On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was visiting with a friend who lived near Washington Square in New York City when they heard fire engines and people screaming. They rushed out to the street to see what the trouble was. A fire had broken out in a garment factory on the upper floors of a building on Washington Square, and the blaze ripped through the lint in the air. The only way out was down the elevator, which had been abandoned at the base of its shaft, or through an exit to the roof. But the factory owner had locked the roof exit that day because, he later testified, he was worried some of his workers might steal some of the blouses they were making.
Today’s letter gives me such pause on a personal, familiar yet arm’s length level. My grandmother and all of her sisters were expected to leave school at pre-teen age to go to work in the factories as seamstresses (NY Metro area) at least until they could maneuver into a coveted job at the phone co. as an operator. Her sister lost her husband when her daughter was 2 years old (circa 1935) and worked to support them in the pajama/lingerie factory. Every Xmas Eve we spent together and were gifted w/new PJs or nightgown. I started noticing a distinctive label “ILGWU”— it looked kind of funny to a kid so I asked my great aunt about it—I was around the same age she would’ve had to stop school to work. She explained it was her “union”—the “International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union” and I sensed her passion and dedication to whatever that meant as well as I could comprehend it. Each year I would open the gift and say, “Oh, does it have your label?” and the convo would start again. Remem being mesmerized that these PJs came from the place where she made these things. So, finally I chose it as topic of a “book report” in grade school noting how lucky I was to get to just write about it at the same age she had to quit school to work in the factory and it was far from something to glamorize. These girls—and I mean girls not yet women—really lived/struggled this era of Dr. Heather’s letter today. My grandmother parlayed her skill into her own biz; my Mom worked in it sewing her way thru college to become a teacher—I suppose it was that or a nurse or secretary in the 40s/early 50s although a couple of her friends became CPAs in that era. I was fortunate enough to earn one of those “yuppie” MBAs two generations later. Today’s post brought this context all back with familiarity b/c as a child spent so much time with these women —only wish I could’ve comprehended more fully back then what I can see more clearly through today’s lens as an adult. And now, unbelievably, the struggle continues to hold onto what was so hard won > 80 years ago. Happy Labor Day~
Good morning everybody, and Happy Labor Day from here in Maine where the Bangor Daily news recently ran this piece about Secretary Perkins AND our beloved HCR. (I have shortened it for brevity). Please pay particular attention to the third paragraph:
“NEWCASTLE — The Frances Perkins Center will celebrate the life and work of Frances Perkins with a virtual Garden Party and awards ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 15.
This year’s annual Garden Party and awards ceremony celebrates the Center’s receiving a prestigious $500,000 grant from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures grant program to preserve and restore the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark, and a $100,000 appropriation from the State of Maine, “An Act To Conserve the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark,” to ensure the public has safe and accessible access to the Frances Perkins Homestead.
Honored at this year’s event will be historian Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, who will receive the Center’s Intelligence and Courage Award, and social activist Juana Rodriguez-Vazquez, who will receive the Open Door Award.
Donations from the event will support the Center’s vision to protect Frances Perkins’ beloved home and transform it into a national center for learning and discourse that addresses 21st century economic and social issues.”
Amen, amen, amen to these two awards.
My heart overflows with quiet, deep respect, pride and gratitude for the work and lives of all three women and I am resolved to learn more about Juana Rodriguez-Vazquez and what she is doing.
My wife and I will be making a gift to the Perkins Center in honor of Heather who, like Secretary Perkins and, I’m certain, Juana Rodriguez-Vazquez, is a true National Treasure. Their goal, as stated above, could not be more worthy.
Maine is blessed in so many ways, this among them.
Quite often, it's the bad things that galvanize us to achieve good things. I hate saying this, but it took Donald Trump for me to realize people I had allowed myself to call "the enemy" over the past 30 years weren't - that all of us who believe in democracy, whatever our policy differences, are part of the same party when an existential crisis hits (we can go back to arguing policy differences later). And this week's events in Texas have, I believe, done to the Republicans who are the dog that caught the car what bombing Pearl Harbor did to the Japanese - as Admiral Yamamoto allegedly said upon being informed of the success of the attack, "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible purpose."
My late husband’s grandmother worked at the Triangle. On the morning of the fire she felt ill and made the hard decision to stay home. She was a survivor because she didn’t go to work that day! My great-aunt Rose worked in a factory that made men’s shirts. She was very active in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union of America. She never married and worked to support herself until she could retire. She was an important part of my life.
From a tragedy, a woman rose to make history! Frances Perkins is a prime example of a woman who validates Ruth Bader Ginsburg's words: "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made." Thank you, dear Prof. HCR, for this exquisite rendition of her determination and her life's work.
We haven't had a break in five years or two, you know exactly what I mean, even so the Letter this morning took us to one of the country's worst catastrophes, The Triangle Fire in 1911. This awful tragedy led to better things, thanks to Al Smith, the Democratic majority leader in the New York legislature, who later became the four term governor of New York State (and, of course, there were more). The other bright light turning tragedy into social good was Francis Perkins. Subscribers followed this determined, capable and deeply social minded, public servant from head of the New York office of the National Consumers League; 'member of the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws'; overseeing the state’s labor department to becoming the country's Labor Department Secretary under president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and let's not forget FDR.
Francis Perkins stipulated that she would agree to become the Labor Secretary only f the president would back her goals: 'unemployment insurance; health insurance; old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; and abolition of child labor.' (The Letter) The president asked if she thought it could be done, and she promised to try.
'Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.'
'In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.'
'In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.' (The Letter)
I don't know about you, but I was smiling at the end of the letter, while reading, 'Happy Labor's Day, everyone'. Francis had taken us on a wonderful ride. She and Heather gave us a break that we were looking for. But the story doesn't end there. Labor in the United States today is not as it was when Francis Perkins was finished as Labor Secretary or for years after that.
Time did not permit a cogent summary of the situation that American workers find themselves in today. The differences for labor between the 1950s and '60s even the '70s and now have not been provided either. What you do have are excerpts from articles and links to them that present a inkling of what's going on . As you read you'll think of a lots of important issues that are missing. That's all right, you can add them in. Labor is a big story and today, it's full of woe These excerpts will provide a sense of how far down we have gone.
'The U.S. places last relative to its national policies around healthcare, unemployment, retirement, parental leave, and paid vacation and sick days, according to Zenefits, a human resources firm.'
'The Czech Republic, Latvia, South Korea and Mexico joined the U.S. among the five least-generous countries. Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland were the top nations for worker benefits.'
'The U.S., for example, is the only advanced nation that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation time to workers, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. By comparison, Europeans get at least 20 days of legally mandated vacation days, and some countries require at least 30.'
'It’s also the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer universal healthcare for its citizens. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than other high-income countries relative to the size of its economy. However, it also has the highest number of hospitalizations from preventable causes and the highest rate of avoidable deaths relative to other wealthy nations, according to the Commonwealth Fund.' (CNBC) Link below:
'Americans work more hours than their counterparts in peer nations, including France and Germany, and many work more than fifty hours a week. Real wages declined for the rank and file in the nineteen-seventies, as did the percentage of Americans who belong to unions, which may be a related development. One can argue that these post-industrial developments mark a return to a pre-industrial order. The gig economy is a form of vassalage. And even workers who don’t work for gig companies like Uber or TaskRabbit now work like gig workers. Most jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temporary jobs. Four in five hourly retail workers in the United States have no reliable schedule from one week to another. Instead, their schedules are often set by algorithms that aim to maximize profits for investors by reducing breaks and pauses in service—the labor equivalent of the just-in-time manufacturing system that was developed in the nineteen-seventies in Japan, a country that coined a word for “death by overwork” but whose average employee today works fewer hours than his American counterpart. As the sociologist Jamie K. McCallum reports in “Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work Is Killing the American Dream” (Basic), Americans have fewer paid holidays than workers in other countries, and the United States is all but alone in having no guaranteed maternity leave and no legal right to sick leave or vacation time. Meanwhile, we’re told to love work, and to find meaning in it, as if work were a family, or a religion, or a body of knowledge' (New Yorker).
'Women continue to weather the worst of this coronavirus-induced economic storm, but out in the horizon, another disturbance is forming.'
'Public sector jobs are expected to take a greater hit as plummeting tax revenues across the country slash local and state government budgets, setting off layoffs and furloughs. When the job losses come, it’ll be women who will be most at risk'.
'Nearly 60% of public sector employees are women, many of them women of color — the same demographic groups that already experienced the highest rates of unemployment when COVID-19 ripped through the job market. (Unemployment for Latinas peaked at 20.2% this year, and unemployment for Black women hit 16.5%). The one-two punch of the depletion of child care options and the closure of service sector businesses, jobs dominated by women, set off the nation’s first female recession. About 54% of all the jobs lost since the pandemic began were held by women.' (USA)
' Americans’ work conditions are terrible. No wonder many don’t want to go back.
In the restaurant and hospitality industry, many workers still receive the tipped federal minimum wage of $2.13 an hour. The restaurant industry accounts for more sexual harassment claims than any other sector, with incidents citing customers and co-workers. In recent years, top chefs including Momofuku’s David Chang were revealed to rage at workers on the job. “People are forgetting that restaurant workers have actually experienced decades of abuse and trauma. The pandemic is just the final straw,”Crystal Maher, a restaurant worker in Austin, recently told The Post.'
'But white-collar work wasn’t in a healthy state either. Even before covid-19, the pressure to work long hours was immense, with many survey respondents admitting to checking emails after hours and during vacation.'
Some worried Americans have considered the country's enormous wealth gap as a major reason for the social animosity and polarization. Have we so thought enough about the lives of America's workers and their much diminished communities -- how that, too, is part of their anti-social behavior. Why doesn't the meanness of their lives, perhaps, even more than the lies and propaganda ratify their sense of grievance? The lies and the propaganda may help fuel and channel it, but the workers daily existence is the starting point. Have the American workers been screwed? There is also a sub-group - malcontents - mini Trumps - they've always been around - 5% - 10%, perhaps, the 'experts' know. Is there too much concentration on Trump and his enablers, when more time might is need in knowing the base. What percent is salvageable and what changes in labor and the safety net need to be done Time for Francis Perkins, several of them to put the American workers back together again.
In December, 1828, the first ever labor strike in the United States took place in the Cocheco Mills in Dover, NH (my home town). The "Mill Girl Strike" involved about 600 cotton weavers (all female). New owners had bought the mill and lowered the women's wages but not the men's or management's (sound familiar?). The strikers wanted an end to these "Tariff Wages", an end to the practice of individuals in the company enriching themselves through "fines" (the women made 42 cents a day - the previous owners paid 47, and could be fined 12 1/2 cents if late for work, etc, money they believed was sometimes being pocked by supervisors, and the recognition that the mill owners were enriching themselves on the backs of those "least able to afford it" All very familiar. In the end, the workers had to give in when the company began hiring other workers (mainly from Quebec, I believe). I do not do justice to this story or to the women who participated in it. They did set the pattern for future strikes in America and effective labor activism in general. We owe them all a tremendous debt. Happy Labor day everyone! - I'm off to work now.
How convenient is it not that we now can outsource shirt production out of sight, with the same dangerous production facilities with low wages, and still be able to buy the shirts we want even with our low or moderate incomes. - Documentary films have an important role to be aware of: things far apart, that do belong together, must be shown together for the world to heal.
This story never fails to amaze me. It reminds us that there was a time when things had gone too far and decent people said enough and fixed it for a little while, at least.
Until I started following your letters I had but a scant knowledge of Frances Perkins' achievements. Your letter this Labor Day (and your other writings) paints a portrait of an amazing American.
When the Triangle Shirt Factory burned, women could not yet vote. Yet that did not deter her from becoming a powerful force that changed the course of the labor movement and reshaped the American economy for almost a century now. I believe you said that she stayed as a cabinet member for FDR through his entire presidency. What she accomplished is amazing!
Ironic isn't it, that she called out Hoover for his plan to let the the Depression "burn itself out". Has anything really changed? That is exactly how the GOP approached our current crisis. And now we have 650,000 dead as a testimonial to their laissez faire approach to it (and damned near everything else that doesn't involve women's rights).
So happy Labor Day Dr. HCR, and a happy Labor Day to the American worker!
Happy Labor Day, and thank you for the sharing the Triangle Shirt Factory tragedy of workers being locked in - afraid they might steal a BLOUSE. I’m taken back to September 1991 in Hamlet, NC where 25 workers died behind locked doors when a fire broke out at the Imperial Foods factory. Locked because the owners thought a worker might steal a CHICKEN. We must continue the fight for worker’s rights and women’s rights.
Thank you, Dr. Richardson. I so appreciate your history knowledge. Frances Perkins, was a true champion for the people. Contrast her to the vile hooligans (the list is long) who destroy and disrupt the American Dream for ordinary people. President Biden is on track to be the FDR of the 21st century, but he faces some unprecedented obstacles.
This was a perfect tribute on a day when most of us just think about what we'll throw on the grill.
Why didn't I know the name "Frances Perkins" when I was growing up? Why did it take reading a book about FDR decades after leaving school?
The history in today's letter should be taught in every elementary school. Perhaps if kids learned more about the labor movement as a class unto itself, we could break out of the feudal oppression of our current employment system.
Today I Fly the Flag for "LABOR". If there were ever a time for unions to regain strength, it certainly is now. We need some more "Norma Rae". A lot more.
This missive is why I love HCR. Very succinctly she puts issues in perspective. Although she didn’t mention it, here we are again on the threshold of “human” infrastructure with legislation pending before Congress. Yet there is a large body of the politic who exclaim there’s nothing in the Constitution about “being our brother’s keeper” and would roll back the New Deal, the Great Society, Obama Care, etc. if they could. Texas… The Supreme Court...
Today’s letter gives me such pause on a personal, familiar yet arm’s length level. My grandmother and all of her sisters were expected to leave school at pre-teen age to go to work in the factories as seamstresses (NY Metro area) at least until they could maneuver into a coveted job at the phone co. as an operator. Her sister lost her husband when her daughter was 2 years old (circa 1935) and worked to support them in the pajama/lingerie factory. Every Xmas Eve we spent together and were gifted w/new PJs or nightgown. I started noticing a distinctive label “ILGWU”— it looked kind of funny to a kid so I asked my great aunt about it—I was around the same age she would’ve had to stop school to work. She explained it was her “union”—the “International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union” and I sensed her passion and dedication to whatever that meant as well as I could comprehend it. Each year I would open the gift and say, “Oh, does it have your label?” and the convo would start again. Remem being mesmerized that these PJs came from the place where she made these things. So, finally I chose it as topic of a “book report” in grade school noting how lucky I was to get to just write about it at the same age she had to quit school to work in the factory and it was far from something to glamorize. These girls—and I mean girls not yet women—really lived/struggled this era of Dr. Heather’s letter today. My grandmother parlayed her skill into her own biz; my Mom worked in it sewing her way thru college to become a teacher—I suppose it was that or a nurse or secretary in the 40s/early 50s although a couple of her friends became CPAs in that era. I was fortunate enough to earn one of those “yuppie” MBAs two generations later. Today’s post brought this context all back with familiarity b/c as a child spent so much time with these women —only wish I could’ve comprehended more fully back then what I can see more clearly through today’s lens as an adult. And now, unbelievably, the struggle continues to hold onto what was so hard won > 80 years ago. Happy Labor Day~
Good morning everybody, and Happy Labor Day from here in Maine where the Bangor Daily news recently ran this piece about Secretary Perkins AND our beloved HCR. (I have shortened it for brevity). Please pay particular attention to the third paragraph:
“NEWCASTLE — The Frances Perkins Center will celebrate the life and work of Frances Perkins with a virtual Garden Party and awards ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 15.
This year’s annual Garden Party and awards ceremony celebrates the Center’s receiving a prestigious $500,000 grant from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures grant program to preserve and restore the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark, and a $100,000 appropriation from the State of Maine, “An Act To Conserve the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark,” to ensure the public has safe and accessible access to the Frances Perkins Homestead.
Honored at this year’s event will be historian Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, who will receive the Center’s Intelligence and Courage Award, and social activist Juana Rodriguez-Vazquez, who will receive the Open Door Award.
Donations from the event will support the Center’s vision to protect Frances Perkins’ beloved home and transform it into a national center for learning and discourse that addresses 21st century economic and social issues.”
Amen, amen, amen to these two awards.
My heart overflows with quiet, deep respect, pride and gratitude for the work and lives of all three women and I am resolved to learn more about Juana Rodriguez-Vazquez and what she is doing.
My wife and I will be making a gift to the Perkins Center in honor of Heather who, like Secretary Perkins and, I’m certain, Juana Rodriguez-Vazquez, is a true National Treasure. Their goal, as stated above, could not be more worthy.
Maine is blessed in so many ways, this among them.
Quite often, it's the bad things that galvanize us to achieve good things. I hate saying this, but it took Donald Trump for me to realize people I had allowed myself to call "the enemy" over the past 30 years weren't - that all of us who believe in democracy, whatever our policy differences, are part of the same party when an existential crisis hits (we can go back to arguing policy differences later). And this week's events in Texas have, I believe, done to the Republicans who are the dog that caught the car what bombing Pearl Harbor did to the Japanese - as Admiral Yamamoto allegedly said upon being informed of the success of the attack, "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible purpose."
My late husband’s grandmother worked at the Triangle. On the morning of the fire she felt ill and made the hard decision to stay home. She was a survivor because she didn’t go to work that day! My great-aunt Rose worked in a factory that made men’s shirts. She was very active in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union of America. She never married and worked to support herself until she could retire. She was an important part of my life.
From a tragedy, a woman rose to make history! Frances Perkins is a prime example of a woman who validates Ruth Bader Ginsburg's words: "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made." Thank you, dear Prof. HCR, for this exquisite rendition of her determination and her life's work.
We haven't had a break in five years or two, you know exactly what I mean, even so the Letter this morning took us to one of the country's worst catastrophes, The Triangle Fire in 1911. This awful tragedy led to better things, thanks to Al Smith, the Democratic majority leader in the New York legislature, who later became the four term governor of New York State (and, of course, there were more). The other bright light turning tragedy into social good was Francis Perkins. Subscribers followed this determined, capable and deeply social minded, public servant from head of the New York office of the National Consumers League; 'member of the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws'; overseeing the state’s labor department to becoming the country's Labor Department Secretary under president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and let's not forget FDR.
Francis Perkins stipulated that she would agree to become the Labor Secretary only f the president would back her goals: 'unemployment insurance; health insurance; old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; and abolition of child labor.' (The Letter) The president asked if she thought it could be done, and she promised to try.
'Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.'
'In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.'
'In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.' (The Letter)
I don't know about you, but I was smiling at the end of the letter, while reading, 'Happy Labor's Day, everyone'. Francis had taken us on a wonderful ride. She and Heather gave us a break that we were looking for. But the story doesn't end there. Labor in the United States today is not as it was when Francis Perkins was finished as Labor Secretary or for years after that.
Time did not permit a cogent summary of the situation that American workers find themselves in today. The differences for labor between the 1950s and '60s even the '70s and now have not been provided either. What you do have are excerpts from articles and links to them that present a inkling of what's going on . As you read you'll think of a lots of important issues that are missing. That's all right, you can add them in. Labor is a big story and today, it's full of woe These excerpts will provide a sense of how far down we have gone.
'The U.S. places last relative to its national policies around healthcare, unemployment, retirement, parental leave, and paid vacation and sick days, according to Zenefits, a human resources firm.'
'The Czech Republic, Latvia, South Korea and Mexico joined the U.S. among the five least-generous countries. Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland were the top nations for worker benefits.'
'The U.S., for example, is the only advanced nation that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation time to workers, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. By comparison, Europeans get at least 20 days of legally mandated vacation days, and some countries require at least 30.'
'It’s also the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer universal healthcare for its citizens. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than other high-income countries relative to the size of its economy. However, it also has the highest number of hospitalizations from preventable causes and the highest rate of avoidable deaths relative to other wealthy nations, according to the Commonwealth Fund.' (CNBC) Link below:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/04/us-is-worst-among-rich-nations-for-worker-benefits.html
'Americans work more hours than their counterparts in peer nations, including France and Germany, and many work more than fifty hours a week. Real wages declined for the rank and file in the nineteen-seventies, as did the percentage of Americans who belong to unions, which may be a related development. One can argue that these post-industrial developments mark a return to a pre-industrial order. The gig economy is a form of vassalage. And even workers who don’t work for gig companies like Uber or TaskRabbit now work like gig workers. Most jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temporary jobs. Four in five hourly retail workers in the United States have no reliable schedule from one week to another. Instead, their schedules are often set by algorithms that aim to maximize profits for investors by reducing breaks and pauses in service—the labor equivalent of the just-in-time manufacturing system that was developed in the nineteen-seventies in Japan, a country that coined a word for “death by overwork” but whose average employee today works fewer hours than his American counterpart. As the sociologist Jamie K. McCallum reports in “Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work Is Killing the American Dream” (Basic), Americans have fewer paid holidays than workers in other countries, and the United States is all but alone in having no guaranteed maternity leave and no legal right to sick leave or vacation time. Meanwhile, we’re told to love work, and to find meaning in it, as if work were a family, or a religion, or a body of knowledge' (New Yorker).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/whats-wrong-with-the-way-we-work
'Women continue to weather the worst of this coronavirus-induced economic storm, but out in the horizon, another disturbance is forming.'
'Public sector jobs are expected to take a greater hit as plummeting tax revenues across the country slash local and state government budgets, setting off layoffs and furloughs. When the job losses come, it’ll be women who will be most at risk'.
'Nearly 60% of public sector employees are women, many of them women of color — the same demographic groups that already experienced the highest rates of unemployment when COVID-19 ripped through the job market. (Unemployment for Latinas peaked at 20.2% this year, and unemployment for Black women hit 16.5%). The one-two punch of the depletion of child care options and the closure of service sector businesses, jobs dominated by women, set off the nation’s first female recession. About 54% of all the jobs lost since the pandemic began were held by women.' (USA)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/10/unemployment-during-covid-19-hit-women-public-sector-harder/5729043002/
' Americans’ work conditions are terrible. No wonder many don’t want to go back.
In the restaurant and hospitality industry, many workers still receive the tipped federal minimum wage of $2.13 an hour. The restaurant industry accounts for more sexual harassment claims than any other sector, with incidents citing customers and co-workers. In recent years, top chefs including Momofuku’s David Chang were revealed to rage at workers on the job. “People are forgetting that restaurant workers have actually experienced decades of abuse and trauma. The pandemic is just the final straw,”Crystal Maher, a restaurant worker in Austin, recently told The Post.'
'But white-collar work wasn’t in a healthy state either. Even before covid-19, the pressure to work long hours was immense, with many survey respondents admitting to checking emails after hours and during vacation.'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/02/another-way-think-about-worker-crisis-americans-work-conditions-are-terrible/
Some worried Americans have considered the country's enormous wealth gap as a major reason for the social animosity and polarization. Have we so thought enough about the lives of America's workers and their much diminished communities -- how that, too, is part of their anti-social behavior. Why doesn't the meanness of their lives, perhaps, even more than the lies and propaganda ratify their sense of grievance? The lies and the propaganda may help fuel and channel it, but the workers daily existence is the starting point. Have the American workers been screwed? There is also a sub-group - malcontents - mini Trumps - they've always been around - 5% - 10%, perhaps, the 'experts' know. Is there too much concentration on Trump and his enablers, when more time might is need in knowing the base. What percent is salvageable and what changes in labor and the safety net need to be done Time for Francis Perkins, several of them to put the American workers back together again.
In December, 1828, the first ever labor strike in the United States took place in the Cocheco Mills in Dover, NH (my home town). The "Mill Girl Strike" involved about 600 cotton weavers (all female). New owners had bought the mill and lowered the women's wages but not the men's or management's (sound familiar?). The strikers wanted an end to these "Tariff Wages", an end to the practice of individuals in the company enriching themselves through "fines" (the women made 42 cents a day - the previous owners paid 47, and could be fined 12 1/2 cents if late for work, etc, money they believed was sometimes being pocked by supervisors, and the recognition that the mill owners were enriching themselves on the backs of those "least able to afford it" All very familiar. In the end, the workers had to give in when the company began hiring other workers (mainly from Quebec, I believe). I do not do justice to this story or to the women who participated in it. They did set the pattern for future strikes in America and effective labor activism in general. We owe them all a tremendous debt. Happy Labor day everyone! - I'm off to work now.
Hail Frances Perkins. And all women. Thank you. And thank you Professor for teaching us. Happy Labor Day all.
(Sweden)
How convenient is it not that we now can outsource shirt production out of sight, with the same dangerous production facilities with low wages, and still be able to buy the shirts we want even with our low or moderate incomes. - Documentary films have an important role to be aware of: things far apart, that do belong together, must be shown together for the world to heal.
This story never fails to amaze me. It reminds us that there was a time when things had gone too far and decent people said enough and fixed it for a little while, at least.
Until I started following your letters I had but a scant knowledge of Frances Perkins' achievements. Your letter this Labor Day (and your other writings) paints a portrait of an amazing American.
When the Triangle Shirt Factory burned, women could not yet vote. Yet that did not deter her from becoming a powerful force that changed the course of the labor movement and reshaped the American economy for almost a century now. I believe you said that she stayed as a cabinet member for FDR through his entire presidency. What she accomplished is amazing!
Ironic isn't it, that she called out Hoover for his plan to let the the Depression "burn itself out". Has anything really changed? That is exactly how the GOP approached our current crisis. And now we have 650,000 dead as a testimonial to their laissez faire approach to it (and damned near everything else that doesn't involve women's rights).
So happy Labor Day Dr. HCR, and a happy Labor Day to the American worker!
Happy Labor Day, and thank you for the sharing the Triangle Shirt Factory tragedy of workers being locked in - afraid they might steal a BLOUSE. I’m taken back to September 1991 in Hamlet, NC where 25 workers died behind locked doors when a fire broke out at the Imperial Foods factory. Locked because the owners thought a worker might steal a CHICKEN. We must continue the fight for worker’s rights and women’s rights.
Thank you, Dr. Richardson. I so appreciate your history knowledge. Frances Perkins, was a true champion for the people. Contrast her to the vile hooligans (the list is long) who destroy and disrupt the American Dream for ordinary people. President Biden is on track to be the FDR of the 21st century, but he faces some unprecedented obstacles.
As she often does, Ms. Richardson simply tells the historical story in straightforward terms and the story instructs. Beautifully done.
This was a perfect tribute on a day when most of us just think about what we'll throw on the grill.
Why didn't I know the name "Frances Perkins" when I was growing up? Why did it take reading a book about FDR decades after leaving school?
The history in today's letter should be taught in every elementary school. Perhaps if kids learned more about the labor movement as a class unto itself, we could break out of the feudal oppression of our current employment system.
Today I Fly the Flag for "LABOR". If there were ever a time for unions to regain strength, it certainly is now. We need some more "Norma Rae". A lot more.
This missive is why I love HCR. Very succinctly she puts issues in perspective. Although she didn’t mention it, here we are again on the threshold of “human” infrastructure with legislation pending before Congress. Yet there is a large body of the politic who exclaim there’s nothing in the Constitution about “being our brother’s keeper” and would roll back the New Deal, the Great Society, Obama Care, etc. if they could. Texas… The Supreme Court...