Topaz Partners

As I labor along doing my tech PR thing on the eve of the holiday weekend, I thought it made sense to remember what this Labor Day was all about.

Labor Day Lost

Beer and barbecues are the connotation of a modern American Labor Day – a day that marks the end of the summer, the beginning of school terms and football season, as well as the last day a fashion-conscious individual will wear white. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t have a clue as to why we have celebrated it as a federal holiday since 1894…

Pullman Strike

The Pullman Strike refers to a nation-wide conflict between labor unions and railroad workers that started in Pullman, Illinois in 1894 when approximately 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike in response to the 12 hour working day and the already unfair wages that had once again been reduced, subsequently bringing all traffic West of Chicago to a standstill. Needless to say, the company’s president George Pullman declined to negotiate or even talk with them. Many of the railroad workers were already members of the American Railway Union, which supported the Pullman Strike by launching a boycott in which union members refused to run trains containing Pullman cars. The strike effectively shut down production in the Pullman factories and led to a lockout while workers across the nation in over 20 different states refused to switch Pullman cars onto trains. Within four days, approximately 125,000 workers on twenty-nine railroads had quit work rather than handle Pullman cars (at its peak, the strike spanned across 27 states with about 250,000 workers on strike).

Cleveland’s Response

The railroad strikes paralyzed commerce in the United States, and since trains carried mail and many of the lines were under federal jurisdiction, President Grover Cleveland decided a federal solution was necessary. Cleveland dispatched a gang of U.S. Marshalls and 12,000 army troops on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail, ignored a federal injunction and represented a threat to public safety. The arrival of the military and subsequent deaths of workers led to further outbreaks of violence and during the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded.

Making Amends

Despite the fact that the newspapers were generally against the labor movement, Cleveland sensed the political unrest, feared further acts of violence and made it a top priority to reconcile with the labor forces. Labor Day, which had been celebrated since 1882 by worker’s unions in New York and other states on the first Monday of September, would now become an official, federal holiday. Legislation was rushed through Congress and passed unanimously on June 28, 1894, just six days after the end of the Pullman strike.

Always Remember

The next time you gather with your family and friends on the first Monday of September, sipping an ice cold drink and enjoying some food off the grill, take a moment to remember those who suffered and paid the ultimate price to make our lives better, to bring fair wages and decent working conditions to the men and women of the United States of America.

(Ironically, these incidents aren’t mentioned at all in the history of Labor Day section on the Department of Labor’s website: http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm)

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