Labor Day 2010

Happy Labor Day--the one day of the year set aside to honor America's workers.

More than 70 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "If I were a worker in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union."

At the AFL-CIO's August Executive Council meeting, President Barack Obama referenced FDR's statement and took it further:

I think that's true for workers generally. I think if I was a coal miner, I'd want a union representing me to make sure that I was safe and you did not have some of the tragedies that we've been seeing in the coal industry. If I was a teacher, I'd want a union to make sure that the teachers' perspective was represented as we think about shaping an education system for our future.

That statement is a Labor Day treasure, and I want you to have the brief video that captures it.

Watch the video. *Click here to play* [ http://www.youtube.com/user/AFLCIONow#p/a/u/2/JkxYlvFmj9o

I "did" work in a coal mine--so I know firsthand how right President Obama is. In 1890, the mineworkers who came together in Columbus, Ohio, to form their union were black and white, they spoke more than a dozen native languages. They had dirty, dangerous jobs. Bosses cheated them on paychecks, charged them for the tools they used and placed less value on their lives than on the lives of the mules hauling the coal.

But when they joined together as workers who shared a common fate, they began to build a better life. And when they built a better life for themselves, they helped build a better life for everyone in America. When they sent their children to college, America got a better education.

That's what a union meant 100 years ago, 70 years ago, 30 years ago. And it's what a union means today.

Working people coming together to build a better life. To build a middle class. To build opportunity for the next generation. To foster social and economic justice at work and in our society. To strengthen democracy and spread prosperity throughout America.

Labor Day Picnic

 LABOR DAY WORKING FAMILIES PICNIC 

Monday, September 6, 2010 

This year the Sacramento Central Labor Council will be celebrating its 113th year of representing working families by having a traditional 

Labor Day Picnic at: 

William Land Park 

Village Green Area 

Off of Freeport Blvd. and 

Sutterville Road 

11:00-3:00PM 

This 

Labor Day : Richard Trumka

Labor Day, Bill Moyers

BILL MOYERS: In past decades, the voices of the labor movement swelled the Democratic chorus. Then, Democratic presidential candidates officially opened their campaigns in the city that was the symbolic heart of union country - Detroit, then the engine of the booming auto industry. Standing in Cadillac Square on Labor Day was a Democrat's way of saying our hearts are one.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I have come here today on a day that belongs to the working men and women of America...
BILL MOYERS: John Kennedy kicked of his campaign for president in Cadillac Square in 1960, praising unions that fought for education, for better health care, even for family farms. Kennedy declared that as unions go, so goes America.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: We share a common, deep-seated belief in the workings of free collective bargaining and in the growth of free, responsible unions, and, unlike our opponents, we don't just believe that on Labor Day.
BILL MOYERS: These were the golden years for organized labor. Union bargaining power helped lift other worker's boats - and the yachts of their employers - in a rising tide of prosperity that moved millions of families into the middle class.
But that seems now another age, another world. Union membership has plummeted from Kennedy's day - down to less than 8% of the private sector workforce. Millions of union jobs have been lost to cheap labor abroad, and to consumers who demand cheaper prices. Corporations have warred relentlessly on unions, in league with a conservative movement that regards business as its own ATM machine. Collusion between government and corporations in the global economy has left workers to fend for themselves. The results have been disastrous.
Job security - slashed. Pensions - slashed. Healthcare benefits - slashed. In a golden age of profit-taking and extravagant wealth for CEOs, compensation for employees, as a share of the total economy, has reached a new low.
And even with the Democratic party, labor's place at the table can not be taken for granted. President Bill Clinton after all championed NAFTA, the trade deal that sent manufacturing jobs overseas. Barack Obama has wavered on his opposition to reopening NAFTA. Democrats in Congress are being inundated with money from corporations. And in Denver this week, those same corporations were hosting lavish parties - captured here by ABC News' Investigative Unit shelling out millions to wine and dine Democratic officials.
BRIAN ROSS: "Lobbyists gone wild!"
BILL MOYERS: A house divided can hardly be called the home of working people.
So for all the rhetoric and cheer in Denver, workers have little to celebrate this Labor Day -- they've been falling farther behind for years now. But across the country, there are growing signs of defiance:
You see it as California nurses pushed for universal health care... you see it as workers march in Los Angeles for a living wage...you see it in immigrants fighting back against a system that hires them to pick and prepare our food, yet pays them pitiful wages and treats them as criminals.
It just might be that that same spirit of anger roused by injustice...that old and enduring hunger of working men and women for a better deal...it just might be the spark that catches fire, lighting the way once again for politicians returning to Cadillac Square on Labor Day.
That's it for the JOURNAL. We'll see you again next week. I'm Bill Moyers.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08292008/transcript4.html
Watch the Bill Moyers Journal this week