I got this earlier in the weekend, but while enjoying my day off with a jog wearing my Teamsters T-Shirt from Yearly Kos 2007, I thought about it again:
Labor Day has special meaning to my family as we celebrate and recognize the achievements and progress of working families in this country. The labor movement helped my parents make investments in me as a child that provided a foundation for future successes. In fact, those investments made it possible for me to be the first person in my family to go to and graduate from college. Stories like this are common in working families throughout the country, and Labor Day is an important time to recognize those stories and the achievements of working families.
Feel free to tell your story in comments.
Remember folks – to Republican’ts this is exactly what’s wrong with Labor. The celebration of Labor. And … the celebration of the value of labor.
during my time in Detroit, that bastion of unionism, even city libraries were organized — and, in my library, even managers were part of a union — just not the same union that represented their staff members. Hard to explain why, but library managers were represented by the UAW. Different levels of staff were represented by six different unions — as a manager it was a big job to keep the details of all the relevant contracts straight. The unions, though, were the reason that the librarians and clerical staff in my library had better salaries and benefits than other libraries in the area (academic and municipal) and one reason that library jobs were avidly sought after.
Years earlier, in my first professional job as a rare book librarian in an academic library where librarians had faculty status, I was eligible to join the AFT which was organizing faculty at the University. With union help we worked on library salary equity issues and pushed a drive for a 10 month work year — which other faculty enjoyed. It was a good introduction to what can unions do.
Way to go Clint!! Labor day is about families and the struggles it took to get where we are. Zweifel gets it!!