New York — To most of us, Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer. However, there was a time when it was more than that: a time to reflect on the value of America’s unions and the workers they represent.
Back then, Labor Day had special meaning to America’s Jewish community. After all, it was unions, more than almost any other institution, that enabled members of our grandparents’ generation to lift their families out of poverty and, ultimately, into the middle class.
Thanks to the economic security won by what were often Jewish-led unions, our ancestors didn’t walk away from America’s ghettos; they ran away.
Today, another generation of Jews is embracing the American labor movement. But where their ancestors may have done so out of economic necessity, these women and men are moved by a personal, and uniquely Jewish, commitment to social justice.
On college campuses from coast to coast, Jewish student activists are playing key roles in the growing campaign against sweatshop labor at home and abroad. At Harvard University, Jewish students helped lead recent protests backing a “living wage” for university employees.
Many Jewish student activists eventually become involved in the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer internship internship program or other efforts. Eventually, some will become full-time union organizers.
Who are they? They’re people like Tana Becker, who’s worked to organize hospital workers in Massachusetts; and Avi Green, who, through the Jewish Labor Committee, mobilized support for worker concerns throughout our community.
At the core of the labor movement’s appeal to these and other young activists is the traditional commitment of unions to defend the rights of workers, especially the working poor. After all, the great medieval rabbi and philosopher Maimonides himself taught that helping people to support themselves is the very highest form of charity.
Ironically, the beneficiaries of this “new wave” of Jewish union activism are often immigrant workers whose problems are eerily reminiscent of those faced by our own grandparents.
Though today’s immigrant workers are more likely to hail from Mexico or Asia than Russia and Poland, the difficulties they face are largely the same: poverty wages, dangerous working conditions and employer intimidation and abuse.
For example, my union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union found that in New York City, supermarket delivery workers — many of them recent immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean — were often on the job 60 to 80 hours per week, but earned as little as $1.10 per hour. The RWDSU not only organized those workers; we also were able to help them win a $3.5 million legal settlement.
But for every immigrant worker who does win the respect that comes with having a union, many more are still suffering without it.
As we celebrate Labor Day our community can be proud. Of course, we’ll always be proud of the role unions played in helping an earlier generation of Jews into the American middle class.
But, this year, we can also take special pride in the role young Jewish activists are playing to bring the benefits of unionization to today’s immigrant workers. Our grandparents would be proud.
Stuart Appelbaum is president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union; and president of the Jewish Labor Committee.
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