Before there were Labor Day barbecues and Labor Day sales, there was Labor–workers in the 19th century pushing for an eight-hour day and safe conditions as the U.S. economy was transforming itself from one of small enterprises to one dominated by industrial corporations.
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In a recent LAWCHA post, Conor Casey, of the Labor Archives of Washington at the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections, properly cheered students who won a prize at National History Day using documentary footage about the 1934 West Coast Waterfront strike—and appropriately boasted how the archives had supported them.
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As part of our effort to make workers history public in the Baltimore area, we had a state historical marker erected in memory and honor of the Sparrows Point steel mill, once the largest mill in the world and now — as a symbol of post-industrial America — a 3,100-acre wasteland.
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As the president of the US announces new historical monuments, ranging from Harriet Tubman to 240,000 acres of land in New Mexico, it is a moment for each of us to remember how workers history is ignored and how we need to stop being academics and become organizers to promote it.
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As LAWCHA members know, contemporary unionism is almost invisible—union members usually don’t show T-shirts or bumper stickers and certainly not yard signs proclaiming “Proud Union Family.” Union history is equally uncelebrated so each of us needs to promote public displays of the movement’s history.
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