Sunday, September 6th, 2020
This weekend the smell of BBQ’s, melting S’mores and the sound of socially distant laughter will be seen and heard throughout the valley.
Most people celebrate Labor Day as the end of the summer season. In the northeast, that is not really something to celebrate because that can only mean one thing…winter is coming. But Labor Day actually has a much more significant, and sometimes dark, start.
In the 18th Century, the Industrial Revolution saw workers toiling 12 hours a day – seven days a week and that was barely enough for them to eke out a living. Children, as young as 5 or 6, were working alongside their adult counterparts in mines and factories, earning pennies as compared to the older workers. All workers endured unsanitary conditions, unsafe working environments, lack of access to fresh air and breaks, especially immigrants and the very poor. Life was hard.
As a result, Labor Unions gained a voice in the late 1800’s and began to organize workers. They started organizing strikes and rallies to shine the light on these unsafe conditions and to negotiate hours and pay for the American workers. On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City and that became the first “Labor-Day Parade”. Some of these events unfortunately became violent and led to deaths of workers and police, as happened during the Haymaker Riot of 1886 in Chicago and in May of 1894, employees for the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago went on strike to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives. On June 26, the American Railroad Union, called for a boycott of all Pullman Railway cars and railroad traffic nationwide was effected. The federal government sent troops to Chicago to break the strike which led to waves of riots that resulted in more than a dozen workers deaths.
In an effort to repair the relationship between the government and American workers, Congress passed an act to make Labor Day a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and territories. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law on June 28, 1894.
This COVID Labor Day
I think this weekend we need to take a moment to celebrate and honor a very special group within the American labor pool – the Essential Workers.
Our friends, family and neighbors, who during the height of the pandemic, not just here in New York, but throughout the country, left the presumed safety of their home and went to work. Many of these essential workers had been overlooked before, they were the supermarket workers that kept food on the shelves, they were the janitors in medical facilities who worked tirelessly to make sure that all cleaning protocols were met to stave off the spread of COVID. They were the workers in not-for-profit entities that were providing services to our most needy including food and shelter. The workers in the local food pantries, whose stocks were stripped bare in no time. They were the cooks in restaurants, who were providing take-out and delivery services that had never done that before. The educators who were learning a completely new way to teach children. They were the utility services who had to keep the power and the lights on and the internet service flowing while they were being faced with the highest demand they had ever had. And, let us not forget the healthcare workers, police officers, and firefighters, who all provided services during these extraordinary times while confronting the deadly impacts of the COVID-19 virus.
But there was also YOU, you as an individual. You may have done grocery shopping for your elderly neighbor so they didn’t have to go to the store, you may have volunteered your time at a food pantry to assist in feeding your neighbors, and you may have gone out and purchased food and donated it to the food pantry. You may have watched your neighbor’s children for them as they need to go to work at the hospital. There were countless ways that YOU were an essential worker for someone.
We as a community, we were all essential “workers” during this time in many different ways.
So I want to say thank you to all of YOU who were fighting this battle, not just for us but with us.
If there was ever a time to celebrate the American Worker and their accomplishments it is today.
