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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW It's no con: 'Dirty Rotten' is hysterically funny ... Charter, marijuana tax measures await Talent voters ... Emigrant Lake drowning victim identified as Medford man ... It's no con: 'Dirty Rotten' is hysterically funny ... Charter, marijuana tax measures await Talent voters ... Emigrant Lake drowning victim identified as Medford man ... RELOCATIONS Herb Rothschild Jr.: Labor Day thoughts Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Sep. 3, 2016 at 12:01 AM Posted Sep. 3, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News Oregon was the first state to declare Labor Day an official holiday. That was in 1887, one year after thousands of U.S. workers went on strike and rallied for the eight-hour day. At the rally in Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886, in support of the strike and to protest police murders of workers the previous day, someone threw a bomb at the police as they tried to disperse the crowd. Police gunfire was responsible for almost all the ensuing deaths of seven officers and four civilians. On slim evidence, eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy and seven sentenced to death. In 1894 Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday. Monday, supporters of organized labor in our area will gather from 11 to 3 in Emigrant Lake Park for the annual picnic under the auspices of the Southern Oregon Central Labor Chapter, AFL-CIO. Everyone is invited. Lunch is free. Judging from recent picnics, however, not many will attend. They haven’t been high-energy celebrations of courage and hard-won victories in the teeth of state-sponsored violence. Nor is the rhetoric any farther left than liberal. Nevertheless, I always attend, because our main chance to end for the second time this nation’s gross economic inequality is a resurgence of the movement that ended it the first time. I joined the Communication Workers of America in 1992 through the Texas State Employees Union. At the time I was working in public affairs for the University of Houston System. The union offered me no direct benefits, but it helped lower-paid workers in agencies like Health and Human Services and Corrections. So solidarity was important. Even more so was gratitude for the immense benefits that unions had brought to U.S. workers regardless of whether they were union members: the 40-hour week, the minimum hourly wage, paid vacations, overtime, pensions, medical coverage and sick leave, as well as child labor and health and safety laws. But, you think, these benefits are being scaled back or disappearing. So true and so sad. Non-union members took them for granted and felt no need to organize their workplaces. Union members grew complacent and reduced efforts to organize new sectors, which proved a disaster when we transitioned to a hi-tech and service economy. Union leadership in the U.S. has done a miserable job of public relations. Worse, it has been extraordinarily short-sighted. Finally, early on it fell into the trap of nationalism. Labor Day should never have been on the first Monday of September. It should have been on the first of May. The Second International (the original Socialist International), meeting in Paris in 1889, designated May 1 as International Workers Day. That was a main reason an alarmed Congress in 1894 chose a different date. May Day remains an international occasion for labor militancy. Labor Day has become our time for back-to-school shopping. By 1900, capital was already global. Labor — especially U.S. labor — hasn’t been. But U.S. workers are no longer beneficiaries of American dominance. We’re now in a race to the bottom, and losing. We must oppose trade deals like the TPP written by and for global capital, but we should favor pacts designed to raise labor standards in all the treaty nations. We should value the work of the U.N.’s International Labor Organization, and find ways to support union organizing abroad. Their gains will be ours as well. — Herb Rothschild's column appears in the Tidings every Saturday. DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Sep. 3, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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