For Bangor’s Labor Day in 1905, area unions chartered a special train, 13 cars long, and filled it with 600 union people and another 400 supporters to travel to Lewiston to celebrate Labor Day.

The previous year’s Labor Day celebration was held in Bangor and the Bangor Daily News gave extensive front-page coverage of the event. The BDN describes the more than 2,000 union members marching through Bangor “filled with good-fellowship and triumph … a potent example typified in thousands of silent, stalwart men, of the strength and force and dignity which labor organization brings.”

Union members filled the grandstands at Maplewood Park, listened to 11 bands, played baseball, went to a ball and listened to speakers. The BDN extensively quotes the Bangor Labor Day keynote address given by the Hon. J.F. Sheehan, who laid the groundwork for the development of unions:

“It is often said that the union men of America are discontented. If this be so – and I deny it not – then it is a virtue and not a vice. The discontent that urges a man to rise above the lowly station where his lot is cast; that makes more money, better homes, nobler men and truer women; that has shortened the hours of labor and improved the scale of pay; that has given the United States the political liberty and social equality which it enjoys now; and which lastly, the trade unions of the land are going to ferment until it has equalized the scale between employers and employed until the American working man can stand up to all the world and say: ‘I am a man, with a man’s feelings and a man’s rights; I will be the faithful employ of any; but the unconsidered slave of none – this discontent, I say, must be hailed as a glory rather than as a sin!”

An important truth of the 20th century was that America’s union members took their discontent and used it to advance our country. It was their discontent that made possible the progressive standards that we enjoy today such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, work place safety, overtime legislation, the end to piece work and homework, the end to child labor among others. It has been discontent, which gave rise to the civil rights and women’s rights that we now enjoy today.

On Labor Day 2005, the American labor movement continues to embrace discontent and with it the ability to positively contribute to our society’s social improvement.

The widely respected human rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), did an extensive investigation of worker rights in the United States in 2000. In the reports’ summary, HRW noted, “Human rights cannot flourish where workers’ rights are not enforced” and concluded “that that freedom of association is a right under severe, often buckling pressure when workers in the United States try to exercise it.”

Today in America a whole cottage industry of “union avoidance” law firms and consultants offers their service to put severe pressure on workers to scare and intimidate workers who organize a union. For example, at least since July management at Eastern Maine Medical Center has used a high-priced outfit out of Houston named PTI Labor Research to aid in their campaign against their own employees’ democratic efforts.

EMMC’s campaign has followed a distressingly familiar script, whose goal is to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. EMMC top management, in written communication to employees, requests that workers give the union their “trust” and “not sign or support the Machinists.” Management has held dozens of one-on-one meetings with workers, where they discourage unions. They have handed out letters to employees that call union cards “legally binding documents that can obligate you to follow union rules and regulations including paying dues to the union without any assurances that you will obtain what the union may have promised.” Ridiculous.

All these resources and energy that EMMC puts into fighting the union are a drain on EMMC mission of caring for patients.

In Brewer, DHL’s local contractor, Rydbom, responded to its employees in a much cruder anti-union fashion, simply illegally firing them. (These workers are now back to work.)

Unions at their heart are simply democracy in the workplace. Unions provide a way for workers to gain a voice so that mutually respectful conversations about working conditions can occur. The truth is organizing a union is a time-consuming, difficult and often heroic activity. People don’t go through all this work for money, as there are far easier ways to make a buck than organizing a union.

The people who go through all this trouble -and I’ve been privileged to meet and directly work with hundreds and hundreds of these people — do it for very simple reasons: they care about doing their job well, they care about their co-workers and they care about justice.

Following in the tradition of the unions of the Bangor region, please join us for a Labor Day where we not only celebrate and relax, we also work to figure out how to transform workplace discontent into the advancement of our community and our society. The public is invited and the event begins at 3 p.m. For more information, call 989-4141.

Jack McKay is president of the Greater Bangor Area Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.