Prepared by: Qais Ahmad

Labor Day This holiday is celebrated on the first Monday of September. It was originated by Peter J. McGuire, who was in a union that helped honor the workers. President Grover Cleveland designated it a Federal holiday.

Prepared by: Qais Ahmad How did Labor Day came out? ( background) Pullman, Illinois was a company town, founded in 1880 by George Pullman, president of the railroad sleeping car company. Pullman designed and built the town to stand as a utopian workers' community insulated from the moral (and political) seductions of nearby Chicago. The town was strictly, almost feudally, organized: row houses for the assembly and craft workers; modest Victorians for the managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman himself lived and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman would lodge while in town. 1. It’s residents all worked for the Pullman company, their paychecks drawn from Pullman bank, and their rent, set by Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly paychecks. The town, and the company, operated smoothly and successfully for more than a decade.

Prepared by: Qais Ahmad But after sometimes this company was caught in the nationwide economic depression, orders for railroad cars declined, so Pullman had to lay off hundreds of Labors, those who remind, endure wage cut, while the rent of home remind the same, so the people and employee came out on roads and start protesting, and the Pullmans men started striking, rioting, pillaging and burning of railroad cars, this strike become a national issue, president Glove Cleveland face with nervous executives of the railroad workers, he declared the strike a federal crime, president sent soldiers to break the strike, two labors were killed when the deputy marshal fired on protester, but the strike was closed for sometime, Debs the leader of Labors was in jail, but it was not the end, he started campaigning behind bars and won the millions of votes for socialist tickets in the presidential race but he was not elected.

Prepared by: Qais Ahmad The First Labor Day The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Prepared by: Qais Ahmad Labor Day: a good-bye to summer Almost a century since Gompers spoke ( The day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it.) Though; Labor Day is seen as the last long weekend of summer. And everyone who can takes a vacation on the first Monday of September. Friends and families gather, and clog the highways, and the picnic grounds, and their own backyards -- and bid farewell to summer.

Prepared by: Qais Ahmad The Customs of Labor Day A custom that people do on Labor Day is having the Labor Day Parade. In the parade there are marching bands, flags and people marching through the street.

Prepared by: Qais Ahmad Customs of Labor Day (Continued) One of the customs of Labor Day is getting the day off from school for children and getting off from work for the adults. Also on Labor Day groups of people get together and have union picnics, barbeques and end of the summer beach parties.

Prepared by: Qais Ahmad