Post by michelle on Sept 1, 2008 17:53:43 GMT 4
HAPPY LABOR DAY, AMERICAN WORKERS!
This one's for you.....
It's Labor Day and.....my birthday! Actually, I was born on Labor Day [Mum didn't think it was so funny...I was a hard birth; the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck...kinda makes me wonder if someone/thing was tryin' to shut me up right from the start!] My B-day is also the date of the start of WWII, but that's for next year's post.
OK, a few things for you today, most of it isn't pretty for Labor in the united States. The Commander in Thief and his cronies have hit the working class hard....they're still at it, trying to sew up more attacks on you. Recently, they've put the screws to workers' safety. Our Labor Department, along with every other public watchdog institution, has been taken over by the corporations....the unions, well, they've always been corrupt, but they've reached new heights in screwin' their members....Ah well, we've got the good fight in front of us.
First, let's start out with some news that colors me happy and then we'll get on with the down and dirty.
Solidarity, Brothers and Sisters,
Never Forget It!
Michelle
Hats off to our N. American neighbors...Way to go Canadian Wal-mart [ ]Workers! Let's hope for more of the same in the US:
Canada
Quebec Wal-Mart workers get union contract
In a North American first, workers at the Wal-Mart outlet in Gatineau, Quebec, across the river from Canada`s capital city, Ottawa, have signed a contract agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
While two other Wal-Marts in Quebec had previously been unionized, workers were not able to obtain a contract from the notoriously anti-union company. One store closed as a result of the certification, and both cases are still before the courts. The new contract was imposed by a Quebec provincial arbitrator after a three-year effort by the union.
The three-year agreement will lift wages C$2.00 an hour above the C$8.50 an hour workers were getting, and will provide improvements in areas such as vacation provisions. Wal-Mart has indicated it will fight union certification for two other bargaining units at the same outlet, but the union has said that it expects two more Wal-Mart stores to obtain union contracts before the end of the year.
From:
www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/wkrs-a26.shtml
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The following video [1 minute] isn't the best piece of filming, but the boo-hisses and raised fists directed at Bush's motorcade warm my heart. Betcha' didn't see any coverage on that. Let's hear it for the city of Cleveland and Working America members!
Working America Bush Protest 7/29/08 Cleveland
From: StewartApplesauce
Joined: 8 months ago
Videos: 3
Added: July 29, 2008
On July 29, 2008 over 100 Working America members gathered as close as we were allowed, to protest the president and his failed policies that have hurt countless Americans.
This is a video of the motorcade when President Bush went by. Among the gathered are the Canton Cleveland and Youngstown offices. Learn more about Working America at www.workingamerica.org
Working America group protests Bush in Cleveland
David Edwards and Diane Sweet
Published: Thursday July 31, 2008
About 100 AFL-CIO members wearing red shirts booed and made thumbs down gestures as Bush's motorcade passed on the way to Lincoln Electric.
The protesters gathered in front of an expanse of vacant parking lots outside of the defunct Euclid Square Mall.
"If you look around here, you see a wasteland," said Harriet Applegate, executive secretary for the North Shore AFL-CIO. "Northeast Ohio has been incredibly hard hit by the Bush administration."
AFL-CIO member Gaelynn Dooley, 24, said the success of Lincoln Electric was not representative of industry in the rest of the region.
"Our message today is that we need politicians who are accountable to working families," Dooley said. "We've been hemorrhaging 340 jobs a day in Ohio."
Just down the road, 8-year-old J.J. Conway held a "Go McCain" sign and greeted Bush's motorcade along with his mom, Rebecca, and brother, Matthew, 4, "We're here supporting President Bush because there's so many anti-Bush people," said Rebecca Conway, 36, who held a sign that read "My Pro-Life President." [?!!!! ...M]
He’s worked hard and made a big impact on the social issues. He's defended our country and kept us safe."
Democrats maintain that more drilling isn't the answer. And they argue a point the White House itself concedes - allowing offshore drilling is not going to lower gas prices now.
Bush himself said, "It took us a while to get to this position, and it's going to take us a while to get out of it."
Still, Bush says more drilling would send an important signal to the world that the United States is serious about expanding the oil supply. He says it can be done in environmentally safe ways, but opponents fear oil spills and drops in coastal tourism.
The soaring cost of gasoline has turned energy policy into a kitchen-table issue. Millions of people who rely on their cars are eager to get some help from elected leaders - and those leaders, especially those up for election, want to show some action.
"If we’re worried about your gasoline price and recognize that it's high because of the price of crude oil, and it's possible to find more oil right here in the United States ... doesn't it make sense to try to find that oil?" Bush said. "I think it does."
Bush also pushed for nuclear power and other forms of alternative energy.
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are in a stalemate over how to rein in energy prices. Using the country's frustration as leverage, the president is trying to build pressure on lawmakers to take action before they leave town for their August recess.
A gallon of gasoline costs $3.94 nationwide, down slightly from a month ago, according to a daily survey of gas stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. The cost varies across the country, with several states topping $4 a gallon.
The average cost a year ago was $2.89 per gallon - more than a dollar below today’s cost.
Bush says many Americans are suddenly practicing their own version of conservation.
"It's interesting to note that many of our consumers have already made the decision to switch away from automobiles, like SUVs that consume a lot of gasoline, to smaller cars," Bush said. "Why? Because you're smart. You know how to handle your own business."
After his energy speech, Bush raised some cash for the Congressional Trust, a Republican campaign fund for congressional candidates. The event was expected to raise $530,000.
The fundraiser was held in Gates Mills, a Cleveland suburb, at the home of insurance executive Umberto Fedeli in the Cleveland suburb of Gates Mills.
Like most of Bush's fundraisers this year, the event was closed to the media.
On his way out of town, Bush stopped his motorcade so he could get out and wish a happy birthday to a local woman, Ruth Harris, who was celebrating her 91st birthday.
Bush sat in a chair next to Harris and said "91 years old - how special."
When neighbors noticed what was happening, they soon surrounded the president for a moment with him too.
From: rawstory.com/news/2008/Working_America_group_protests_Bush_in_0731.html
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Death and the Bush Administration
By: Tula Connell Thursday July 31, 2008 10:30 am
Last week, a confluence of events reminded the U.S. public that it's not just the food we eat that's increasingly dangerous in our daily lives—inadequate safety on the job still is killing America's working people.
The week ended with two more deaths from construction cranes, this time in Illinois. These fatalities came within days of four deaths due to a crane collapse in Houston—and raises to 18 the number of workers who died from crane-related deaths so far this year, according to an estimate by The Wall Street Journal, which doesn't include bystander deaths.
Also last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued 120 citations for safety violations at the Imperial Sugar Co. plant in Port Wentworth, Ga., where high levels of sugar dust fueled an explosion Feb. 7 that killed 13 workers. OSHA fined the company $5 million—but refuses to set a dust safety standard to help prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.
In addition, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released a report on last year's Crandall Canyon Mine disaster that killed six miners, placing the blame squarely on the coal mine operator, Murray Energy Co., and the engineering company hired to develop the mining plan. (Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray attributed the disaster to an earthquake and refused to go to Capitol Hill to testify before lawmakers.) The agency levied $1.6 million in fines against the mining company and $220,000 against the engineering firm. Three rescue workers later were killed trying to reach the site in Utah.
Juxtaposed to these events was a report by The Washington Post that revealed the Labor Department is fast-tracking a secretly written rule—long sought by the business community—that could increase workers’ exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxic substances on the job and tie the hands of future administrations trying to improve workplace safety.
Even as workers die on the job, the Bush-Elaine Chao Labor Department plots to ensure the administration's legacy of failed safety enforcement, minimal penalties and wink-and-nod appointments of wolves to guard safety agencies like MSHA continues long after it's gone. Rewarding their corporate cronies is the gift that keeps giving.
And in the nepotistic Bush world, Chao's husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell, is so beholden to the failed Bush ideology that he won't even come to the aid of his own constituency: Kentucky coal miners.
A 2006 article by Lexington Herald-Leader staff writer John Cheves explores how McConnell and Chao have operated as a “tag team,” sacrificing worker safety in favor of employers’ interests.
When it comes to workplace-related issues such as mine safety, the McConnell-Chao marriage presents an intriguing target for industry donors. At the Labor Department, Chao has taken what some reports say is a relaxed attitude toward the regulation of coal mines and an approach that labor unions perceive as hostile.
Sometimes Chao achieves what her husband cannot in the Senate, such as a wage freeze her department instituted on certain farm workers.
Chao attends her husband’s fundraisers, chats with his donors and seeds her agency with his former aides. Chief among them is Deputy Labor Secretary Steven Law, whose last job was helping McConnell tap donors—Bob Murray included—at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They collected an impressive $187 million in four years there.
The area of mine safety has taken the greatest beating since the Bush-Chao duo took office. In 2006, the year of the Sago Mine disaster, some 47 coal miners died in 2006—a 210 percent increase from 2005. Further:
*Chao's Labor Department missed the Dec. 15 deadline to issue new federal rules for better trained mine rescue teams at the nation’s coal mines.
*Between 2000 and 2008, the MSHA has failed to issue more than 4,000 fines for violations of mine safety laws—including a mine where a Kentucky coal miner died in 2005.
*Bush even threatened to veto new mine safety legislation passed by the House to build on the 2006 MINER Act that passed in the aftermath of the Sago, Aracoma and Darby coal mine disasters.
In a House Education and Labor Committee hearing last October on the Crandall Canyon disaster, Sheila Phillips, mother of miner Brandon Phillip who perished in the collapse, told House members:
It’s just hard to have hope, and have your heart broke every day, and have your grandson grow up without a dad....I just miss him…I would like to know where my son is in that hole, so I can leave a marker on that mountain.
Each day in 2006, 16 U.S. workers were fatally injured on the job—5,840 that year, the latest for which data are available. That's an increase from 5,734 in 2005.
That the number of on-the-job deaths is rising should be an embarrassment and a source of shame for the leadership of any western industrialized nation. That Sheila Phillips cannot place flowers on her son's grave should keep any U.S. administration awake at night.
But not this one.
Source:
firedoglake.com/2008/07/31/death-and-the-bush-administration/
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Bush's last minute effort to undermine work place safety rules
Written by barb howe
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 21:12
An article in the Washington Post this morning has a familiar ring to anyone following the DOL's proposed changes to the H-2A guestworker program. Apparently, "political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins". It's as if they are in a rush to squeeze in as many nefarious plots as possible to harm working people before the clock runs out
It's not only the proposal itself but the secrecy of it that many people find unsavory. No one knew about it until it was published on the website of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), saying it was under review. The text of the proposal has still not been made public
According to the article, "the July submission of [the] proposal broke a deadline set by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who had ordered that all agencies submit proposed regulations before June 1 and ‘resist the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months'". Guess that doesn't apply if you're slashing worker protection laws.
Source:
www.harvestingjustice.org/index.php/immigration-labor-rights/40-immigration-labor-rights/144-bush-undermines-work-places-safety-rules
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Undermining Independence
August 27, 2008
by Tom Bethell
(Posted with permission from The Mountain Eagle, Whitesburg, KY)
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, somebody in the Bush administration comes up with another way to compromise somebody else’s rights. The latest example is Richard Stickler, director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
MSHA has been much in the news since 2006. Coal miners have suffered a string of disasters – Sago, Aracoma Alma, Kentucky Darby, Crandall Canyon – that might have been avoided or mitigated if MSHA since 2001 had stuck to its congressionally mandated job, which is law enforcement. But the Bush years have seen the agency shifting to “compliance assistance” (try requesting that the next time a trooper stops you) while hobbled by budget cuts, resulting in having too few inspectors to handle even their more compliant role.
At Crandall Canyon, as you’ll remember if you watched the news, Stickler seemed subordinate to mine owner Robert Murray, whose flawed mining plan led to the deaths of nine miners – six who were trapped when the inadequately supported mine walls erupted behind them and three (including a federal inspector) who were killed ten days later while trying to rescue the trapped miners.
MSHA’s handling of the Crandall Canyon mine from start to finish – from approving a bad mining plan to botching a rescue – was so obviously inept that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was forced to appoint a team of independent investigators to look into how the agency conducted itself. As we noted in an August 6 editorial, the two investigators – Ernie Teaster and Joe Pavlovich, both MSHA veterans now retired – did a remarkable job, delivering a report that left no doubt of the desperate need for someone to lead MSHA back to its original mission.
Stickler, we now learn, is not that kind of leader.
As Salt Lake Tribune reporter Mike Gorrell revealed last Sunday, it wasn’t the report’s recommendations that got Stickler’s attention. No, what he wanted to know more about was who the sources were for the many unflattering comments in the report about how he performed at Crandall Canyon – candid comments by MSHA personnel, in interviews with Teaster and Pavlovich that were supposed to be kept confidential.
It’s not surprising that Stickler didn’t like the comments, which depict him as a real piece of work – a manager with no listening skills who was inclined to fire anyone questioning his thinking during a crisis. Whether that’s a fair portrayal, it’s how some front-line people felt, and for the sake of MSHA’s future it’s important that they expressed those views. But it’s equally obvious that they wouldn’t have talked so candidly if they had known that Stickler would track them down.
Which seems to be exactly what he’s doing. Stickler reportedly demanded, and got, the transcripts of the supposedly confidential interviews. When Gorrell broke the story, a Labor Department spokesman blandly maintained that there would be no firings, no nasty reassignments, no recriminations of any kind for those whose identities have now been revealed to their chief.
Oh, sure. How would a Labor Department flack – far removed from the front lines – have any idea? You might as well ask the greeter at Wal-Mart.
That said, let’s cut to the chase. The whole point of the investigation was to be independent – of all those responsible for MSHA’s conduct before, during, and after the Crandall Canyon calamity. Confidential interviews were as essential to its independence as water to a fish. Take away confidentiality and you take away any confidence in the investigation – not just this one, but any such investigation in the future. After this breach of faith, can you seriously imagine federal employees talking candidly to investigators about the failings of their agency?
With any luck, Richard Stickler has only a few more months in office. He could have used the time to battle the rising rates of black lung among miners who shouldn’t be being exposed to potentially lethal levels of respirable coal dust. He could have used the time to start correcting all the institutional flaws revealed by Teaster and Pavlovich in their eye-opening report. Instead, he’s burrowing into transcripts, looking for the dirt on who said what.
We’ve seen this movie before. It was called The Caine Mutiny, featuring a Captain Queeg. Things didn’t turn out very well for him (in a role reprised by Richard Nixon). Netflix would do Stickler a real favor by sending him the film – if he’s not too busy to watch it.
===
The editorial was written by The Mountain Eagle Contributing Editor Tom Bethell, who has covered coal for the paper off and on for nearly 40 years. Based in Washington, D.C., he is also the author of The Hurricane Creek Massacre, a book about a 1970 mine disaster, and is a former research director of the United Mine Workers of America. He was part of a team that investigated the Sago mine disaster in 2006. (The Mountain Eagle celebrated its 90th anniversary last year.)
Source: thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/undermining-independence/
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Let's go back in time, early in the Bush administration, and look at how they attacked workers right from their beginning. Workers, across our country, you've always been pushed down, beaten, used and abused......Get out there!
RAISE YOUR VOICE!...M
Published in the June 1, 2002 issue of The Progressive Populist
Bush's Assault on Workers Rights
by Nathan Newman
Bush has been appearing at a number of events with union workers-- from announcing tariffs on imported steel to supposedly protect steel jobs to promising oil drilling jobs in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to Teamsters. Does this mean that Bush's "compassionate conservatism" includes a pro-union component?
Hardly.
Despite all the media fuss over Teamsters and some building trades support for ANWR drilling, the media has largely ignored the opposition to Bush's energy policy by major unions ranging from the Service Employees International Union to the Communication Workers of America. As for steel tariffs, Bush's policy ignored a key demand of the Steelworkers union: guaranteeing the health care and pensions of workers threatened by the bankruptcy of their previous employers.
But then, promoting corporate bailouts while ignoring direct help for workers has been Bush's policy from day one of his administration. When airlines were bailed out after the September 11th attacks, none of the $15 billion in money went to help the workers laid off by the airlines. Worse, both before and after the attacks, the administration intervened to block strikes at Northwest, Delta and United Airlines to prevent workers from demanding fair treatment by the airlines.
Bush may be trying to clothe his anti-worker actions by cutting a few deals with folks like Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. at the Teamsters union, but even many top Teamster officials aren't buying it. Chuck Mack, the Teamsters Vice President for the Western Region, has called Bush's labor policy "a nightmare for workers." The AFL-CIO Building Trades Department labeled Bush's policies "nothing short of a declaration of war on construction workers." And these are supposedly the unions closest to the administration.
It's not hard to see why the attacks on Bush are so scathing, since beneath his rhetoric, he has mounted an attack on unions and workers rights on a sweeping scale. Topping the anti-worker agenda of the Bush administration, of course, was its 2001 tax cut for the wealthy last year, which aside from paying back his campaign contributors, was designed to bankrupt the government and prevent new spending for national health insurance, day care or any other initiatives to assist working families. But the anti-worker agenda is shown in a wide range of other initiatives and appointments Bush has made. Here is just a partial review since his taking office.
In his first days in office, Bush issued four executive orders to directly undermine labor organizing
Ending Project Labor Agreements: The first order (found illegal by the courts later in the year) sought to bar what are known as project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects, agreements that encourage union contracts and labor peace that been regularly used since the 1940s.
Ending Rights When Federal Contractors Change: The second revoked a rule designed to reduce turnover in low-wage jobs which had required federal contractors to rehire displaced workers when the government changed contractors.
Abolishing Labor-Management Systems: The third order abolished employee participation systems in the federal government that had given employees a voice and led to numerous cost-savings measures benefiting all taxpayers.
Undermining Union Dues: The fourth (also struck down by courts as illegal) required government contractors to post notices highlighting ways for workers to object to union dues, while not requiring the posting of any other workers rights to organize or join unions.
Bush followed these orders with a "review" and termination of a number of Clinton-era regulations. These included:
Ergonomics Regulations: Bush signed off on the GOP's repeal of regulations designed to prevent injuries from repetitive motion and compensate the victims of on-the-job injuries. The administration has yet to issue replacement regulations and have announced they will favor "voluntary" measures by businesses that have contributed millions of dollars to the GOP to preserve the status quo.
Contracts for Corporate Criminals: The Bush administration repealed "responsible contractor" rules that would have denied billions of dollars in government contracts to chronic corporate violators of our environmental, labor and safety laws.
Black Lung Regulations: Bush's administration attorneys persuaded a federal judge to suspend new black lung regulations that went into effect on January 19, 2001 that would helped streamline claims by dying miners in claiming benefits from the mining industry.
Bush has also loaded up his administration with a range of rightwing anti-union officials who have pledged to rollback day-to-day enforcement of workers' rights:
Labor Department Secretary: After the firestorm of protest over his initial choice of Linda Chavez as Labor Secretary, Bush's second choice was Elaine Chao, a policy analyst from the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, where she had attacked affirmative action programs and minimum wage laws as undermining "free enterprise." Under her leadership, the department has pledged that it would emphasize "compliance assistance" for companies, rather than actual enforcement of workplace laws.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Similarly, Bush's OSHA chief John Henshaw has announced a focus on compliance and "voluntary" programs and using enforcement only to stop "the worst law breakers."
Labor Department Solicitor: Facing a firestorm of opposition, Bush used a recess appointment to bypass the Senate to make anti-worker lawyer Eugene Scalia (son of the Supreme Court Justice) the top lawyer for the Labor Department. Scalia has campaigned against ergonomics rules as "junk science" and in a 10-year career as a labor lawyer, he represented only two workers amidst a practice of fighting for large corporations against workers rights.
National Labor Relations Board: Again bypassing the Senate, Bush made two recent recess appointments to the five-member NLRB, Michael Bartlett and William Cowen. Barlett previously headed labor policy at the Chamber of Commerce, while Cowen was founder of a notoriously anti-union labor firm. With a new majority of GOP appointees, we can soon expect serious reversals of pro-union precedents by the NLRB.
Justice Department: John Ashcroft's anti-civil liberties policies have gotten the headlines, but he has also taken advantage of the post-Sept 11th crisis to terminate union representation and collective bargaining agreements in several Justice Department agencies in the name of "national security."
All of this has been done largely without any new legislation, but if the GOP can retake control of the Senate this fall, Bush will no doubt continue this record with a whole new raft of anti-union legislation.
Bush may be using a few select union leaders as props for photo opportunities as the camera bulbs flash brightly, but his policies are increasingly leaving workers rights in the dark
Nathan Newman is a labor lawyer and longtime community activist, a national vice president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of the forthcoming book Net Loss on Internet policy and economic inequality. Email nathan@newman.org or see www.nathannewman.org
Source:
www.commondreams.org/views02/0517-06.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And now, here's some 'feel good' information from the U.S.Department of Labor [NOT!] about Labor Day and American Workers. Read it and weep, America......
September 1, 2008
The History of Labor Day
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
Source: www.dol.gov/OPA/ABOUTDOL/LABORDAY.HTM
PS: I'm posting my birthday wish at the thread, American Resistance. Join me, won't you?
Here:
airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=america&action=display&thread=105&page=3#3065
This one's for you.....
It's Labor Day and.....my birthday! Actually, I was born on Labor Day [Mum didn't think it was so funny...I was a hard birth; the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck...kinda makes me wonder if someone/thing was tryin' to shut me up right from the start!] My B-day is also the date of the start of WWII, but that's for next year's post.
OK, a few things for you today, most of it isn't pretty for Labor in the united States. The Commander in Thief and his cronies have hit the working class hard....they're still at it, trying to sew up more attacks on you. Recently, they've put the screws to workers' safety. Our Labor Department, along with every other public watchdog institution, has been taken over by the corporations....the unions, well, they've always been corrupt, but they've reached new heights in screwin' their members....Ah well, we've got the good fight in front of us.
First, let's start out with some news that colors me happy and then we'll get on with the down and dirty.
Solidarity, Brothers and Sisters,
Never Forget It!
Michelle
Hats off to our N. American neighbors...Way to go Canadian Wal-mart [ ]Workers! Let's hope for more of the same in the US:
Canada
Quebec Wal-Mart workers get union contract
In a North American first, workers at the Wal-Mart outlet in Gatineau, Quebec, across the river from Canada`s capital city, Ottawa, have signed a contract agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
While two other Wal-Marts in Quebec had previously been unionized, workers were not able to obtain a contract from the notoriously anti-union company. One store closed as a result of the certification, and both cases are still before the courts. The new contract was imposed by a Quebec provincial arbitrator after a three-year effort by the union.
The three-year agreement will lift wages C$2.00 an hour above the C$8.50 an hour workers were getting, and will provide improvements in areas such as vacation provisions. Wal-Mart has indicated it will fight union certification for two other bargaining units at the same outlet, but the union has said that it expects two more Wal-Mart stores to obtain union contracts before the end of the year.
From:
www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/wkrs-a26.shtml
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The following video [1 minute] isn't the best piece of filming, but the boo-hisses and raised fists directed at Bush's motorcade warm my heart. Betcha' didn't see any coverage on that. Let's hear it for the city of Cleveland and Working America members!
Working America Bush Protest 7/29/08 Cleveland
From: StewartApplesauce
Joined: 8 months ago
Videos: 3
Added: July 29, 2008
On July 29, 2008 over 100 Working America members gathered as close as we were allowed, to protest the president and his failed policies that have hurt countless Americans.
This is a video of the motorcade when President Bush went by. Among the gathered are the Canton Cleveland and Youngstown offices. Learn more about Working America at www.workingamerica.org
Working America group protests Bush in Cleveland
David Edwards and Diane Sweet
Published: Thursday July 31, 2008
About 100 AFL-CIO members wearing red shirts booed and made thumbs down gestures as Bush's motorcade passed on the way to Lincoln Electric.
The protesters gathered in front of an expanse of vacant parking lots outside of the defunct Euclid Square Mall.
"If you look around here, you see a wasteland," said Harriet Applegate, executive secretary for the North Shore AFL-CIO. "Northeast Ohio has been incredibly hard hit by the Bush administration."
AFL-CIO member Gaelynn Dooley, 24, said the success of Lincoln Electric was not representative of industry in the rest of the region.
"Our message today is that we need politicians who are accountable to working families," Dooley said. "We've been hemorrhaging 340 jobs a day in Ohio."
Just down the road, 8-year-old J.J. Conway held a "Go McCain" sign and greeted Bush's motorcade along with his mom, Rebecca, and brother, Matthew, 4, "We're here supporting President Bush because there's so many anti-Bush people," said Rebecca Conway, 36, who held a sign that read "My Pro-Life President." [?!!!! ...M]
He’s worked hard and made a big impact on the social issues. He's defended our country and kept us safe."
Democrats maintain that more drilling isn't the answer. And they argue a point the White House itself concedes - allowing offshore drilling is not going to lower gas prices now.
Bush himself said, "It took us a while to get to this position, and it's going to take us a while to get out of it."
Still, Bush says more drilling would send an important signal to the world that the United States is serious about expanding the oil supply. He says it can be done in environmentally safe ways, but opponents fear oil spills and drops in coastal tourism.
The soaring cost of gasoline has turned energy policy into a kitchen-table issue. Millions of people who rely on their cars are eager to get some help from elected leaders - and those leaders, especially those up for election, want to show some action.
"If we’re worried about your gasoline price and recognize that it's high because of the price of crude oil, and it's possible to find more oil right here in the United States ... doesn't it make sense to try to find that oil?" Bush said. "I think it does."
Bush also pushed for nuclear power and other forms of alternative energy.
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are in a stalemate over how to rein in energy prices. Using the country's frustration as leverage, the president is trying to build pressure on lawmakers to take action before they leave town for their August recess.
A gallon of gasoline costs $3.94 nationwide, down slightly from a month ago, according to a daily survey of gas stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. The cost varies across the country, with several states topping $4 a gallon.
The average cost a year ago was $2.89 per gallon - more than a dollar below today’s cost.
Bush says many Americans are suddenly practicing their own version of conservation.
"It's interesting to note that many of our consumers have already made the decision to switch away from automobiles, like SUVs that consume a lot of gasoline, to smaller cars," Bush said. "Why? Because you're smart. You know how to handle your own business."
After his energy speech, Bush raised some cash for the Congressional Trust, a Republican campaign fund for congressional candidates. The event was expected to raise $530,000.
The fundraiser was held in Gates Mills, a Cleveland suburb, at the home of insurance executive Umberto Fedeli in the Cleveland suburb of Gates Mills.
Like most of Bush's fundraisers this year, the event was closed to the media.
On his way out of town, Bush stopped his motorcade so he could get out and wish a happy birthday to a local woman, Ruth Harris, who was celebrating her 91st birthday.
Bush sat in a chair next to Harris and said "91 years old - how special."
When neighbors noticed what was happening, they soon surrounded the president for a moment with him too.
From: rawstory.com/news/2008/Working_America_group_protests_Bush_in_0731.html
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Death and the Bush Administration
By: Tula Connell Thursday July 31, 2008 10:30 am
Last week, a confluence of events reminded the U.S. public that it's not just the food we eat that's increasingly dangerous in our daily lives—inadequate safety on the job still is killing America's working people.
The week ended with two more deaths from construction cranes, this time in Illinois. These fatalities came within days of four deaths due to a crane collapse in Houston—and raises to 18 the number of workers who died from crane-related deaths so far this year, according to an estimate by The Wall Street Journal, which doesn't include bystander deaths.
Also last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued 120 citations for safety violations at the Imperial Sugar Co. plant in Port Wentworth, Ga., where high levels of sugar dust fueled an explosion Feb. 7 that killed 13 workers. OSHA fined the company $5 million—but refuses to set a dust safety standard to help prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.
In addition, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released a report on last year's Crandall Canyon Mine disaster that killed six miners, placing the blame squarely on the coal mine operator, Murray Energy Co., and the engineering company hired to develop the mining plan. (Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray attributed the disaster to an earthquake and refused to go to Capitol Hill to testify before lawmakers.) The agency levied $1.6 million in fines against the mining company and $220,000 against the engineering firm. Three rescue workers later were killed trying to reach the site in Utah.
Juxtaposed to these events was a report by The Washington Post that revealed the Labor Department is fast-tracking a secretly written rule—long sought by the business community—that could increase workers’ exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxic substances on the job and tie the hands of future administrations trying to improve workplace safety.
Even as workers die on the job, the Bush-Elaine Chao Labor Department plots to ensure the administration's legacy of failed safety enforcement, minimal penalties and wink-and-nod appointments of wolves to guard safety agencies like MSHA continues long after it's gone. Rewarding their corporate cronies is the gift that keeps giving.
And in the nepotistic Bush world, Chao's husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell, is so beholden to the failed Bush ideology that he won't even come to the aid of his own constituency: Kentucky coal miners.
A 2006 article by Lexington Herald-Leader staff writer John Cheves explores how McConnell and Chao have operated as a “tag team,” sacrificing worker safety in favor of employers’ interests.
When it comes to workplace-related issues such as mine safety, the McConnell-Chao marriage presents an intriguing target for industry donors. At the Labor Department, Chao has taken what some reports say is a relaxed attitude toward the regulation of coal mines and an approach that labor unions perceive as hostile.
Sometimes Chao achieves what her husband cannot in the Senate, such as a wage freeze her department instituted on certain farm workers.
Chao attends her husband’s fundraisers, chats with his donors and seeds her agency with his former aides. Chief among them is Deputy Labor Secretary Steven Law, whose last job was helping McConnell tap donors—Bob Murray included—at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They collected an impressive $187 million in four years there.
The area of mine safety has taken the greatest beating since the Bush-Chao duo took office. In 2006, the year of the Sago Mine disaster, some 47 coal miners died in 2006—a 210 percent increase from 2005. Further:
*Chao's Labor Department missed the Dec. 15 deadline to issue new federal rules for better trained mine rescue teams at the nation’s coal mines.
*Between 2000 and 2008, the MSHA has failed to issue more than 4,000 fines for violations of mine safety laws—including a mine where a Kentucky coal miner died in 2005.
*Bush even threatened to veto new mine safety legislation passed by the House to build on the 2006 MINER Act that passed in the aftermath of the Sago, Aracoma and Darby coal mine disasters.
In a House Education and Labor Committee hearing last October on the Crandall Canyon disaster, Sheila Phillips, mother of miner Brandon Phillip who perished in the collapse, told House members:
It’s just hard to have hope, and have your heart broke every day, and have your grandson grow up without a dad....I just miss him…I would like to know where my son is in that hole, so I can leave a marker on that mountain.
Each day in 2006, 16 U.S. workers were fatally injured on the job—5,840 that year, the latest for which data are available. That's an increase from 5,734 in 2005.
That the number of on-the-job deaths is rising should be an embarrassment and a source of shame for the leadership of any western industrialized nation. That Sheila Phillips cannot place flowers on her son's grave should keep any U.S. administration awake at night.
But not this one.
Source:
firedoglake.com/2008/07/31/death-and-the-bush-administration/
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Bush's last minute effort to undermine work place safety rules
Written by barb howe
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 21:12
An article in the Washington Post this morning has a familiar ring to anyone following the DOL's proposed changes to the H-2A guestworker program. Apparently, "political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins". It's as if they are in a rush to squeeze in as many nefarious plots as possible to harm working people before the clock runs out
It's not only the proposal itself but the secrecy of it that many people find unsavory. No one knew about it until it was published on the website of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), saying it was under review. The text of the proposal has still not been made public
According to the article, "the July submission of [the] proposal broke a deadline set by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who had ordered that all agencies submit proposed regulations before June 1 and ‘resist the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months'". Guess that doesn't apply if you're slashing worker protection laws.
Source:
www.harvestingjustice.org/index.php/immigration-labor-rights/40-immigration-labor-rights/144-bush-undermines-work-places-safety-rules
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Undermining Independence
August 27, 2008
by Tom Bethell
(Posted with permission from The Mountain Eagle, Whitesburg, KY)
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, somebody in the Bush administration comes up with another way to compromise somebody else’s rights. The latest example is Richard Stickler, director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
MSHA has been much in the news since 2006. Coal miners have suffered a string of disasters – Sago, Aracoma Alma, Kentucky Darby, Crandall Canyon – that might have been avoided or mitigated if MSHA since 2001 had stuck to its congressionally mandated job, which is law enforcement. But the Bush years have seen the agency shifting to “compliance assistance” (try requesting that the next time a trooper stops you) while hobbled by budget cuts, resulting in having too few inspectors to handle even their more compliant role.
At Crandall Canyon, as you’ll remember if you watched the news, Stickler seemed subordinate to mine owner Robert Murray, whose flawed mining plan led to the deaths of nine miners – six who were trapped when the inadequately supported mine walls erupted behind them and three (including a federal inspector) who were killed ten days later while trying to rescue the trapped miners.
MSHA’s handling of the Crandall Canyon mine from start to finish – from approving a bad mining plan to botching a rescue – was so obviously inept that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was forced to appoint a team of independent investigators to look into how the agency conducted itself. As we noted in an August 6 editorial, the two investigators – Ernie Teaster and Joe Pavlovich, both MSHA veterans now retired – did a remarkable job, delivering a report that left no doubt of the desperate need for someone to lead MSHA back to its original mission.
Stickler, we now learn, is not that kind of leader.
As Salt Lake Tribune reporter Mike Gorrell revealed last Sunday, it wasn’t the report’s recommendations that got Stickler’s attention. No, what he wanted to know more about was who the sources were for the many unflattering comments in the report about how he performed at Crandall Canyon – candid comments by MSHA personnel, in interviews with Teaster and Pavlovich that were supposed to be kept confidential.
It’s not surprising that Stickler didn’t like the comments, which depict him as a real piece of work – a manager with no listening skills who was inclined to fire anyone questioning his thinking during a crisis. Whether that’s a fair portrayal, it’s how some front-line people felt, and for the sake of MSHA’s future it’s important that they expressed those views. But it’s equally obvious that they wouldn’t have talked so candidly if they had known that Stickler would track them down.
Which seems to be exactly what he’s doing. Stickler reportedly demanded, and got, the transcripts of the supposedly confidential interviews. When Gorrell broke the story, a Labor Department spokesman blandly maintained that there would be no firings, no nasty reassignments, no recriminations of any kind for those whose identities have now been revealed to their chief.
Oh, sure. How would a Labor Department flack – far removed from the front lines – have any idea? You might as well ask the greeter at Wal-Mart.
That said, let’s cut to the chase. The whole point of the investigation was to be independent – of all those responsible for MSHA’s conduct before, during, and after the Crandall Canyon calamity. Confidential interviews were as essential to its independence as water to a fish. Take away confidentiality and you take away any confidence in the investigation – not just this one, but any such investigation in the future. After this breach of faith, can you seriously imagine federal employees talking candidly to investigators about the failings of their agency?
With any luck, Richard Stickler has only a few more months in office. He could have used the time to battle the rising rates of black lung among miners who shouldn’t be being exposed to potentially lethal levels of respirable coal dust. He could have used the time to start correcting all the institutional flaws revealed by Teaster and Pavlovich in their eye-opening report. Instead, he’s burrowing into transcripts, looking for the dirt on who said what.
We’ve seen this movie before. It was called The Caine Mutiny, featuring a Captain Queeg. Things didn’t turn out very well for him (in a role reprised by Richard Nixon). Netflix would do Stickler a real favor by sending him the film – if he’s not too busy to watch it.
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The editorial was written by The Mountain Eagle Contributing Editor Tom Bethell, who has covered coal for the paper off and on for nearly 40 years. Based in Washington, D.C., he is also the author of The Hurricane Creek Massacre, a book about a 1970 mine disaster, and is a former research director of the United Mine Workers of America. He was part of a team that investigated the Sago mine disaster in 2006. (The Mountain Eagle celebrated its 90th anniversary last year.)
Source: thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/undermining-independence/
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Let's go back in time, early in the Bush administration, and look at how they attacked workers right from their beginning. Workers, across our country, you've always been pushed down, beaten, used and abused......Get out there!
RAISE YOUR VOICE!...M
Published in the June 1, 2002 issue of The Progressive Populist
Bush's Assault on Workers Rights
by Nathan Newman
Bush has been appearing at a number of events with union workers-- from announcing tariffs on imported steel to supposedly protect steel jobs to promising oil drilling jobs in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to Teamsters. Does this mean that Bush's "compassionate conservatism" includes a pro-union component?
Hardly.
Despite all the media fuss over Teamsters and some building trades support for ANWR drilling, the media has largely ignored the opposition to Bush's energy policy by major unions ranging from the Service Employees International Union to the Communication Workers of America. As for steel tariffs, Bush's policy ignored a key demand of the Steelworkers union: guaranteeing the health care and pensions of workers threatened by the bankruptcy of their previous employers.
But then, promoting corporate bailouts while ignoring direct help for workers has been Bush's policy from day one of his administration. When airlines were bailed out after the September 11th attacks, none of the $15 billion in money went to help the workers laid off by the airlines. Worse, both before and after the attacks, the administration intervened to block strikes at Northwest, Delta and United Airlines to prevent workers from demanding fair treatment by the airlines.
Bush may be trying to clothe his anti-worker actions by cutting a few deals with folks like Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. at the Teamsters union, but even many top Teamster officials aren't buying it. Chuck Mack, the Teamsters Vice President for the Western Region, has called Bush's labor policy "a nightmare for workers." The AFL-CIO Building Trades Department labeled Bush's policies "nothing short of a declaration of war on construction workers." And these are supposedly the unions closest to the administration.
It's not hard to see why the attacks on Bush are so scathing, since beneath his rhetoric, he has mounted an attack on unions and workers rights on a sweeping scale. Topping the anti-worker agenda of the Bush administration, of course, was its 2001 tax cut for the wealthy last year, which aside from paying back his campaign contributors, was designed to bankrupt the government and prevent new spending for national health insurance, day care or any other initiatives to assist working families. But the anti-worker agenda is shown in a wide range of other initiatives and appointments Bush has made. Here is just a partial review since his taking office.
In his first days in office, Bush issued four executive orders to directly undermine labor organizing
Ending Project Labor Agreements: The first order (found illegal by the courts later in the year) sought to bar what are known as project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects, agreements that encourage union contracts and labor peace that been regularly used since the 1940s.
Ending Rights When Federal Contractors Change: The second revoked a rule designed to reduce turnover in low-wage jobs which had required federal contractors to rehire displaced workers when the government changed contractors.
Abolishing Labor-Management Systems: The third order abolished employee participation systems in the federal government that had given employees a voice and led to numerous cost-savings measures benefiting all taxpayers.
Undermining Union Dues: The fourth (also struck down by courts as illegal) required government contractors to post notices highlighting ways for workers to object to union dues, while not requiring the posting of any other workers rights to organize or join unions.
Bush followed these orders with a "review" and termination of a number of Clinton-era regulations. These included:
Ergonomics Regulations: Bush signed off on the GOP's repeal of regulations designed to prevent injuries from repetitive motion and compensate the victims of on-the-job injuries. The administration has yet to issue replacement regulations and have announced they will favor "voluntary" measures by businesses that have contributed millions of dollars to the GOP to preserve the status quo.
Contracts for Corporate Criminals: The Bush administration repealed "responsible contractor" rules that would have denied billions of dollars in government contracts to chronic corporate violators of our environmental, labor and safety laws.
Black Lung Regulations: Bush's administration attorneys persuaded a federal judge to suspend new black lung regulations that went into effect on January 19, 2001 that would helped streamline claims by dying miners in claiming benefits from the mining industry.
Bush has also loaded up his administration with a range of rightwing anti-union officials who have pledged to rollback day-to-day enforcement of workers' rights:
Labor Department Secretary: After the firestorm of protest over his initial choice of Linda Chavez as Labor Secretary, Bush's second choice was Elaine Chao, a policy analyst from the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, where she had attacked affirmative action programs and minimum wage laws as undermining "free enterprise." Under her leadership, the department has pledged that it would emphasize "compliance assistance" for companies, rather than actual enforcement of workplace laws.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Similarly, Bush's OSHA chief John Henshaw has announced a focus on compliance and "voluntary" programs and using enforcement only to stop "the worst law breakers."
Labor Department Solicitor: Facing a firestorm of opposition, Bush used a recess appointment to bypass the Senate to make anti-worker lawyer Eugene Scalia (son of the Supreme Court Justice) the top lawyer for the Labor Department. Scalia has campaigned against ergonomics rules as "junk science" and in a 10-year career as a labor lawyer, he represented only two workers amidst a practice of fighting for large corporations against workers rights.
National Labor Relations Board: Again bypassing the Senate, Bush made two recent recess appointments to the five-member NLRB, Michael Bartlett and William Cowen. Barlett previously headed labor policy at the Chamber of Commerce, while Cowen was founder of a notoriously anti-union labor firm. With a new majority of GOP appointees, we can soon expect serious reversals of pro-union precedents by the NLRB.
Justice Department: John Ashcroft's anti-civil liberties policies have gotten the headlines, but he has also taken advantage of the post-Sept 11th crisis to terminate union representation and collective bargaining agreements in several Justice Department agencies in the name of "national security."
All of this has been done largely without any new legislation, but if the GOP can retake control of the Senate this fall, Bush will no doubt continue this record with a whole new raft of anti-union legislation.
Bush may be using a few select union leaders as props for photo opportunities as the camera bulbs flash brightly, but his policies are increasingly leaving workers rights in the dark
Nathan Newman is a labor lawyer and longtime community activist, a national vice president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of the forthcoming book Net Loss on Internet policy and economic inequality. Email nathan@newman.org or see www.nathannewman.org
Source:
www.commondreams.org/views02/0517-06.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And now, here's some 'feel good' information from the U.S.Department of Labor [NOT!] about Labor Day and American Workers. Read it and weep, America......
September 1, 2008
The History of Labor Day
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
Source: www.dol.gov/OPA/ABOUTDOL/LABORDAY.HTM
PS: I'm posting my birthday wish at the thread, American Resistance. Join me, won't you?
Here:
airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=america&action=display&thread=105&page=3#3065