Reasons I’m Grateful for the Labor Movement
Labor Day Weekend often feels bittersweet to me, as I am a summer enthusiast through and through. Plus, two decades of being a student followed by being a teacher automatically trigger Back to School anxiety. A super-fun end-of-summer COVID infection has only compounded these anxieties.
To counter this, I am trying to focus on the true reason for this holiday. Labor Day honors the brave labor activists and union members who have made work safer and more humane throughout the centuries. So, as we head into our final beach days, let's count down my favorite things the Labor Movement has accomplished:
3. Allowed Me To Be A Child
I got my first non-babysitting job at 16 after accidentally racking up a $500 phone bill messaging through AOL Instant Messenger on my flip phone at 10 cents a message. (Name a more 2005 sentence. I’ll wait.)
Had I been 16 just 70 years earlier, I might have been in the workforce for seven years or more already. In 1910, over two million children under 15 worked. There are examples of kids working as young as 5 or 6.
The Supreme Court struck down numerous attempts to regulate or outlaw child labor. In the years following the Civil War, Southern states especially argued that this was another form of "Northern interference."
The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act was the first federal law regulating child labor upheld by the Supreme Court. It forbade most work for children under 14, although there were exceptions for agricultural jobs, family-owned businesses, and certain specific jobs such as delivering newspapers or "gathering evergreens and making evergreen wreaths." (Name a more 1938 sentence. I’ll wait.)
2. Let Me Get Paid
The first federal minimum wage was set at 25 cents in 1938 by that same Fair Labor Standards Act. Five years earlier, President Franklin Roosevelt said, "It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country."
And, as if foreseeing social media trolls who claim minimum wage is meant for teenagers flipping burgers rather than those supporting a family, FDR added, "By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of decent living."
As of 2022, a living wage in the United States was $25.02 per hour, or $104,077.70 per year for a family of four with two working adults. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009.
Established Weekends (like this one!)
In 1890, the average workweek for full-time manufacturing employees was 100 hours and 102 hours for building tradesmen. Starting in the 1830s, labor organizers began advocating for an 8-hour day and 40-hour workday. Over the better part of a century, unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks. The most famous is the May 1, 1886 strike which gave us the May Day holiday.
The idea behind this slogan is that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time.
While there’s been a slow erasure of the boundaries between work and home, we have the ideal of a work/life balance thanks to these brave labor activists.
Support my labor! (See what I did there?) If you haven't, consider following me, sharing this link, or signing up for my newsletter. And then, go enjoy what’s left of the holiday weekend!
