By Vin Gopal
Labor Day is one of my favorite holidays because it’s the day we celebrate American workers and working families and the labor movement that gave workers a voice.
The labor movement gave us Social Security, health insurance, collective bargaining, and laws that make the workplace safer. It has given families the means to purchase homes, to start family businesses, and send their kids to college.
Yet we often take the benefits the labor movement brought to the American worker for granted. Today in New Jersey, and around the country, workers are being challenged by federal funding cuts and a changing workplace. Seniors who worked their whole lives are worried about threats to Social Security, Medicare, health insurance, and the high cost of living. Young people just out of college worry that they will not be able to find a job or afford a place to live.
The good news is that the labor movement remains strong in New Jersey, even in this time of serious challenges to employment. My LD11 partners, Assemblywomen Margie Donlon and Luanne Peterpaul, and I stand with our unions in New Jersey in taking a strong stand against federal attacks on workers. Their vigorous organizing efforts helped unions not only maintain but even add to their membership, which has grown by 22,000 workers in New Jersey over the past three years, according to the Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN) at Rutgers University. At the same time, the state added an even larger number of non-union jobs. But union or non-union, we all owe a great deal of the benefits we count on today to the labor movement.
On Labor Day, it’s especially important that we remember the contributions of labor and reflect on how hard America's workers fought to win the rights and improvements we take for granted today, like minimum wage and weekends off. One way to do that is by studying people and events in our own state, like the child workers in Paterson who went on strike in 1835 to win an 11-hour day, and the unemployed families of the "Army of Unoccupation" who took over the State House in Trenton in 1936 to press for relief during the Great Depression.
Last year, the governor signed legislation my LD11 partners, Assemblywomen Margie Donlon and Luanne Peterpaul and I co-sponsored into law requiring school districts to provide instruction on the labor movement as part of the social studies curriculum of students in grades six through 12. The materials will present the political, economic, and societal contributions of individuals involved in the labor movement throughout U.S. history.
Other pending bills we have sponsored would establish a four-year Career and Technical Education Partnership Grant Program to train workers for jobs that are in demand, and establish a program to incentivize hiring and continued employment of individuals with developmental disabilities.
We also want to recognize our LD11 small businesses and the role they play in driving both employment and our local economy. Their daily struggles contribute to the quality of life in Monmouth County and throughout the state.
As we pledge to continue to fight for New Jersey workers and small businesses, we want to thank all workers for their tireless efforts, and wish everyone a happy Labor Day.
###
