Special Events

Labor Day

September 7, 2009

Labor Day is a holiday established to honor workers and the effortss that they make in their jobs and to their community. There is some cloudiness as to the origin of Labor Day and who is responsible for it. Following are some bits of information on the history of Labor Day.

• 1882 - Matthew Maguire, later secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J. proposed a Holiday for Labor while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York.

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  1882 - Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor suggested a day to honor workers.

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  September 5, 1882 - The Central Labor Union held its first Labor Day holiday in New York City. A second Labor Day was again held a year later on September 5, 1883.

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  1884 - The first Monday in September was selected as the holiday and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to also celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date.

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  February 21, 1887 - Oregon passed the first bill to become law making Labor Day an official holiday.

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  June 28, 1894 - The U.S.A. Congress passed an act making the first Monday of September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories including all Federal workers in all states. The individual States still had to enact their own legislation which 31 States had done already by this time.

References

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Creek/9369/project7/labor.html Retrieved April 2009.