For Immediate Release
Wednesday, September 01, 1999
C.I.O. Founding Tops List of Labor's Triumphs in 20th Century
WASHINGTON —There was no other century like it. Previously silent, subservient and totally dependent on employer whims, American workers, in the 20th century, made strides never before dreamed possible.
Approaching the final Labor Day of this remarkable century, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees unveiled the 10 greatest labor accomplishments, as ranked by a group of the nation’s top labor scholars and historians from Harvard, Yale, and Cornell Universities, MIT and Washington’s Economic Policy Institute. The list is as follows:
- CIO Founded (1938)
- Social Security Act (1935)
- National Labor Relations Act (1935)
- GM Sit Down Strikes (1936-37)
- Civil Rights Act/Title VII (1964)
- Public Sector Organizing (1962-1980)
- Fair Labor Standards Act (1938)
- "Bread and Roses" Strike (1912)
- World War II Support
- Occupational Safety & Health Act (1970)
Announcing the list to reporters at a news conference, Gerald W. McEntee, president of AFSCME, noted the tremendous courage of American workers who organized in a hostile environment and finally won basic workplace rights. "We take today’s employment conditions for granted, forgetting the risks our ancestors took to make workplaces safe and more humane, to take care of the oppressed, the sick and the aged. Many of these victories came with bloodshed and all came because of great courage."
McEntee also noted that challenges remain in the American workplace. A major challenge, offered by the labor experts, was eliminating divisions among workers to increase the effectiveness of employees in seeking workplace changes. "What the scholars have said is that unions must help Americans to see that if you’re not the boss, you’re a worker, just like every other worker around you. And just as the CIO opened doors to new groups of workers excluded in the early days from the AFL, unions today must bring new groups of workers into the Labor movement."
The labor scholars who contributed to the list of 20th century Labor accomplishments include: Professors John T. Dunlop and Marshall Ganz of Harvard; Professor Thomas Kochan of MIT’s Sloan School of Management; Professor David Montgomery of Yale University; Professors Clete Daniel and Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell; and Eileen Appelbaum, Research Director at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. The scholars each received a list of 25 events associated with the labor movement and were ask to rank the accomplishments in order of greatness, importance and significance and to add any other accomplishment they felt should be included.
The Labor movement is credited with having a direct impact on many significant accomplishments this century that have improved the lives of countless workers.
For more information see:
- Labor Day remarks of President McEntee
- Top 10 Accomplishments List
- Biographies of the labor scholars
