PEP, September 2008: Labor Days from 1882 to 2008

More than 20,000 union workers in their Sunday-best attire carried colorful banners as they marched from City Hall to Union Square Park, where a festive crowd of 25,000 overflowed the sidewalks. The politicized ranks at the rally projected the hopeful message of a fledgling labor movement airing its grievances against the excesses of industrial capitalism and demanding more humane hours, pay and working conditions.
It was the first Labor Day Parade, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882.

Organized labor — depicted as an awakening giant in the graphic imagery of the times — pressed its decade-long campaign for the 8-hour day. The Central Labor Union, as the New York City Central Labor Council was then called, brought out craftsmen of every calling. Brooklyn bricklayers in their white aprons, carpenters, boilermakers and cigar makers marched with glee clubs, choral societies, fiddlers and marching bands. Newark jewelers, four abreast, wore derby hats and dark suits with buttonhole bouquets.

The city had 15 newspapers and all reported on the parade. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle shared the thoughts of a union member, who noted, “We have simply been asleep while capital has taken away our birthright.” No politicians shared the reviewing stand, since the CLU planned to field its own candidates.

The tradition of Labor Day parades has survived for 126 years. In 2008, as New York City unions prepare to march again on Saturday, Sept. 6 (see page 3), the problems that the first parade’s participants faced offer perspective and reinforce the relevance of those distant times. Battling blacklisting, labor spies, the use of immigrants as strikebreakers, wage cuts and mass unemployment, they worked to forge cooperative, radicaland sometimes utopian solutions to the problems they faced.

In 1882, labor was at a historic turning point. The fraternal Knights of Labor — which pressed for equal pay for women and an end to child labor and wanted to replace capitalism with workers’ cooperatives — was nearing the end of its era. A narrower focus on wages and working conditions was coming with the founding of the American Federation of Labor.

In the years since 1882, the labor movement has grown and shrunk several times and workers’ fortunes have waxed and waned. The 8-hour day became federal law in 1838, but today millions of workers need two jobs to survive.

Last February, the Center for Economic and Policy Research released a report that depicted the current failure of America’s social contract. “Only 1 in 4 people in working families has a good job, one that pays $17 an hour with an employer-sponsored health plan and a pension,” said co-author John Schmitt.

The labor movement has a tall order to fill in the coming years to reverse the decline of real wages, halt the destruction of pensions and shrinkage of benefits, rebuild its ranks, expand rank-and-file participation and recapture the fire and intensity that inspired that earlier generation of labor’s activists.

—Jane LaTour

“Play It Again, Sam”

Back in the days when every union activist knew the words to “Solidarity Forever” and labor sing-a-longs were staples at union meetings, Henry Foner was a leading contributor to that tradition. He made his mark as a musician, a songwriter, an organizer, a union editor and as the leader of New York City’s Fur, Leather and Machinery Workers Union.

On June 11, the Labor Arts online virtual museum hosted a program at the Workmen’s Circle called, “Play It Again, Sam: Lost Chords of the Labor and Progressive Movements,” featuring Foner and his legendary musical memory.
Foner took his spot at the microphone in a packed auditorium and was joined by others who accompanied him on instruments and in song. Foner delivered such class-conscious classics as “Capitalist Boss” and “Ol’ Paint (The Horse with a Union Label),” both from 1937, and “Selling Union” (from “Thursdays Till Nine,” the musical he wrote with Norman Franklin in 1947) about department store workers.

In his youth, Foner played alongside his three brothers in a band they called the “Suspended Swing.” The four fabulous Foner brothers were all activists; Moe was a longtime leader of Local 1199 and Philip and Jack were labor historians.
To learn more about the music that inspired a generation, visit www.laborarts.org and explore the new “Play It Again, Sam” exhibit as well as the site’s fascinating photos and art work.