- A three-day weekend. The unofficial end to summer. A last call for beach trips and barbecues. For all the ways North Carolinians will celebrate Labor Day in 2016, little thought may be given to the origins of this national holiday and just how much the history and consequences of the labor movement factor in to our daily lives on every other day of the year.
In the decades following the the Civil War, technological and business innovation ushered in the industrial revolution, resulting in the largest leap in productive capacity and prosperity the world had ever seen. American industrialists such as Carnegie, Rockefeller and the Vanderbilts amassed unimaginable wealth supporting, fueling and connecting the nation like never before.
As farm and factory workers endured unending work schedules, working and living in less than ideal conditions in myriad company-owned towns, labor leaders emerged and began to organize on behalf of the working man.
American innovators and opportunists alike became known as robber barons, as popular perceptions of their ruthless tactics, juxtaposed with their workers’ wanting circumstances, bred a dual resentment that powered the proliferation of unions that campaigned for shorter hours, collective bargaining and safer working conditions.
Some municipalities in the Northeast began recognizing a working man’s holiday in the 1880s, with New York City’s influential Central Labor Union marking Sept. 5, 1882, as the Big Apple’s first official Labor Day. Followed up the next year on the same date, the holiday spread with the growth of labor unions to industrial centers around the country, with Oregon passing the first statewide law designating Labor Day in 1887.
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