and all sort of social media channels are filled with tens of thousands -- if not hundreds of thousands -- messages of condolence. There had not been such an outpouring of sympathy and grief since Pierre Trudeau's passing.

It was "getting surreal," lamented Mike Strobbel of the Toronto Sun and others like him, who couldn't stomach why Canadians paid so much respect to a figure frequently reviled by the media as a socialist menace poised to destroy Canada. One Facebook page dedicated to Jack's passing (R.I.P Jack Layton 1950-2011) gained 185,000 followers, while Jack Layton's page itself broke the 190,000 mark.

Canadians from coast to coast have not stopped at sending condolences to Jack's family. They have been making promises to continue his legacy as they envision it, a legacy of courage, hope and optimism. Within a week of Layton's death, $130,000 had been donated by the public to the Ed Broadbent Institute, as requested by the late NDP's family, in his memory. His life and passing has been transformed into an inspiration to continue the struggle for a better world. Social media pages have been littered with not only condolences but also pledges to struggle for a better world.

On Labour Day, think about unions as an equalizing force

By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.

-Martin Luther King speaking in 1961

On Labour Day 2011, unions in North America are facing historic challenges. Governments and corporations are increasingly disputing the right of unions to exist and to represent working people. This is true not just in the United States. Here in Canada the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Catherine Swift, told the London Free Press:

What would be ideal is getting rid of public-sector unions entirely.

Not that long ago such a view would have been considered extremist. Now it is common in both much of the business community and the mainstream media.

So Labour Day is a good time to review both what unions have given us and what has been lost in much of the world as governments reduce the rights of working people to democratically choose to act collectively.