Friends,
I hope you had a good Labor Day weekend–time to honor what organized labor has meant for America and our people.
Some weeks ago, dozens of mayors met in Scranton, PA for a conference. On a tour of a closed anthracite coal mine, we were told that 30,000 men and boys died in the area’s mines over the 50 most active years – averaging almost two killed per day. Not to mention deaths from black lung disease.
Unions and organized labor confronted these and many related issues. They changed America. Protected child labor. Brought us workplace safety laws, eight-hour days, forty-hour weeks, and overtime pay. The weekend. Workers compensation and unemployment insurance and pensions. The middle class.
Unions made brutal, deadly, exploitative jobs into safe, middle-class jobs.
It’s encouraging that national support for unions is higher than it’s been for 60 years. Still, we have more to do: national paid family leave; a living minimum wage; universal health care. And anti-union politicians and corporations keep making it harder to organize effectively. Only 10% of all US workers and 6% of private-sector employees are unionized (compared to 35% in the 1950s). That compares to about 33% of public-sector employees.
In our city government, we work closely with three strong and active unions representing police, fire, and front-line city workers – a total of about 30% of our employees. A fourth group of 911-dispatch employees recently unionized. We negotiate multi-year labor contracts covering wages, retirements, and more. I meet regularly with union leaders to discuss issues.
Organized labor’s efforts and policies help inspire continued progress for all workers. Our city employees, for example, all now enjoy a new paid family leave pilot program as well as an education tuition benefit. We instituted a minimum wage of $15 for all city employees several years ago – now it’s at $17.75 an hour. We’ve increased matching money for retirement and health savings accounts. We’ve tripled our investment in employee training in recent years, now at least 1.5% of payroll expenses. We’re opening a new employee health clinic downtown soon, to provide convenient, inexpensive wellness visits, prescriptions, vaccinations and the like.
Labor continues to organize. Note the recent successful organizing campaign at a local Starbucks. Graduate students at IU continue their efforts to organize.
A labor professor visiting IU a few years ago at a conference Dawn hosted put it in a way I’ve never forgotten: “there are no inherently ‘good’ jobs. Manufacturing jobs weren’t always good jobs. Organized labor made them good jobs. We can do that for all our jobs if we choose.” That seems spot on. We could make every job one of dignity and decent pay and benefits. Organized labor shows the way.
Thank organized labor for forging the backbone of America, our middle class. Let’s keep working to make every job one of dignity and decent pay.
Democratically yours,
John Hamilton
P.S. – some quotes for the weekend:
“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.” - Abraham Lincoln
“Join the union, girls, and together say ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work.’” - Susan B. Anthony
“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” - Eugene V. Debs
“Think of the thousands who are killed every year and there is no redress for it. We will fight until the mines are made secure and human life valued more than props.” - Mother Jones
“Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.” - Grover Cleveland
“¡Sí se puede!” - Dolores Huerta