Labor Day

Labor Day

Back to School Many students in the United States go back to school right after Labor Day, the first Monday in September. For those students, this holiday means the end of summer. It's a time to have fun before the school year starts. Government offices and many businesses close. Many towns and cities hold parades and picnics. Labor Day isn't just a day to take it easy, though. It's also a day to honor American workers, past and present. To understand what Labor Day honors, it's important to learn about the history of workers in the United States.

Machines and Workers In the late 1700s and early 1800s, many new kinds of machines were invented. People who had money to buy the machines started to make more money. However, machines now did jobs that poorer people used to do. Many of those people moved to cities and went to work in factories. They no longer had any other way to make money. Many factory owners wanted to pay workers as little as possible. Workers were afraid they would lose their jobs if they asked for more money. In the 1800s, low pay, long working hours, and unsafe workplaces were common.

Tough Jobs Many workers in the 1800s didn't get much time off. At that time, the United States had no rules about how many hours people worked each day or week. Many factory workers worked one hundred hours a week! (That's about fourteen hours every day. ) They worked as much as they were told to because they didn't want to lose their jobs.

Child Labor Many children were also forced to work. By the early 1800s, about two million children were working in mills or factories. Children often held jobs before the age of seven. Many worked six days a week for up to eighteen hours each day. They had little time for rest and no time for school or play. Many children became sick from the long hours at work.

Workers Join Together Over time, workers wanted more of a say in how they were treated. Groups of workers came together to form labor unions to protect their rights in the workplace. Labor unions try to get companies to agree to better hours, pay, and safer workplaces. Unions sometimes call for workers to stop working, or strike, to get a better deal at their jobs. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant made a new rule that government workers only had to work eight hours each day. Soon after, people started working to get a law passed that would do the same for all workers.