Labor Day a time for workers to show solidarity

While the origins of the Labor Day holiday cannot be traced to a single event, Rhode Island is one of a few states laying claim to starting it. Rhode Island hosted its first labor celebration on August 23, 1882, even though the state wouldn’t celebrate its first official Labor Day for another eleven years. Then, 10,000 workers marched through the streets of Providence with families and friends cheering them on, and then were ferried to Rocky Point for speeches from local and national labor leaders and a traditional clambake dinner.

Labor Day, then and now, is a time for workers to celebrate our work and to display our solidarity. This year, like in years past, the labor movement will gather in Moshassuck Cemetery in Central Falls to remember the union workers who were killed by security forces during the 1934 Saylesville Massacre. For the labor movement, this weekend is much more than a quiet end to the summer. It is about honoring the dead and fighting for the living. Now, even though the COVID-19 pandemic created hardships for all of us, it has also reminded us why we celebrate workers in the first place.

How many times did we hear the term ‘Essential Workers’ this last year and a half? Healthcare workers and first responders, of course, but also store clerks and truck drivers. Countless workers were deemed essential, including state and municipal workers, teachers and education support professionals, food and agricultural workers, transportation, warehouse, and delivery workers, and critical manufacturing workers. They worked long hours in hazardous conditions for the good of us all. Some of our lowest paid workers were deemed as “essential” and even “frontline” workers.

There were moments captured in the news media of citizens applauding and publicly celebrating our essential workers – and how amazing that we now recognize them as essential.

But now, these same workers are fighting for their basic rights: a living wage, safe working conditions and the right to organize and join a union. As a state, we must ensure, especially now, that powerful employers do not treat these heroes as zeroes.

Throughout this crisis, the Rhode Island AFLCIO and our affiliated unions fought alongside these workers, trying to protect them from unsafe working conditions and working to pass legislation like the Nursing Home Staffing and Quality Care Act. We rallied for civil rights and for the recognition that Black Lives Matter in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. And we continue to push for federal legislation like the PROAct, giving workers a stronger voice on the job.

This year Rhode Island became the ninth state in the country to put workers on a pathway to a $15 minimum wage. We applaud the General Assembly for passing this legislation and Governor McKee for signing it into law. But many challenges still lay ahead for Rhode Island’s working people. Whether the discussion concerns consolidation within the healthcare industry, deciding how to spend federal dollars on infrastructure, how to improve public education, how to protect workers from unscrupulous employers who engage in wagetheft, or how to ensure Rhode Island meets the goal of a net-zero emission economy as envisioned by the Act on Climate, the voice of working people needs to be heard loud and clear.

We are all eager to put this crisis behind us. We are all trying to find our new normal, but in our eagerness to move forward, we should not forget the workers who helped us survive.