The first Monday of September is a national U.S. holiday called Labor Day. Labor Day is not like many other U.S. holidays. It is a celebration without specific traditions, like family dinners or prayers. For most people, Labor Day just marks the last weekend of summer and the start of a new school year. This is not what the people who started the holiday had in mind, more than 100 years ago. They wanted it to be a special day that would bring workers together. Their goal was also to give these workers time off work. History of Labor Day The first Labor Day holiday was in 1882 in New York City. It was led by one of the city's unions. A union is an organized group of workers who have come together to protect their rights. Unions might ask the …show more content…
recognized Labor Day as a holiday. By 1894, President Grover Cleveland made Labor Day a national holiday. However, it is up to each state to declare its own holidays. Just because there is a national holiday does not mean employers have to give their workers the day off. For example, many stores stay open on Labor Day. Even some government services don't take the day off, like police, public transportation and national parks. Controversy: Militants and founders Today most people do not think of Labor Day as a controversial holiday. They did 100 years ago. Unions did not agree on how workers should behave on this day, which was made to honor them. Some wanted workers to go on marches and protests. Other union members wanted Labor Day to have parades and picnics. In the U.S., this is what people chose to do. No one really knows who started the idea of a Labor Day holiday. It will likely never be known who actually came up with it. Have we lost the spirit of Labor Day? Labor Day began in the 1800s as a way to go against long working hours and no time off. These problems seem to be coming back today. Many different types of workers are constantly connected to work. They work even when they are away from their jobs, often at nights, on weekends and on vacations,
The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired” (History.com staff 2009)
“Industrial unions dominated the landscape of the late nineteen century U.S. labor movement.” They gathered all level workers together without discrimination of gender, race, or nationality. They declared the eight-hour workday for the first time when normal work time should be 12. Low wage of workers caused the “Great Strike of 1877”, which began with railroad workers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. After the “Great Strike”, industrial union started to
They concentrated on higher wages, shorter hours, and personal issues of workers. The American Federation of Labor’s main weapon was walkouts and boycotts to get industries to succeed to better conditions and higher wages. By the early 1900’s, its membership was up to ½ million workers. Through the years since The Great Depression, labor unions were responsible for several benefits for employees. Workers have safer conditions, higher paying jobs to choose from, and better benefits negotiated for them by their collective bargaining unit.
The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national strike in American history and it came about during a period of unrest with labor unions and controversy regarding the role of government in business.5 The strike officially started when employees organized and went to their supervisors to ask for a lowered rent and were refused.5 The strike had many different causes. For example, workers wanted higher wages and fewer working hours, but the companies would not give it to them; and the workers wanted better, more affordable living quarters, but the companies would not offer that to them either. These different causes created an interesting and controversial end to the Pullman strike. Because of this, questions were raised about the strike that are still important today. Was striking a proper means of getting what the workers wanted? Were there better means of petitioning their grievances? Was government intervention constitutional? All these questions were raised by the Pullman Strike.
Union affiliation was first seen in the 1600’s when the roots of the United States were just being planted with skilled trade groups such as artisans, laborers, goldsmiths and printers. Over the next two hundred years, unions developed their desires for higher wages through the use of strikes and protests. The nation’s progress spurred the need for more labor and so began the Industrial Revolution. During the Revolution, many union members began to witness the power that employers had and as a result decided to make use of the concept of power in numbers. The National Labor Union formed in 1866 and worked to persuade congress to set a Federal eight-hour workday, which applied to government employees (Miller). Many large unions formed following in the NLU’s footsteps and uni...
Laborers under newly industrialized countries suffered under terrible circumstances. Many worked long hours and were severely underpaid for such work. In the film, China Blue, the workday begins at seven in the morning and ends around 2 a.m., and often runs long when faced with a shipping deadline. This makes the average workday
As part of the Square Deal to control corporations, a series of new measures and policies were created and approved to ensure and protect laborer rights on a federal level. Prior to Roosevelt, the federal government barely supported labor— rather it used injunctions and military actions against labor union strikes, as demonstrated by the railroad strikes of 1877 and the Pullman Strike of 1894. However, during his presidency, Roosevelt wanted a compromise between workers and corporations, and was quick to eschew the use of federal troops, although not as quick to recognize unions. His solution to strikes, influenced partly by the Anthracite coal strike of 1902 and other labor unrests, was the establishment of the “Square Deal” that met the demands of ...
To begin, we need to look towards the first recorded instance of a labor union in the United States, a union known as the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (http://www.lovkoandking.com/federal-society-of-journeymen-cordwainers---commonwealth-v-pullis.html). In 1794, a group of cordwainers, shoemakers, in Philadelphia banded together to form the United States’ first form of organized labor union through a series of strikes....
In the 1914 Herney Ford changed workdays to 8 hours on his assembly line and double workers pay. Ford found his profits had doubled so it had worked out for the company and the workers. This is the time when the 8 hours per day came into play for workers.
The timing was just right for the maritime workers to strike. The grips of the Great Depression fueled laborers to maintain and improve their quality of life and security for their families. Congresses investigation into the 1934 San Francisco Strike concluded that “the aspirations of labor which led to the strike were directed from the change in public opinion expressed in the National Industrial Recovery Act. The potentialities of a protected right to bargain collectively were quickly perceived by waterfront workers.”[1] The shift in public opinion came from the need for the government to be more socially responsible to insure survival of the nation during the depression. The depression was as devastating as it was due to the lack of government involvement, a welfare state was needed. According to the Congressional investigation, “The first notice that forceful demands would be made by the longshoremen appeared in December [1933] when the local voted on the question of participating in a coast-wide strike. Lee J. Holman, then president of the local, stated the longshoremen would demand a 6-day, 30-hour week at a minimum rate of $1 per hour.”[2] Such demands were modest when considering the necessity of waterfront workers to a maritime based economy. This was at a time when the Bay and Golden Gate bridges were still under construction. Before the bridges, overland travel in the San Francisco Bay Area was longer, slower, and couldn’t carry as heavy loads as sailing across the bay.
These primitive unions or guilds of carpenters, cordwainers, and cobblers made their appearance, often temporary, in cities around the east coast of colonial America. These groups of workers are a far cry from what unions are today. They mainly focused on friendship and trust between the workers and management. The first recorded form of a union was a group called the "Friendly Society of Cotton Spinners, who in 1775 instructed its members not to work below the usual price" (Smith). 2 As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence "in the pursuit of happiness" through higher wages and shorter work hours, printers were the first to go on strike, in New York in 1794; carpenters in Philadelphia in 1797, and cordwainers in 1799.
... Sunday often come across people that request Sundays off or a certain day of the week off in order to participate in a religious activity. They are required to work with the employee’s schedule to allow them to go to church or attend whatever ceremony they believe in. (Cross & Miller, 2012, p. 510)
... day marks the day of Jesus’ resurrection where he came back to life and went to heaven.
Jury duty is another benefit where public employees are allotted time to attend court related services without charge to any of the leave banks. This time off is consider Authorized Absence (AA) and the organization absorbs the employees pay for the time off. Other ancillary benefits include time off for voting when schedules conflict with voting hours. Inclement weather allows for delays in start time with no charge to any of the leave banks.
Long working hours continue to be one of the largest health concerns in the world. Currently, the world population has become so busy due to the pressure from harsh economic conditions. People are therefore spending long working hours in the workplace, which is an aspect that has negative impact on their health conditions. Statistics from Working Condition Survey indicates that approximately 30% of workers residing in European Union believe that their health is at risk due to the hours they spent in the workplace (Gurung, 2010:16)