LABOR DAY

“LABOR DAY”

            Later this week Caroline and I will travel to Baltimore to celebrate our daughter Susan’s 35^th birthday – I lost a couple of decades somewhere!  I still remember her coming out of Caroline’s birth canal in less than 90 minutes – ready to engage the world!   We’ll drive up through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia then pass close to Martinsburg, West Virginia, which was the scene of a labor strike in 1877 that led to the observance of Labor Day. 

            One hundred and forty years ago, 1877 was a huge year in American history.  In March a Federal Election Commission voted 8-7 to certify that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was the winner of the 1876 Presidential election over Democrat Samuel Tilden.  Tilden had won the popular vote (sound familiar?), and was barely ahead in Electoral College votes, but he did not have a majority, and so the election was thrown into Congress.  Part of the compromise to get Hayes elected was a promise to pull the remaining Federal troops of Reconstruction out of South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida.  On April 24, 1877, the last Federal troops pulled out, and white supremacists worked hard to re-establish slavery under another name, using both violence and legislation.  Their efforts were crowned with the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 that declared by an 8-1 vote that “separate but equal” was the law of the land.  As we all know, they mean “separate and unequal.”

            April, 24, 1877, indicated the white American view that racism still prevailed, and that slavery could be re-established under a different name.  Three months later on July 16, 1877, a struggle began over wages and working conditions on the railroads, with President Hayes indicating that he favored the railroad barons over the workers.  On that date, railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, responded to a pay cut by shutting down the railroad yard of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  From there the strike spread to Baltimore, St. Louis, Pittsburgh , Chicago and other places, and an estimated 100,000 workers took part, including iron workers, miners and longshoremen.  The governors of West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Illinois called on newly named President Hayes to send in Federal troops, and he did.  Violence broke out in many places, and finally the railroad barons put down the strikes.

            Yet the workers and the American public had begun to see things just a bit differently – there might be a need for community and even for unions.  Just as Hurricane Harvey has reminded us all (especially those in Texas) of the need for community and government involvement in the struggle for social justice,  many people in the USA in the 1870’s and 1880’s began to think about the need for this social fabric to be sown.  The first Labor Day was celebrated on the first Tuesday of September in 1882 in New York City, and Oregon was the first state to establish Labor Day as a statewide holiday in 1887.  In 1894, Congress approved the first Monday in September as Labor Day to honor American workers and to note the continuing struggle that workers have to establish living wages and working conditions.  That struggle would lead to abolition of child labor, 40 hour work weeks, and a minimum wage, and on this day, we should give thanks for those who have witnessed and fought for these conditions.

            That struggle will continue because the power of capitalism is such that many of these workers’ rights are being eroded under another name, just as slavery was re-established under another name after 1877.   The “free market” mantra that has reared its ugly head again under the Presidency of Donald Trump is seeking to strip workers of their hard won rights over the last 140 years.  At the same time, we are undergoing a technological revolution that will bring robots to displace many workers.  Workers in America, and indeed around the world, will find themselves caught in this vice of free market and robotics, and very few visionaries seem to be rising up to help us find our way to justice and equity in these days. 

            The anger of displaced workers in Rust Belt states ironically helped lead to the election of Donald Trump as president.  Let us not forget also that all the white South except for Virginia voted for Trump also.  As we think about these things and a way forward to justice and equity, let us note the intersectionality between race and labor here.  Slavery and its successor neo-slavery was, after all, an economic system, and 140 years ago, we saw the connection in its primal form.  1877 re-established slavery, and workers’ rights were thrown back.  Nevertheless, the forces for justice persisted. While we have made significant progress, 140 years later, we stand at a crossroads again.   In many ways, the path forward is in our hands.