Your Say: Sept. 6-12, 2018
Yours In Solidarity
Picked up my fav community paper, and the Labor Day lead caught my eye. Nice stories about folks who labor in many great industries, but I noticed no one was mentioned from organized labor groups.
It’s been many years (the late 1800s) when the idea took off for a holiday to honor unions pushed by organized labor. Details are probably sketchy about why we have that holiday now. It’s all about sales. LOL.
Our country’s history is not being taught very well in school these days. This includes why we have and need unions. It’s important for me and my family because we’ve grown up fighting for the right to organize and reap the benefit of hard-bargained contracts.
My firsthand knowledge was hearing stories about my grandfather, who organized farm workers in San Diego County in the 1930s, and my own parents who belonged to trade unions all their life. I learned early on that a few of my stays in the hospital did not break us because my parents had insurance from their union contracts. My family is all dues-paying tradespeople, and we make no bones about Labor Day being our day to sit back and thank those who came before us and how we can make the future lives of trade unionists have a good life. Not an easy task in 2018.
Off the top of my head, unions helped give American workers weekends, fair wages, helped to end child labor, win widespread employer-based health care. And we fought for the Family and Medical Leave Act, to name a few big wins.
Don’t get me wrong; I am a forever supporter of Bay Weekly and your well-written local Bay stories. Wanted to say those of us in labor know the real reason we have this holiday and to thank you for all your informative work as the editor of the Bay Weekly over the years.
We caught this 81⁄2-inch crab this weekend while trot-lining in the West River with friends. It was a pleasant surprise, though not as large as the one caught in Fairhaven and shown in these pages a couple weeks ago. I was surprised by the thickness of the shell.