The first Labor Day celebration in the United States was held in New York City in September l882. On June 28, 1894, Congress declared Labor Day a national holiday amidst national labor unrest caused by the work-related deaths of miners, wage reductions for the workers of the Pullman Coach Company, wide-spread unemployment, and the deployment of state militia, Pinkerton guards and the U.S. army against striking workers. These events demonstrated to the working folks that while the government was steadfastly refusing to legislate on their behalf, it had no qualms legislating on behalf of the corporations that employed them.
It took another 40 years for Congress to pass comprehensive pro-employee legislation in the form of the National Labor Relations, or Wagner, Act in l935. This act established the first national recognition and protection of the rights of working people to organize themselves in unions and to elect representatives to bargain collectively on their behalf with the employers. The legislation embraced unions as an indispensable institution in an industrialized democracy - a right already recognized in other industrialized countries - which provided a balance between the powers of the government and the corporations. Unions have worked and continue to work to reduce economic inequalities and to assist individual employees in redressing grievances against powerful employers.
During this period, unions backed political candidates who supported the passage of legislation for an eight-hour workday, occupational safety, accident insurance, retirement, social security, and child labor laws - all benefits now taken for granted.
But in l947, the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act undermined these gains, resulting in a steady erosion of workplace rights. By the early l980s, the rights of employees came under assault by their employers backed by the courts. Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University, in a 2000 study, showed that 80 percent of employers who faced employee organizing efforts hired "consultants" to help them conduct anti-union campaigns, making a mockery of the act's promise that American workers are guaranteed "the rights to self-organization, to form, join or assist labor organizations . . . for the purposes of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection."
So while over the last decades unions have helped build a more prosperous, inclusive, and egalitarian America, the decline of unionization has coincided with an increasing economic disparity between employees and their employers, especially for those employees not protected by union-negotiated contracts.
The lesson of the last 100 years is that hard-won gains and rights can be lost if they are not exercised and defended, a cautionary tale especially applicable in the current climate of transnational corporations. With the aid of government legislation, these entities seek a "race-to-the-bottom" economy of ever declining wages and assaults on workers rights, including massive layoffs and the looting of workers' retirement funds.
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Here in New Mexico as elsewhere in the United States, the true meaning of Labor Day has become submerged in a general end-of-the-summer long weekend signifying no more than an opportunity to shop. While the latest turns and downturns in business will be no doubt debated, discussed, and ardently followed by the media and media pundits, it is certain that labor as a topic will not be mentioned in these discussions.
I encourage those in the United Staff-UNM collective bargaining unit to consider this Labor Day as the starting point for an election season, which will bring new leadership to Santa Fe. Whether or not this leadership will provide actual rather than mere lip service to the needs of N.M. wage earners, whether in the public or private sector, is up to us. Labor Day for me means celebrating the legacy of Tom Paine, Eugene Debs, Joe Hill, Robert Ferdinand Wagner, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Dolores Huerta. And may I suggest that instead of heading off to the mall for the latest cinematic offering, how about renting "Matewan," "Norma Rae," "Salt of the Earth," "Bread and Roses," or my personal favorite, "Chicken Run." Amazing what fowl can do when organized.
by Harry P. Norton
Daily Lobo Guest Columnist
Harry P. Norton, a UNM staff member, is president of the United Staff-UNM union.
