A union organization is holding a rally in downtown Jacksonville on Saturday of Labor Day Weekend to protest government cuts to workers’ rights and to remind residents how the holiday for laborers got started.
The North Florida Central Labor Council is calling residents of Jacksonville to join their rally Saturday at 11 a.m. at 400 West Bay St. in the heart of downtown. The event is titled “Stand up for workers.”
Russell Harper, President of the organization, said it’s a good time to remind residents how labor unions secured rights for workers across America.
“It’s to protest the actions of Rick Scott and the current legislators we have that are anti-worker, anti-union and anti-any-kind-of-human rights, unless you’re the rich and wealthy,” Harper said.
The Labor Council is the local wing of the Florida AFL-CIO. It’s composed of separate union shops in Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties. The organization has been around for about a half-century and has about 21,000 members in the First Coast region.
Harper said the organization expects “hundreds” of people to attend the rally Saturday morning. But he acknowledged that he hopes the gathering draws an even larger crowd.
“It will be mostly labor union leaders and activists who will be speaking and there will be a program. We invited a few legislators,” Harper said while acknowledging that some declined.
The Jacksonville event coincides with national AFL-CIO efforts and events taking place across the country ahead of Labor Day on Monday. Those national events are designed to reinforce the reality that many existing workers’ rights are direct results of unions and efforts that were successful in changing working conditions more than a century ago.
“We want to bring us all together and celebrate that long ago, it was 1894 to be exact, Labor Day was established as the first Monday in September by President Grover Cleveland,” Harper said.
“That was brought about by workers protesting poor working conditions and 60 hours was the average work week at that time. Unions fought for the 40-hour work week, Social Security, child labor protection.”
The protest is challenging the prevailing government posture, according to Harper, that holds an anti-union perspective.
“The protest is to try to tell the government at all levels to quit abusing workers and quit taking away the rights that we worked so hard to get,” Harper said.
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