Labor Day. Time again for politicians and union adherents to praise organized labor. Time again for others to pontificate about the supposed decline and growing irrelevance of unions as they continue to lose members and continue to argue among themselves over the future direction of the labor movement. Time again for most other people to ignore the Labor Day messages as we mark the end of summer with yet another three-day weekend.
The general public indifference is understandable. After all, only about 12 percent of the country’s working people are in unions these days. But even if you are not a union member — even if you do not approve of unions — consider this while you’re enjoying the long Labor Day holiday:
There wouldn’t be any three-day weekends if it wasn’t for those unions.
Ingen.
Hvis fagforeningene ikke hadde gjort det de gjorde – og fortsetter å gjøre – er det høyst usannsynlig at noen utenfor de ledende rekkene ville få betalt ferie på Labor Day, eller en annen dag. (Eller til og med, selvfølgelig, at det ville være en slik ferie som Labor Day.)
Det er heller ikke sannsynlig at de som er pålagt å jobbe på slike helligdager vil få lønn på to til tre ganger den ordinære satsen som fagforeninger har satt standarden for feriearbeid i de fleste områder - eller få premielønn for annet arbeid, kl. noe annet tidspunkt.
Ferier betydde svært lite for de fleste yrkesaktive i dagene før fagforeningene trådte i kraft. De betydde bare en uvelkommen fridag og tap av en dagslønn eller i beste fall en arbeidsdag til vanlig lønn.
Those were the days when unions still were struggling primarily for nothing more than legal recognition. It wasn’t until World War II that unions were able to go beyond the fundamentals and make negotiation of paid holidays a common practice, a concession employers made in lieu of the pay raises that federal wage controls prohibited during the war.
De betalte feriene så mange arbeidsfolk tok som vanlig denne sommeren var også svært sjeldne før fagforeningene krevde og vant dem. Det samme var arbeidsgiverfinansierte pensjoner og medisinsk behandling og andre frynsegoder, helse- og sikkerhetsstandarder, jobbsikkerhet og andre ting som nå vanligvis ble gitt de fleste arbeidere, både fagforeninger og ikke-fagforeninger.
Uten fagforeninger, bør vi ikke glemme, ville det ikke vært betalt ferie for folk flest, ingen premie eller overtidsbetaling, ingen betalte ferier, få frynsegoder og liten beskyttelse mot jobbrelaterte farer og vilkårlig oppsigelse.
Uten fagforeninger kan faktisk standard arbeidsdag fortsatt være 10 til 12 timer, standard arbeidsuke seks til syv dager, og arbeidsfolk ville ha få av rettighetene som mange nå tar for gitt. Det inkluderer den overordnede retten til å ha en genuin stemme når de bestemmer deres lønns- og arbeidsvilkår.
Tviler du på det? Tenk på minnene til Mark Hawkins, som jobbet i varehusene langs San Franciscos travle vannkant på 1930-tallet, før en effektiv fagforening kom.
Hawkins husket menn som kjempet med kasser, bunter, kartonger, varer i alle størrelser, former og vekter, 10 timer om dagen, ofte hver dag i uken, for bare 60 dollar i måneden. De jobbet så mange timer på så mange dager som sjefen krevde, uansett lønn han tilbød, for ikke å bli erstattet av andre som ropte etter jobber i de mørke dagene under den store depresjonen.
Hawkins especially remembered a fellow worker who failed to raise his hand one Saturday when the boss made his usual Saturday afternoon request for “volunteers” to work Sunday. The reluctant warehouseman pleaded that his wife, undergoing a complicated pregnancy, was seriously ill and would need him at home to comfort her.
"Ok," sa sjefen - "men tror du ikke hun vil føle seg enda verre hvis du må fortelle henne at du ikke har en jobb lenger?"
The man worked that Sunday. When he got home, his wife was dead.
Very few of today’s employers would even consider acting in such a manner. It would be virtually unthinkable, given the firm standing gained for all workers by the country’s now solidly entrenched unions. That alone is more than enough reason to honor organized labor on the holiday it won for us all.
By some reckoning, this is the 111th Labor Day, since it was first observed as a national holiday in 1894. But the observance actually began a quarter-century earlier in San Francisco.
It was on Feb. 21, 1868. Brass bands blared, flags, banners and torchlights waved high as more than 3,000 union members marched proudly through the city’s downtown streets, led by shipyard workers and carpenters and men from dozens of other construction trades.
“A jollification,” the marchers called their parade — the climax of a three-year campaign of strikes and other pressures that had culminated in the establishment of the eight-hour workday as a legal right in California.
New York unionists staged a similar parade in 1882 that is often erroneously cited as the first Labor Day parade, even though it occured 14 years after the march in San Francisco.
Honors for holding the first official Labor Day are usually granted the state of Oregon, which proclaimed a Labor Day holiday in 1887 — seven years before the Federal Government got around to proclaiming the holiday which is now observed nationwide.
But Oregon’s move came nearly a year after Gov. George Stoneman of California issued a proclamation setting aside May 11, 1886 as a legal holiday to honor a new organization of California unions — the year-old Iron Trades Council. That, said renowned labor historian Ira B. Cross of the University of California, was “the first legalized Labor Day in the United States.”
San Francisco also played a major role in that celebration of 1886. The city was the scene of the chief event — a march down Market Street by more than lO,OOO men and women from some 40 unions, led by the uniformed rank-and-file of the Coast Seamen’s Union. Gov. Stoneman and his entire staff marched right along with them.
The procession was seven miles long, took more than two hours to pass any given point and generated enthusiasm that the San Francisco Examiner said was “entirely unprecedented — even in political campaigns.”
Copyright © 2005 Dick Meister, a freelance columnist in San Francisco who has covered labor issues for four decades as a reporter, editor and commentator.([e-postbeskyttet], www.dickmeister.com).
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