What is Labor Day? It’s the day America celebrates people who work for a living by giving them a day off — but not on the day the rest of the world celebrates.
It’s the day the newspapers and the TV news shows run stories and editorials about working people and unions — so they don’t have to run them the rest of the year. It’s the day they report on labor struggles — that seldom make the front page the rest of the year, if they get mentioned at all.
It’s the day when history is trotted out — the history they don’t teach in schools. Ever hear of Blair Mountain? The NY Times has a write up of what was one of the more violent labor battles in our history.
...In late August 1921, thousands of rifle-bearing coal miners marched to this thickly wooded ridge in southern West Virginia, a campaign that was ignited by the daylight assassinations of union sympathizers but had been building for years in the oppressive despair of the coal fields. The miners’ army was met at Blair Mountain by thousands of men who volunteered to fight with the Logan County sheriff, who was in the pay of the coal companies. Over 12 miles and five days, the sheriff’s men fought the miners, strafing the hillsides with machine-gun fire and dropping homemade bombs from planes. There were at least 16 confirmed deaths in the battle, though no one knows exactly how many were killed before the US Army marched in to put a stop to the fighting.
How bad was it — and how determined was the government to end it? This Times piece on the fight by workers than and today for better working conditions has this historical detail.
...In early September 1921, the federal government dispatched thousands of troops and 15 fighter planes to Logan County, W.Va., to assist in the violent suppression of thousands of coal miners seeking the right to unionize.
“You understand we wouldn’t try to kill these people at first,” Gen. Billy Mitchell reassured reporters assembled to hear the government’s plans. “We’d drop tear gas all over the place. If they refused to disperse, then we’d open up with artillery.”
By Sept. 5 — Labor Day — the miners had given up.
The era of gun battles between capital and labor is long over. But on this Labor Day, 100 years after the Battle of Blair Mountain, it remains far harder for workers in the United States to unionize than almost anywhere else in the democratic, developed world.
Blair Mountain is getting a lot of attention because it is the centennial of the battle. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virgiinia has issued social media posts celebrating the workers of his beloved coal industry at Blair Mountain — but as governor in 2009 he claimed he had nothing to do with erasing it from history. While claiming to be on the workers side these days, he gets his marching orders from the donor class — and he’s trying to further their agenda by blocking the infrastructure bill.
Ever hear of Haymarket Square? (Memorialized in the photo above.) How about the Pullman Strike and Eugene Debs? How about Joe Hill?
You were probably taught in school that Henry Ford was a brilliant industrialist who revolutionized mass production with the assembly line, made cars affordable, and supported good wages for his workers so they could buy his cars. Maybe your knowledge is a little deeper, and you’re aware of his campaign of anti-semitism. How many of you have heard of The Battle of the Overpass? How many know Ford maintained a goon squad in his factories the Stasi would envy.
These are just a few examples of the violent history of labor efforts in this country to get a fair wage for a day’s work, and safe working conditions. It’s history the 1% wants to make sure we never know.
The party of Big Money has been working to kill off unions for decades, and they’ve run up quite a score, beginning with Reagan’s firing of the Air Traffic Controllers, passing misnamed “Right to Work” laws that cripple unions, and installing anti-union judges in the courts.
The GOP at the behest of Steve Bannon is launching a campaign to capture school boards — with the aim of blocking critical race theory, covid prevention measures, you name it. But — you know it’s also about blocking teaching the fight by working people for a better life.
It’s all about presenting a propagandized version of American history. It’s the history of founding fathers as god-like figures, and hero industrialists who ‘prove’ anyone can become rich in America if they just work hard enough — but not the ordinary people trying to make a living who fought and died for a fair share of the pie.
Labor Day comes once a year as an official holiday, but the truth is every day someone goes to work is Labor Day. Never forget what those who came before us sacrificed, and never forget the struggle is never over.