• Intention of Labor Day not what it is today

    I Like Pike
  • More than the last fling of summer, Labor Day weekend is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.
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    Pike County has several strong historical ties to the labor movement.
    Pennsylvania's former first lady, Cornelia Pinchot, was a vocal advocate of wage and union protections for women and children. She was the wife of Gov. Gifford Pinchot of Grey Towers in Milford.
    Cornelia Pinchot marched in 1933 with striking workers seeking higher wages. She was appointed to a state committee that investigated sweat shop labor and her husband helped strengthen child labor laws in Pennsylvania.
    In Bushkill, a major recreation and education center for union workers started in 1924 when the land was sold to the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
    They called the property the Unity House and Camp Tamiment, located where Eagle Village, Tamiment, and the Mountain Laurel Center for Performing Arts stand today.
    In the 1920s, union members and their families vacationed at the resort, enjoying typical resort activities, plus lectures by college professors, union leaders and public figures.
    By 1945, union vacationers numbered 10,000 a summer. They enjoyed retreats, forums and even musical productions featuring union songs designed to bolster union solidarity.
    Politicians visited Unity House, including Eleanor Roosevelt. The Unity House operated at a loss and finally closed in 1989.
    Compared to the days before labor laws, more of today's jobs are cushy, because of people who fought for safe environments and a 40-hour work week.
    Labor Day is about children in coal mines, shameful wages and workers trapped in fires or injured while working on machines without safety devices. But too much government regulation and unreasonable union power has strangled some businesses and stagnated industrial growth.
    Now workers in other countries make our goods, many while working in the same crummy conditions U.S. unions fought against.
    Was that the intention of the original labor organizers?
    As U.S. jobs disappear, people take what they can get, lower wages and working several jobs to pay the bills.
    I don't have the solution to today's many labor questions. But it seems our leaders should talk about the relationship between jobs and industry and, for once, stay on topic until everyone who wants to work can get a job.
    Because the only thing worse than a bad job is no job at all.
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