LABOR DAY 2023 - A Time to Honor and Reinforce the Historic Labor and Civil Rights Alliance
As IFPTE members and Locals across North America celebrate Labor Day on Monday, September 4th, we thought it necessary to pen a letter to the IFPTE family honoring the historic and ongoing Alliance between our movement and the Civil Rights movement. This year, 2023, marks a significant anniversary in our historic partnership that helped to shape our movement to protect and enhance both workers’ rights and human rights for ALL people across North America. The event we are talking about is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, which took place on August 28, 1963, and was just commemorated last weekend at the very same location, the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, DC.
The Civil Rights and Labor Movements are inexorably linked. We have been strong partners for decades and can proudly say that together we have forced positive change for working families all across North America. The March on Washington was, of course, organized by Civil Rights icons such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, the late Congressman John Lewis (who spoke at a past IFPTE legislative conference and penned a letter of support for SPEEA/IFPTE Local 2001 members in Wichita), Bayard Rustin, and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (who also spoke at several IFPTE conferences). However, what some do not realize is that labor trailblazers also were among those who organized the event. A. Philip Randolph, who was the founding president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and fought against discrimination against Black workers in our very own Labor Movement, and United Auto Workers president, Walter Reuther, were two labor officials who also helped to organize the March. Other moments in history, such as the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike where Dr. King travelled to picket with the striking AFSCME workers only to be tragically killed at the Lorraine Hotel, further underscore our significant alliance.
Our alliance with the Civil Rights movement is as critical today as it was 60 years ago. Today we see the gains that we worked so hard to achieve decades ago being chipped away. Our collective bargaining rights, voting rights, and workers’ rights in general are in jeopardy. For example, IFPTE members are seeing Provincial governments in Manitoba and Ontario attempting to erode collective bargaining rights, and even do away with the right to strike. In the United States we are fortunate that President Biden quickly reversed the attacks by the prior administration aimed at eliminating unions. The President, to his credit, has made building union density throughout the country part of the foundation of his economic policies to strengthen the middle class and bring the working poor into the middle class. President Biden understands that the true ticket to the middle class is a union card. Nonetheless, this has not dissuaded some in Congress from introducing and moving legislation intended to eliminate collective bargaining rights and unions. As IFPTE members we understand all too well, despite the government in power, the assaults on workers’ rights inevitably come to our doorsteps. IFPTE will, of course, be there to fight against all of these attacks--and we will win.
Which brings us back to Labor Day. As union members and workers, we should take time this year to relax, spend valuable time with our families, turn the page from Summer to Fall, and celebrate all that we have achieved as a labor movement and as workers. After all, we have certainly earned it. We should also celebrate and be proud of our continuing partnership with the Civil Rights movement. We understand that it is this foundation that we continue to build and rely on that will aid us in preserving and growing our unions and our strength.
Happy Labour Day!
In Solidarity,
Matt and Gay