May Day! May Day!

[jawnbc]

Traditionally the 1st of May is celebrated as Labour/Worker Day. The origins of this day, particularly with respect to its ties to Marxist/Marxian ideologies led the US and Canada to move their Labour Day to September. To some extent this has successfully differentiated between a day that celebrates working and a day that underlines the importance of workers' rights movements.

I think, however, that many who celebrate the former aren't fully cognizant of the incredibly powerful impact workers' rights movements have had on the world. Almost entirely for the better.

In feudal times, a very narrow strata of society owned private property. Most people were tenanted labourers: they worked on the land of their landlord, were charged a value for their residence (often squalid), and eaked out a subsistence living. With the advent of modernity came both the service sector and industrialization. Enterprises small and large required labour and capital. Arguably it was the labour that largely generated the capital. Profitability was substantively driven by keeping costs--labour mostly, and materials somewhat--low. And therefore keeping labourers paid as little as possible.

Common ways to do this included firing without cause (to keep others on their toes), overwork people to illness, injury or death, and to withhold earned wages at will. And these sorts of exploitations--treating workers as objects rather than as people--that led to the worker's rights movements. Make no mistake about it, these were adversarial relationships: initially owners and workers, but eventually the advent of a managerial class meant workers against owners and managers.

Few of us lived in a time when people routinely died working in factories--often in horrific industrial accidents. Or were maimed. When women workers were routinely sexually assaulted in the workplace. When employers hired thugs to beat up or kill those who dared seek fairness in the workplace. Initially trade unionists weren't arguing about the terms of collective agreements: they were arguing about staying well, staying alive, having a chance to raise families in security, economic and social. In many smaller towns, enterprises operated as employer, landlord, shopkeep, and schoolmaster. To lose a job was to lose...everything.

We live in a different world now--at least in Canada and the US. But the battles fought 100 years ago here are being waged today in places like Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. We might have (legitimate) concerns about buying "sweat shop" merchandise; trade unionists in those jurisdictions are happy we do--if we can help them leverage working conditions that in local terms are fair. They want living wages, not Canadian wages. They want to be paid for their work. They want to be able to engage with their peers, their employers and their governments in a discourse about how the benefits of industrialization can be a benefit to society--not a handful of entrepreneurs.

So Happy May Day! And here's a few things we should at the very least acknowledge as legacies of those commie pinko Bolsheviks from the past:

The weekend
Minimum wage
Anti-child-labour laws
Collective agreements
Occupational health and safety standards
Employer-paid benefits
Pensions
Family leave/maternity leave
Lunchtime
Adult basic education/literacy programmes
Human rights codes

All of these came directly from the work of trade unionists. Many others, like public education, are also substantially derived from their work. Rather than take these things for granted I'd like to say thank you to the women and men who fought these battles, so all of us might benefit from the richesse that is modernity.

Because if we don't cherish it, and aren't cognizant of its origins, it's suprisingly easy for it to slip away...

Comments

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

My Mom has a bumpersticker that says, "The Labor Movement: the folks who brought you the weekend."

I celebrated today by telling wealthy people they couldn't have green salad and over-priced bread and that life is filled with disappointments. I support my fellow workers and then I left early. Because I had my fill.

[jawnbc]

I love that bumpersticker. Were I port such things (or have a bumper) that would be top of my list. Right after "if you're anti-abortion, don't have one"

I celebrated by taking a colleague to farewell lunch. *burp* The boss paid...

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

*snorts*
What did you eat?

[jawnbc]

The gays always wanna know about the sex. The foodies the menu...

Vietnamese/Japanese. I had veggie spring roll and shrimp salad roll on rice vermicelli (V.). One colleague had the same, except on rice; the other had a sushi/chicken teriyaki obento.

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

Well the sex would be entertaining to but I am more familiar with the food.

Sounds rather good. I had yogurt and a bagel. Because I am exciting like that.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

It's my own little pinko corner of the world, but I am freaked out at how ... distressed ABE and adult literacy are becoming. They are unfashionable and unfunded, but needed as much as ever. It makes me want to start my own literacy program.

[jawnbc]

Here in BC there's a range of ABE programmes, but little beyond that. So folks who need to get their year 12s have choices, but then are expected to go into major student loan debt to complete "customer service" or "reservations agent" or "administrative clerk" certificates at our local tech.

*fumes*

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking even that level ... just basic basic, like writing your name, using the ATM, reading the signs on the bus.

[jawnbc]

yeah I know. But a way to leverage BC funding is to position an ABE programme as part of a suite of "year 12 completion". Or as ABE for new Canadians, focussing on job searches.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

...and that is precisely my irritation. Why does everything have to be couched in terms of feeding the corporate meatgrinder? What about just teaching people to read so they can participate better in society?

[jawnbc]

because they might not vote Liberal?

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

The Tories (specifically, Harris) killed ABE in Ontario.

[jawnbc]

I don't think the ideological differences between the two are historically pronounced.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Um, maybe not federally? but there is a long history of decidedly rightist Tory governments in Ontario.

[jawnbc]

Well here in BC the Liberals are the Tories. They've never been Liberal. But if you go earlier than 30 years ago, weren't the Ontario Tories and Liberals both right-of centre?

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Let's see that would be mid 70s? Hmm I don't know much about the Ontario Liberals of that era.

[jawnbc]

Generally, with an inconsistent knowledge to be honest, you can trace the Liberals shift towards the centre in each province as the NDP picked up a groundswell of support.

Except in BC where the Liberals weren't anything provincially (or much federally) until the mid 90s. Most of the current "safe" federal Liberal seats out here were Tories until Chrétien came along...with Preston Manning.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Anyway my point was that Harris, who was a very right-wing premier, was the one who defunded or cut back a lot of the ABE in Ontario that had been put together since the 70s.

[ink-ling.livejournal.com]

Literacy is one of the most crucial issues I can think of right now, in terms of the long-term. It seems that, behind the writ-large motions in favor of the corporate and wealthy, there is also an almost concerted (well, not accidental) effort to slowly erode the cornerstones of the individual's ability to participate in democracy.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

Something I've never understood is why there have not been more labor shortages, with the result of laborers enjoying power without the need to organize. The libertarian argument about labor is that you're always free to go somewhere else to work, so that to some degree employers are in competition with each other for workers, yet that rarely seems to work out in practice.

Without any familiarity with the workings of capitalism, one might suppose that laborers would develop an entrepreneurial bent, and the capitalist / factory owner class would be the one where opportunities were limited by excess competition. But almost always, there is a surplus of labor that results in low pay, and systematic exclusion from the hard to reach roles of ownership and authority.

I suppose this might have something to do with economies of scale causing large operations to push smaller ones out of existence, thus forcing small scale owners back into the role of laborers.

But that's just a guess. I've never seen a systematic explanation of this particular failure of capitalism, much less how it might be rectified. Workers rights movements have offered a solution, but I worry that it's a weak one; a deeper, more permanent structural solution that gave laborers inherent, permanent power as individuals would surely be more desirable.

[jawnbc]

The diversification of economies means that social strata are less narrowly defined--particularly if one uses income/wealth as a measure of stratum (which I think is problematic). Our economies here have diversified to an extent that the category of unskilled worker has almost entirely disappeared. It's been a couple of generations since someone with a year 12 could expect to find a long-term job that paid a wage upon which a small family could be raised.

Professional/skilled work has exploded, and there's where you see some notion of meritocratic competition happening--but among workers much more than employers. One edge of this has been the advent of the "consultant" which allows companies to convert labour into an object--avoiding issues like payroll taxes, benefits, and working conditions. Often consultants have to compete towards low-balling, since there is inevitably a bright 22 year old willing to be paid $25/hour for a $100/hour work, to "get their foot in the door." Which is really being repeatedly slammed on their foot.

The few alternatives posed to liberal meritocratic capitalism have failed--as much in human terms and economic. Part of the seduction of capitalism is the eroticism of the ideals of fairness and personal agency. Despite evidence that there's no shortage of scumbags willing to pervert these ideals to others' detrmiments.

The only alternative is to wedge the current system away from exploitation.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

A further comment: I don't remember the details, but my impression is that employer-paid benefits were introduced as a way of recruiting workers after WWII, during one of those rare labor shortages when mandated salary caps made it hard to hire people. So I'm not sure if it belongs on this list...

[jawnbc]

I dunno. But there's no doubt that they're an integral part of collective agreement negotations these days.

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!

[jawnbc]

Yeah baby!

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Not sure but I think NZ was the first country to embed the 8 hour day in legislation, and I think our Labour day is in October as the weather in may is usually so wet.

I like your main posting so much I am going to use it in a tutorial on Labour, if you don't mind that is (credited of course)

[jawnbc]

Go NZ! Go NZ!

Really? I'm flattered...proof it for me then, eh? ;)

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Will do - it's nice and pithy, should lead to some good discussion and as so many other have noted, this kind of history gets lost these days.

Below is the history of the 8 hour day here:

The honour of introducing the eight-hour day in New Zealand is traditionally assigned to Samuel Duncan Parnell. A London carpenter, Parnell, on his arrival at Petone in 1840, insisted on working no longer than eight hours when erecting a store for the merchant George Hunter. In later years other claimants have come forward to the title of founder of the eight-hour system, but Parnell's claim remains the best. The idea of reducing the hours of work was in the air in 1840. It was discussed on the emigrant ships on the voyage out, and was carried into practice on arrival. Carpenters were in the forefront of the movement; a meeting of carpenters outside German Brown's (Barrett's) Hotel, Wellington, in October 1840, is said to have pledged itself “to maintain the eight-hour working day, and that anyone offending should be ducked into the harbour”. In the Otago settlement the sequence of events was similar. A reduction of working hours, which had been agreed to on the emigrant ships, was carried out on arrival. In January 1849 Captain Cargill, the resident agent of the New Zealand Company, made an attempt to revert to “the good old Scotch rule” of working 10 hours a day, but he was unable to overcome the resistance of the working people who found a leader in the painter, Samuel Shaw. Canterbury is said to have enjoyed the eight-hour day from the beginnings of organised European settlement. In Auckland, a Chartist painter, William Griffin, led an agitation among the building trades in 1857, which achieved the adoption of the eight-hour working day on 1 September of that year.

While New Zealand was thus the first country in the world to adopt the eight-hour day, the custom was confined to tradesmen and labourers and lacked legislative sanction. From 1882 onwards, efforts were made to legalise the eight-hour day. Bills were submitted to Parliament and annual demonstrations were held in the main centres. Labour Day, which commemorates the introduction of the eight-hour day, became a public holiday in 1899 (the original date, the second Wednesday in October, was changed in 1910 to the fourth Monday of that month) but the many Eight-hour Bills which were submitted in the 1880s and 1890s failed to gain parliamentary approval. Other enactments, however, have made the eight-hour day all but universal in New Zealand.

by Herbert Otto Roth, B.A., DIP.N.Z.L.S., Deputy Librarian, University of Auckland.

[ink-ling.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for reminding us of this! I'm afraid this kind of history has been butchered more than most any ... .

[jawnbc]

agreed.

[hickbear.livejournal.com]

Initially trade unionists weren't arguing about the terms of collective agreements: they were arguing about staying well, staying alive, having a chance to raise families in security, economic and social. In many smaller towns, enterprises operated as employer, landlord, shopkeep, and schoolmaster. To lose a job was to lose...everything.

My late grandfather was a coal miner in such a small, little, teensy-tiny gnat's-ass of a town in southern West Virginia. I can remember, quite well, *the* school, The Company Store, etc., from visits when I was young. One of my great-uncles was killed in one of the largest mine disasters in USAn history (January 10, 1940, Bartley, WV), so I was raised to believe that The Holy Trinity was Jesus, FDR, and John L. Lewis.

You ain't kidding that to lose a job was to lose literally everything. Now that all of the mines have closed, unemployment there is so bad that the county has begged for -- and received -- not only a state prison, but a federal prison as well.

In fact, said state prison occupies the grounds and buildings that originally made up the hospital where my mother was born.

(BTW, I found you via the Lovely and Talented dakoopst. Hope you don't mind that I dropped by for a ramble or three...)

[jawnbc]

Drive-by rambles are great...when we're on the same side. ;)

Thanks for popping in!

[holden-wake.livejournal.com]

Happy May Day brothers and sisters! Solidarity forever, fo realz.

[jawnbc]

Workers People of the world! Unite!

[bear-left.livejournal.com]

Thanks for a terrific post. Teaching privileged American students, there's no question that they have a far harder time grasping a different economic order than race, gender, or even sexual orientation. The idea that it could be any other way (other than an even *more* neo-liberal corporate hell) is beyond their imagination.

And now I have Billy Bragg's "There is Power in a Union" in my head...

[jawnbc]

Try to hunt down "Legal/Illegal" somewheres...wait, I'll post it.

[cennetig.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this. On one level its so simple and so obviously a piece of our history that every American should know. But most don't.

I have worked for a unionized airline and I am now working for a nonunionized one where the topic is a hot discussion. I see advantages and a few disadvantages but a lot of people seem to simply be infected with a meme that unions = bad. My response to them is usually a poorly put together historical perspective. Thanks for writing a more tidy perspective, I won't be printing it off or anything but Im sure some of it will come out of my mouth.

[jawnbc]

Glad it was of some value.