Labor Day facts
For well over a century Americans have been celebrating Labor Day on the first Monday in September, yet it may be the federal holiday about which kids — and plenty of adults — know the least.
A protest in 2011 in Ohio against a Republican effort to cut public workers’ union bargaining rights. (Melina Mara/THE WASHINGTON POST)Too many don’t know that it was labor activists who forced employers to stop sending kids into mines, textiles, glass factories, canneries and other places to work back-breaking jobs day and night. Because of the labor movement, child labor ended, and adult workers won better conditions, including the eight-hour work day.
The first Labor Day celebration is believed to have been first observed on Sept. 5, 1882, when Peter J. McGuire, a Carpenters and Joiners Union secretary, organized 10,000 workers to march in New York City, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Within a decade, more than half
