The Penguin

  Workers strike for safer conditions during the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic - eerily similar to today! What is Labor Day? It's become a day for sales, vacations, barbecues - a fill-in holiday between July 4th and Halloween. The meaning of Labor Day has been obscured, packed away as a historical event, shuffled under the rug as an inconvenience. Most people know Labor Day as a dumb joke: "Isn't it ironic that you don't "labor" on Labor Day?" But hidden within Labor Day is the long and tortured history of American labor - the workers who, with no rights, near-universal hatred, and in desperate circumstances, literally fought for the right to organize themselves against the all-powerful companies that hired them. Workers faced miniscule pay, long work hours, no benefits, deadly working conditions, harassment and even assault by managers and supervisors, and the fear of being fired or laid off at any time and for any reason. Those who struck - stopped wo...