“You must not exploit the laborer who relies upon their wages, whether a fellow citizen or a stranger in one of your communities. You must pay their wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for their lives depend upon it, lest anyone cry out to God against you and you incur Divine guilt.”
—Deuteronomy 24:14-15
Today is Labor Day, a national holiday signed into law in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland, mere days before he dispatched federal troops to Chicago to end the Pullman railway union strike, a decision that resulted in 30 deaths, even more injuries, and the imprisonment of several key labor leaders. Though the media, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times, routinely depicted the striking workers as malevolent anarchists, a federal commission later condemned the Pullman company for exploiting its workers and refusing to negotiate fair wages.
Though a purely symbolic (and ironic) gesture, Labor Day emboldened many Americans already working to improve conditions for laborers across the nation, including American Jewish labor leaders such as Abraham Cahan, Daniel DeLeon, Joseph Barondess, Clara Lemlich, and Pauline Newman, who transformed the garment industry into one of the most organized and regulated trades in America, while paving the way for safety regulations and workers’ rights in other fields as well.
Jewish labor organizers often relied upon the teachings of our tradition to inform their policies and to inspire progress. In fact, the Uprising of 20,0000, an 11-week strike by more than 20,000 Jewish women garment workers in 1909, began after thousands, listening to Clara Lemlich, affirmed a pledge derived from Psalm 137:5: “If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may my right hand wither from the arm I now raise.”
As we celebrate a national holiday informed by our own tradition’s teachings, we are reminded to consider how our tradition’s teachings might shape our civic virtues, and, in so doing, help lead to a better future for all our citizens.
—Rabbi Josh Knobel