The Real Work Behind Labor Day

(Opinion)—A day off to celebrate work might seem strange, but actually Labor Day is like most all-American holidays — a commemoration born of a struggle for a better life.

Think about the calendar: Memorial Day and MLK Day, Presidents Day and the Fourth of July, each associated in some way with tremendous strife for freedom, dignity and equal opportunity.

The story is similar with Labor Day. In 1894, Congress created the national holiday to honor the American labor movement, a struggle then defined by mortal suffering to achieve the basic right to bargain for fair working conditions. That year, about 40 people were killed during the Pullman strike, which followed the Homestead Massacre of 1892, the Morewood Massacre of 1891, the Thibodaux Massacre of 1887, on and on.

Here in Connecticut, this tragic history was brought into the present in June by Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski, who praised the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which leaves firefighters, teachers, and other public servants economically vulnerable. As Stefanowski happily noted about these workers’ public sector unions, ​“It takes them out right at the knees.” (See video.)

This is not the kind of attitude toward workers we need from a politician who seeks to represent millions of Connecticut working men and women. Just like the harmful ​“right-to-work” state laws — which deny workers the union advantage in states like Mississippi and Michigan — the Janus decision is built on bait-and-switch logic, if not Orwellian doublethink. The Court’s conservative majority argued that free speech rights are violated when public sector workers are required to help fund the unions whose benefits they enjoy. (Research shows that union members make about 20 percent more than non-union workers, plus greater benefits for their families). Of course, the result of Janus is that those unions stand to lose funding, and their benefits would disappear for all workers. The reasoning was so farfetched, Justice Elena Kagan wrote about the Court’s trend toward ​“weaponizing the First Amendment.”

We may not feel the belligerence like before because history has made club-wielding Pinkerton agents obsolete. But knee-bashing candidates and weaponized amendments show how serious the labor struggle still remains.

Some historical developments have been purely technological. Shipping container standardization, the digital/robotics revolution, and communications breakthroughs have all cut into unionized jobs, and not just in manufacturing (think self-check-out).

Other developments have been economic. A recent study by Harvard and Princeton professors showed that almost all of the 10 million new jobs created in the U.S between 2005 and 2015 were for independent contractors and workers at subcontracting companies. This overwhelming trend has allowed employers to shrug off their legal responsibilities to workers, and blown apart the idea of a single ​“union shop.”

Combating these setbacks demands new strategies. To tackle the subcontracting dilemma in the hypersegmented field of janitorial and other building service work, my union has undertaken industry-wide organizing. By bringing together multiple employers under a single ​“master contract,” we disarm the threat employers feel from cheaper competitors, while pooling resources to allow smaller employers to offer better benefits.

Organizing this way is hard, but it works. While union membership has plummeted to an 80-year low nationally, our Connecticut local 32BJ SEIU has grown by 80 percent since 2000. And 32BJ is not the only union to fight the workforce changes. Over the past year, teachers in red states from West Virginia to Arizona have marched and demanded better treatment from ​“right-to-work” legislatures, while teaching assistants at 16 private universities have held union elections for the first time. Elsewhere, fast food workers continued to spearhead a ​“Fight for $15” movement that has raised wages from Boston to Seattle through state and municipal legislation. All of this agitation helped unions actually increase their ranks by 262,000 new members in 2017, three-quarters of them under the age of 34.

But as some of these fights suggest — and as Bob Stefanowski graphically reminds us — the most brutal bouts these days aren’t directly with giant companies but with their political proxies. Whereas Congress at the dawn of the Progressive Era at least offered the olive branch of a national holiday, today’s reactionary politicians in state and federal government have declared metaphorical war.

In Connecticut, Stefanowski urged in those same ​“kneecapping” comments the introduction of ​“right-to-work” laws in Connecticut and the destruction of the SEBAC agreement that has helped stabilize our state’s fiscal future. Already we live in the second most economically divided state in the nation. Historically, this divide has been smallest when labor union membership has been highest. The last thing we need is to elect politicians who have, in effect, pledged themselves to a cause that can only increase our divisions.

In a way, it’s healthy that the turbulent origins of Labor Day and other national holidays have receded into the past, and the holidays have come to mostly mark the changing seasons. No doubt that’s in part because much has been achieved through these struggles. But when the day-off ends, work continues, and the fight for its betterment goes on.

Juan Hernandez is Vice-President of 32BJ SEIU Connecticut.