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Labor Day, Labor Movement Deserve More Respect
Editor's Note: Karen McCowan, a feature writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., is vice president of The Newspaper Guild-CWA Local 37194. This piece is based on her 2002 Labor Day column for the paper.
As I set out to write my Labor Day column, I wanted to address an annual pet peeve: that this holiday gets taken for granted.
I wanted to find a new way to break through our nation's long-entrenched habit of thinking of this day only in terms of picnics, Muscular Dystrophy telethons, or the chance to squeeze in one last camping trip. Inspired by one of my favorite bumper stickers, I decided to find that new way by looking to the distant past.
I began the column by describing characteristics of that era which also ring true today: A decade of unprecedented prosperity giving way to plunging stocks, closing plants and failing businesses. Rising unemployment. Rising support for unions - though many workers are leery of flexing their collective muscle in such uncertain times.
Then I told my readers I wasn't referring to the 1990s and the 2000s, but the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression of the 1930s. And proceeded to remind them of a time when the labor movement successfully pressed for a measure widely dismissed as radical and ill-timed.
How widely dismissed? I let samples from actual newspaper editorial pages of the time make the case:
This radical measure established a national minimum wage - then 25 cents an hour. It also established a maximum workweek - 44 hours per week in 1939, 42 hours per week in 1940, and 40 hours per week thereafter - before overtime must be paid.
I reminded readers that, despite all the dire predictions, the law did not destroy the U.S. economy. That data from the national Bureau of Labor Statistics show that U.S. productivity grew steadily for more than three decades. Many who marginalize the value of labor unions today see the 40-hour workweek as some pre-ordained standard handed down from on high, I added. But the average manufacturing workweek was still 50 hours in the prosperous 1920s. And the weekends most of us take for granted today were possible only through the hard-fought efforts of yesterday's organized workers.
Had the labor movement not been so strong then, we might not have the leisure time we enjoy now. Had it been a little stronger in the second half of the 20th century, we might enjoy even more today. A 35-hour workweek might now be standard here, as it is in France where, according to a new United Nations study, workers are more productive per hour than their longer-toiling U.S. counterparts. Instead, according to the U.N. study, Americans work more hours than any other industrialized nation.
A Labor Day poll by The Associated Press showed that three-fourths of Americans generally approve of unions, but only 13.5 percent of today's workers belong to one - the lowest rate in six decades.
I concluded that the Labor Day holiday seemed an appropriate time to acknowledge how much for granted most Americans take the labor movement. Who are, as the bumper sticker says, "The folks who brought you the weekend."
As I set out to write my Labor Day column, I wanted to address an annual pet peeve: that this holiday gets taken for granted.
I wanted to find a new way to break through our nation's long-entrenched habit of thinking of this day only in terms of picnics, Muscular Dystrophy telethons, or the chance to squeeze in one last camping trip. Inspired by one of my favorite bumper stickers, I decided to find that new way by looking to the distant past.
I began the column by describing characteristics of that era which also ring true today: A decade of unprecedented prosperity giving way to plunging stocks, closing plants and failing businesses. Rising unemployment. Rising support for unions - though many workers are leery of flexing their collective muscle in such uncertain times.
Then I told my readers I wasn't referring to the 1990s and the 2000s, but the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression of the 1930s. And proceeded to remind them of a time when the labor movement successfully pressed for a measure widely dismissed as radical and ill-timed.
How widely dismissed? I let samples from actual newspaper editorial pages of the time make the case:
- "The measure will freeze new industry before it starts, and handicap young industry in its efforts to get ahead," the Dallas Morning News warned.
- "Hopelessly vicious," The Detroit Free Press opined. "A flagrantly political approach to an economic problem."
- "A straitjacket that would ruin business," one New York Times op-ed concluded.
- From the rival New York Sun: "It will lead to further unemployment and will penalize the very group it's supposed to help."
- "At best," the Los Angeles Times huffed, "the law will do more harm than good through paving the way for federal control of industry."
- "Congress could hardly engage in anything more futile," the Wall Street Journal decreed. It "threatens the country," attempts to "do impossibly too much in too short a time" and "destroys the opportunity of hundreds of thousands to earn a living."
- The Richmond Times-Dispatch allowed that it would "feel more optimistic" about the labor bill "if it had been delayed to permit a definite business upturn."
- And, from the New York Times' own editorial board: "Short legal working hours will tend to restrict the national production of wealth and, consequently, living standards. Higher labor costs, coming especially in the present depression, will be difficult to meet in many cases, and will act as an additional brake on recovery."
This radical measure established a national minimum wage - then 25 cents an hour. It also established a maximum workweek - 44 hours per week in 1939, 42 hours per week in 1940, and 40 hours per week thereafter - before overtime must be paid.
I reminded readers that, despite all the dire predictions, the law did not destroy the U.S. economy. That data from the national Bureau of Labor Statistics show that U.S. productivity grew steadily for more than three decades. Many who marginalize the value of labor unions today see the 40-hour workweek as some pre-ordained standard handed down from on high, I added. But the average manufacturing workweek was still 50 hours in the prosperous 1920s. And the weekends most of us take for granted today were possible only through the hard-fought efforts of yesterday's organized workers.
Had the labor movement not been so strong then, we might not have the leisure time we enjoy now. Had it been a little stronger in the second half of the 20th century, we might enjoy even more today. A 35-hour workweek might now be standard here, as it is in France where, according to a new United Nations study, workers are more productive per hour than their longer-toiling U.S. counterparts. Instead, according to the U.N. study, Americans work more hours than any other industrialized nation.
A Labor Day poll by The Associated Press showed that three-fourths of Americans generally approve of unions, but only 13.5 percent of today's workers belong to one - the lowest rate in six decades.
I concluded that the Labor Day holiday seemed an appropriate time to acknowledge how much for granted most Americans take the labor movement. Who are, as the bumper sticker says, "The folks who brought you the weekend."