Abstract

Anti-Labor Day: 1959

Since Labor Day is a legal holiday in tribute to American labor, next week's celebration could hardly have come at a more embarrassing moment. What happened recently in the U.S. Congress, in the field of labor legislation does not lend itself to interpretation as a tribute to the trade-union movement, nor does the steel strike promise much for the organized worker. Indeed, the strike marks a dangerous labor relation in the country labor relations in this country. Nowhere do labor developments furnish palatable material for the usual Labor Day oratory. If the trade Unions did not have such deep and permanent roots in American society, and a book membership numbering close to 18,000,000, one would be tempted to compare the current anti-labor mood in the nation with the beginning of the "anti-Communist" wave of the early post-war years that culminated in the reign of McCarthyism.