By Dennis R. Pierce
BLET National President
CLEVELAND, September 3 — When the first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City in 1882, our Brotherhood had been fighting to improve wages and working conditions for locomotive engineers for nearly 20 years. Today, the holiday is most noted as marking the unofficial end of summer and the focal point of the back-to-school sale season. But the true history of Labor Day is far more somber.
America in the late Nineteenth Century was a decidedly unfriendly place for workers. The six day workweek was the norm, and the typical work day lasted from 10 to 12 hours, without payment of overtime. There were no pensions, health care or vacations for the average worker. The courts considered trade unions to be illegal conspiracies in restraint of trade. A railroad strike in 1877 led to industrial warfare in which railroad workers and citizens were killed by federal troops, and 10 years after the first Labor Day a private army hired by Andrew Carnegie murdered seven steel workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania.
Despite this dark history, the labor movement that we honor this weekend is the engine that made the American Dream a reality for tens of millions of workers and their families. All of the benefits we enjoy today — including paid holidays like Labor Day — are the result of generations of struggle by American workers and their unions. Those victories were not won by union leaders fighting on behalf of their members. Rather, they were the product of union leaders and members fighting together in unity, waging struggles that required blood, sweat and tears, and genuine sacrifice to win.
Apathy is a cancer that eats at the core of any organization, and it sows the seeds of disaster. There are no entitlements in life, and we get to keep and improve only that which each of us is prepared to defend.
Even in these times of economic uncertainty, the railroad industry continues to make historic profits. Those profits measure the direct contribution of BLET members to the carriers’ bottom line and the American economy. But we cannot claim our fair share of the wealth our labor generates by idly standing by, waiting for someone else to deliver the goods for us.
This fall, the BLET marks an historic turning point. For the first time in our 147-year existence the membership of our Brotherhood will choose who will lead the Organization to its 150th birthday. The industry needs to hear a strong, unified voice on behalf of the nation’s locomotive engineers and you will have the opportunity to be a part of that voice by casting your vote in our upcoming election of National Division officers.
This is your Brotherhood, and we can be only as good as your willingness to get involved and stay involved; that is your personal obligation as a BLET member. Fulfilling your obligation to vote in the National Division officer and national, state and local elections this fall is an investment in the BLET not unlike the sacrifices of those who preceded us, and it can have an equally powerful impact on where we go from here. It also is the best way to honor those who fought for your right to vote, whom we remember this weekend.