Labor Day Parade, Main St., Buffalo N.Y.
As we get ready to celebrate Labor Day and the rights of American workers; it’s also a good time to remember the millions in this battered economy without jobs and struggling to keep their heads barely above water.
In commemoration of the holiday, then, I compiled some historical facts on unemployment in the United States, stretching back to the 19th century, followed by significant labor legislation that was passed at the federal level beginning in the early 20th century.
Labor Day Origins
• 1882: Matthew Maguire, who later became secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., first proposed Labor Day while working at the Central Labor Union in New York.
• September 5, 1882: First Labor Day Parade took place in New York when 10,000 workers marched from City Hall to Union Square.
• By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
• ***
Historical Snapshot of Unemployment in the United States:
• The German word for unemployment, ``Arbeitslosigkeit''-literally the state of being without work-was rarely used before the 1890’s, when Karl Marx discussed the unemployed in Das Kapital; he referred to them not as die Arbeitslosen but as die Unbeschaftigen , the idle, or not busy.
• In New York City, the first emergency association was the Samaritan Society founded to cope with a relief crisis in 1805.
• Buffalo N.Y. was the site of the first YMCA (1854); and the first American Charity Organization Society (1878)
• The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was founded in 1843 by Robert M Hartley, a wealthy Presbyterian merchant
• State governments created boards of state charities to bring order to this administrative chaos; the first was in Massachusetts in 1863 followed by New York in 1867; by the end of the century 16 other states had followed suit.
• Until the 1890’s, thousands of homeless men (called ``lodgers’’) slept in police stations every night.
• In 1876, the Cincinnati Police Department sheltered and lodged 75,331 indigent persons without homes.
• Between 10 percent and 20 percent of the U.S, population in the late 19th century came from families of which one member had experienced the hospitality of a police station.
• European governments introduced unemployment insurance early in the 20th century. Britain passed the first unemployment insurance act in 1911; between 1919 and 1930-10 other countries followed suit. The United States didn’t pass one until 1932
• Wisconsin passed the country’s first unemployment insurance act in 1932; then New York in 1935.
• The Social Security Act was signed in September, 1935, which made unemployment insurance compulsory.
• Between 1929 and the summer of 1933, official unemployment in America climbed from 3.2 percent to 24.9 percent. In Cleveland unemployment reached 50 percent; in Akron 60 percent ; and Toledo 80 percent
• New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt engineered the Wicks Act, which created the Temporary Emergency Relief Association (TERA) in September 1931
• Between 1930 and 1939 unemployment ranged from 8.7 to 24.9 percent.
• The average unemployment rate from 1950 through 1959 was 4.5 percent
• As unemployment increased in 1975, Congress increased the number of weeks for which benefits were paid, extending coverage to 12 million previously excluded workers and used federal funds, not payroll taxes to finance the program’s expansion.
• In March, 1975, a weekly average of 5.9 million persons received $1.5 billion in unemployment insurance benefits, more than five times the number during the last year of the Johnson administration.
• Between 1960 and 1978, the steel industry lost 20 percent of its total jobs, almost all in production; and in the next few years, the shutdowns accelerated.
• Between 1987 and 1995, one in twenty New Yorkers inhabited a homeless shelter at least once between 1987 and 1992
• The unemployment rate tripled in one year from 4 percent in 1929 to 13 percent in 1930; by 1932 it doubled to over 25 percent.
• In 2008, 39.8 million people were counted as poor in the United States—an increase of 2.6 million persons from 2007, and nearly the largest number of persons counted as poor since 1960.
• Over the course of 2008, the unemployment rate increased from 4.9 percent (January 2008) to 7.2 percent (December 2008); by March 2010, , the unemployment rate was 9.7percent , down from a most recent high of 10.2% in October 2009
***
Significant Labor Legislation in the United States
• 1913: Congress creates the U.S. Department of Labor. (USDOL).
• September 1, 1916: The Keating Owen Act bans child labor; while the U.S. Supreme Court in Hammer v. Dagenhart rules the child-labor law to be unconstitutional on June 3, 1918.
• September 7, 1916: Federal Employees Compensation Act; established Office of Workers Compensation Programs in the U.S. Department of Labor.
• 1919: The International Labor Organization is organized as an extension of the League of Nations
• March 5, 1923: Montana and Nevada become the first states to enact old age pension laws, well before the federal Social Security Act of 1935.
• July 7, 1930: Congress authorizes the Department of Labor to begin gathering labor statistics.
• March 3, 1931: The Davis-Bacon Act (also known as the Prevailing Wage Law) becomes the first federal law to secure a minimum wage for nongovernment workers.
• July 21, 1932: Emergency Relief and Construction Act created employment through a public works program.
• July 5, 1935: The National Labor Relations Act (also called the Wagner Act, named after U.S. Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York) gives labor unions the right to exist and collectively bargain with industry.
• August 14, 1935: The Social Security Act creates two social insurance plans to help meet the risks of old age and unemployment.
• June 25, 1938: The Fair Standards ACT (FLSA) is passed , which created a Wage and Hour Division in the U.S. Department of Labor; mandated a 40 cent-per-hour minimum wage by 1945; required a maximum workweek of 44 hours, with a reduction to 40 hours by 1940; established an overtime wage rate at one and a half times the regular rate of pay
• June 10, 1963: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (an amendment to FLSA) makes it illegal to pay different wages based on gender to those doing substantially the same work.
• July 2, 1964: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which includes Title VII banning discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin.
• August 20, 1964: The Economic Opportunity Act was passed. The Act was the first official legislation on the War on Poverty, giving power to the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which created the Job Corps, Head Start, Neighborhood Youth Corps and the Community Action Program to help combat growing poverty in America.
• December 15, 1967: The Age Discrimination Act is passed, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of age in job applications procedures, hiring, firing, or promotion.
• December 30, 1969: The Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act was passed, which set mandatory health and safety standards for underground coal mines.
• December 29, 1970: The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 gave state governments the option of regulating workplace safety and healthy by submitting a state plan to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for approval.
• December 10, 1981: Veteran's Employment and Training Service (VETS) maximizes training and employment opportunities for veterans and disabled by ensuring that legislation involving veterans is carried out by local public employment services and private enterprise
• January 14, 1983: The Migrant and Seasonal Worker Protection Act protects rights, pay, and working conditions of migrant workers.
• February 5, 1993: The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) allows workers to take unpaid leave from work when they or someone in their family needs medical care.
• August 17, 2006: Pension Protection Act is signed into law, to protect workers and retirees and to encourage continued sponsorship of pension plans.
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
Source: U.S. Department of Labor; ``Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History’’, Eric Arnesen (Editor), ``A Social History of Welfare in America'' by Michael Katz (Basic Books); ``A People’s History of Poverty in America’’ by Stephen Pimpare
This is really a great article. Thanks for sharing these important dates and events.
Posted by: Security Guard Training | 10/16/2010 at 02:05 PM