What you owe to American labor

36 Reasons To Celebrate Unions This Labor Day Weekend

By Ann Werner

It’s Labor Day weekend and the unofficial end of summer. While you’re at the beach, out hiking and enjoying nature, or just staying home and enjoying the long weekend with family, friends and neighbors in a backyard cookout, take a moment to reflect on the reason we set aside this weekend once a year. 

It’s to honor those who labor – those who built our country and keep it going.

With the vilification of unions so strident on the right, it might be a good time to remind them (and ourselves) of the things we enjoy due to the union movement. Without unions, I doubt we would have a day honoring the hard working people of this country; and I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have a three-day weekend to go out and play.

For those of you who can’t imagine such a thing, I highly recommend you read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. It chronicles the hell endured by immigrant workers – many of them Lithuanian (my heritage on my mother’s side) – and provided the impetus for laws to be enacted to protect workers. 

If you have a Kindle device, you can download it for free and you don’t need a Kindle unlimited subscription to do so.

Here are 36 things that were made possible by unions.

1. Weekends without work
2. All breaks at work, including your lunch breaks
3. Paid vacation
4. Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
5. Sick leave
6. Social Security
7. Minimum wage
8. Civil Rights Act/Title VII – prohibits employer discrimination
9. 8-hour work day
10. Overtime pay
11. Child labor laws
12. Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
13. 40-hour work week
14. Workers’ compensation (workers’ comp)
15. Unemployment insurance
16. Pensions
17. Workplace safety standards and regulations
18. Employer health care insurance
19. Collective bargaining rights for employees
20. Wrongful termination laws
21. Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)
22. Whistleblower protection laws
23. Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) – prohibits employers from using a lie detector test on an employee
24. Veteran’s Employment and Training Services (VETS)
25. Compensation increases and evaluations (i.e. raises)
26. Sexual harassment laws
27. Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
28. Holiday pay
29. Employer dental, life, and vision insurance
30. Privacy rights
31. Pregnancy and parental leave
32. Military leave
33. The right to strike
34. Public education for children
35. Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 – requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work
36. Laws ending sweatshops in the United States

Ann Werner is a blogger and the author of CRAZY and Dreams and Nightmares. You can view her work at AnnWerner.info. Visit her on Twitter @MsWerner and Facebook Ann Werner