On this day in Labor History the year was 2012.
A few thousand artists, activists, teachers and union members lined Broadway in New York City.
Each held a pink placard, representing a “pink slip.” As New Yorkers bustled by on their way to work, the protesters stood with their signs from 8:14 in the morning until 8:28.
The organizers planned the fourteen minute protest to bring attention to then fourteen million workers who were unemployed in the United States.
The line stretched for nearly three miles. The participants also passed out pink flyers to passersby, emblazoned with the message “the next pink slip might be yours.”
As the country slowly recovered from the deep recession of 2008, that March’s national unemployment still topped 8 percent of the work force.
The protest organizers chose to hold their event on “Super Tuesday,” the day when ten states held primaries to choose presidential candidates.
The protesters asked the presidential candidates, congress and corporations to address the crisis of unemployment.
One of the protest organizers explained the visual imagery of the event. “If all 14 million jobless Americans formed a single unemployment line, it would stretch unbroken around the borders of our entire country, from Portland, Maine to Seattle Washington to San Lucas, California, to Miami, Florida and back to Portland.”
In the years that followed, the rate of unemployment improved slowly. In January, of 2015 the US still faced 5.7 percent unemployment.
Yet millions of Americans are still are without work or are underemployed, or unable to get enough work hours to support their families.
Labor History in 2:00 brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and The Rick Smith Show