Dear UMPI Community,
As we observe Labor Day in the US, I invite you to reflect on the history and meaning of this national holiday, one whose origins lie in the workers’ movements of the late nineteenth century.
On September 5, 1882, some 10,000 workers, many giving up a day’s pay, marched from City Hall to Union Square in New York City in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union, generally regarded as the nation’s first Labor Day celebration. The observance spread quickly: Oregon became the first state to establish Labor Day as an official holiday in 1887, and by 1894 twenty-three other states had followed suit.
Maine, I am proud to note, was among the earliest. Our state’s first Labor Day celebration took place on August 31, 1886, when the Knights of Labor gathered more than 3,000 people on Peaks Island for a day of rest and recreation; the Maine legislature made it an official holiday five years later, in 1891.
President Grover Cleveland signed it into law in June 1894, in the midst of the Pullman Strike—a national railway boycott that would end, within weeks, with federal troops in the streets of Chicago. The recognition of labor’s dignity has never come easily and this holiday commemorates a history of struggle as much as one of celebration.
That history speaks directly to who we are as a university. Everything we accomplish at UMPI—every course taught, every building maintained, every student supported—is the work of people, and Labor Day invites us to honor that work in all its forms, from students to faculty to staff to the families who support us and whom we support in turn. My particular thanks go to those members of our community who will spend part of this holiday working on our behalf, planned or unplanned.
Wherever you are on this day, I hope you will take a moment to join me in gratitude for the generations of workers, here in Maine and across the country, whose labor and sacrifice built the freedoms and protections we honor today and every day.
