Date: Fri 04-Sep-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Quick Words:

Labor-Gompers-holiday

Full Text:

The Workingman's Holiday: Why We Don't Work On Labor Day

BY SHANNON HICKS

"Labor Day," Samuel Gompers once said, "differs in every essential from the

other holidays in the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or

less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of

strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over

another.

"Labor Day ... is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or

nation," he finished. Mr Gompers was the founder and a longtime president of

the American Federation of Labor.

It is a long-running joke of comedians to ask why we call it Labor Day when we

don't do any work on that day.

The US Department of Labor says there is some doubt, 100 years after the first

observance of Labor Day, as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

What is known, however, is that Labor Day was first celebrated on a Tuesday.

In New York City, the first Labor Day was observed on Tuesday , September 5,

1882.

What is also certain is that it was the Central Labor Union (CLU), in 1882,

which first adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a

demonstration and picnic. Two years later, the first Monday in September was

selected for the holiday, which was part of the original proposal by the New

York-based CLU.

CLU urged similar organizations in other cities to follow New York's example

in celebrating what the union called a "workingmen's holiday." The following

year the day was observed in many of the country's industrial centers.

The first government recognition, again according to the Department of Labor,

came through ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. The first state bill,

appropriately, was introduced into New York legislature, but Oregon beat New

York to the punch when it passed the bill into law -- the first state in the

country to do so -- on February 21, 1887.

New York, Massachusetts, Colorado and New Jersey all followed suit by the end

of the year. Connecticut had enacted Labor Day into law by the end of the

decade.

A little known fact: In 1909, a resolution by the American Federation of Labor

adopted the Sunday preceding Labor Day as Labor Sunday. The day was dedicated

to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

Right from the start, the CLU had said that the observance of Labor Day should

be through street parades, to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit

de corps of the trade and labor organizations," to be followed by a festival

for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families.

So the next time you hear someone crack a joke about not working on Labor Day,

tell them it's just part of a tradition. And who wants to mess with tradition?