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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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(9/9/00 Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper)
by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
John J. Sweeney's parent's were Irish American immigrants. Mine began their working life as share croppers in Manning, S.C.
We share a life experience, however, that guides our vision of America, one that is far more important than any accident of ancestry. We both understand what it is like to work hard - and still struggle to survive.
His father drove a bus. My father labored at Davison Chemical in Curtis Bay. Both our mothers did domestic work to help balance our families' budgets.
In both families, it was our fathers' union membership that opened the doors to survival and success, so when John spoke from his heart at the Democratic National Convention, his words expressed something important that lives deep within my own.
"In our home," Mr. Sweeney declared, "three things were central to our lives: our family, our faith and my father's union."
"We knew that without our family, there would be no love, that without our faith, there would be no redemption, and that without my father's union, there would be no food on the table."
Today, John Sweeney is the President of the AFL-CIO, and I serve in the Congress of the United States. In many ways, our lives have taken different paths, but in one essential way we are the same.
We are both sons of Labor. For us, Labor Day is not just another holiday.
When my daughters ask me about Labor Day, I tell them about A. Phillip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters and their role in bringing about the integration of the U.S. military and the movement for civil rights.
On Labor Day, I remind my children that before their grandparents had a union to stand by them, they were forced to work from sun up to sun down for 15 cents an hour.
Today, although union members earn more than twice the minimum wage, they lead the fight to increase our nation's basic wage rate because it is the right thing for us to do.
Today, African American union members earn 40% more than their non-union counterparts.
In my family, Labor Day is a day when we remember that the Chemical Workers Union helped my parents buy their first and only home. We thank God every day that the union negotiated a good medical plan with prescription coverage to protect my parents during their retirement.
I am a son of Labor, and, for me, the national issues central to working families are not abstract propositions. They are central to my own life experience
I cannot rest until we enact a national minimum wage that is a living wage. My own parents were forced to work too many hours just to support their family - leaving too little time to spend with their children and each other.
Supporting Title I, Head Start and other federal aid to education is a personal mission in my life. I remember the strengths and limitations of the public schools I attended as a child.
I know how difficult paying for college can be for working families because I remember what it was like to sweep out the machine shop at Bethlehem Steel to earn money for school.
Because of my family's struggles, Labor Day is not a day to relax at the beach. It is a time for reflection, a time to rededicate myself to the inherent value of America's working families - families just like John Sweeney's and my own.
I am the son of a labor movement that now welcomes African Americans and women, that shares our dream of a nation that will truly honor and support working families every day of the year.
Mr. Sweeney expressed our shared goal in Los Angeles. It is nothing less than an America in which "...every individual - regardless of the accident of their birth, or the color of their skin, or the selection of their partner - should be able to rise as high as their talents will take them."
Led by America's unions, black and white working families have joined together in a common cause. In our time, and in our space, we will reform this nation.
Working together, we can create an America in which every day is Labor Day.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
