Yup, Labor Day - the one day a year working stiffs get a little recognition. If you want to see what that used to mean, read on.
Once A Year Day is the title of a song from the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. By today's standards, it's a socialist-communist subversive propaganda piece, with a hell of a soundtrack. Back in 1954 when it premiered, labor unions in the U.S. were at their highest membership - roughly a third of all workers belonged to a union. It was a time when American workers had come back from the Great Depression, won World War II, and were going on to new levels of economic prosperity fueled by things like the G.I. Bill in the post war era.
The Pajama Game is a time capsule of an America that has largely vanished, when it was possible to earn a living wage without an advanced education, when unions were a force to be reckoned with in politics, when the memories of the massive failures of capitalism in the Great Depression were still fresh in people's minds, the New Deal still reverberated, and the financial sector had yet to break loose again and wreak havoc.
It may seem like ancient history - but it has a lot to teach us today. (more)
The title may confuse people at first. The 'Game' is the business of making pajamas, not some kind of sexual farce/drama - although there's plenty of sexuality in the show. The setting for the musical is the Sleep Tite Pajama company, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There's unrest in the factory; the workers have been negotiating for a 7 and a half cent per hour raise to keep up with the rest of the industry. The plant manager Myron Hasler has been stonewalling their demands for months. Sid Sorokin the new shop superintendent is trying to keep things under control on the shop floor, while trying to persuade Hasler to come to some kind of agreement.
"Old Man" Hasler is a classic, hard core capitalist. There's a topical reference in the show to a 1950s conservative talk radio host (some things haven't changed) that Hasler listens to all the time. Hasler's also a bit paranoid about letting anyone see the company books...
Sid's caught in the middle. He's just managed to move up from the shop floor himself from another city, and this is his big chance. He finds himself tangling with "Babe" Williams, head of the union grievance committee over labor issues at first - and then over romantic issues as the two of them are mutually attracted to each other. There's plenty of other sources of tension in the factory as well.
Vernon Hines is the factory timekeeper, a man dedicated to shaving seconds off every production task and keeping the factory moving at top speed. He's also insanely jealous of his girl friend, Gladys Hotchkiss, who is the secretary to Hasler. The head of the union is Prez - a bit of a Lothario, but sincerely dedicated to the union nonetheless.
The song Racing With The Clock captures the stress on the shop floor, in the relentless drive to get as much out of the workforce every hour as possible. This is before OSHA or concern about things like repetitive stress injuries. It foreshadows the productivity gains in the U.S. that would end up with fewer workers doing more, and the gains being pocketed by management and shareholders - for those industries that didn't move to non-union states or overseas. (The video comes from the 1957 Warner Brothers movie version of the Pajama Game.)
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The song Once A Year Day is set at the annual Company Picnic, the one day a year everyone gets to relax and blow off steam, outside the factory. It's a regular Bacchanalian frenzy. Hasler has helped fund the outing, but it's largely the union that makes it possible. It's a wild dance number, but it's also a reminder that people who work hard also need to play hard. A work place isn't just a job after all - it's a kind of community with a shared culture. Set in an era when lifetime employment with decent wages and benefits didn't seem like an impossible dream, the high spirits seem poignant today.
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Negotiations over the wage demands continue to go nowhere, and tensions continue to rise. Babe and Sid are caught between their romantic interest in each other - and their roles on opposite sides in the labor-management struggle. When the union stages a slow down, an incident forces Sid to fire Babe. The rest of the story turns on whether or not Sid can find a way to reconcile his conflicting interests, settle the dispute equitably, and win back Babe. (There's also some secondary romantic tangles going on elsewhere that lead to some amusing scenes, as does the discovery that the workforce has found a creative way to use quality control issues in their tactics.)
Not to give away too much, the musical number Seven and a Half Cents is the key to understanding the crux of why the union is fighting. It sounds like a trivial amount of money - but it adds up. This is from the big union rally towards the end of the play.
(Prez)
With a pencil and a pad I figured it out!
Only five years from today!
Only five years from today!
I can see it all before me!
Only five years from today!
Five years! Let's see..thats 260 weeks, times forty hours every week, and roughly two and a quarter hours overtime.. at time
and a half for overtime! Comes to exactly.. $852.74!
That's enough for me to get
An automatic washing machine,
A years supply of gasoline,
Carpeting for the living room,
A vacuum instead of a blasted broom,
Not to mention a forty inch television set!
(Chorus)
So! Although!
Seven and a half cents doesn't buy a hell of a lot,
Seven and a half cents doesn't mean a thing!
But give it to me every hour,
Forty hours every week,
And that's enough for me to be living like a king!
Allowing for inflation, it's easy to see when laid out like that (and there's more) what kind of impact a small amount of money can have over time. This is what grew the middle class, created the demand for goods that grew the economy, and let ordinary people care for themselves and their families. (Note how many of the things Prez wants to buy are no longer made in this country....)
Now look at the austerity mania of today, where the work force is told either make concessions or end up on the street. Think about the goods not purchased, the employees laid off elsewhere, the growing inability to put kids through school, pay medical bills, retire, the lost tax revenues that starve government to where it can't provide services... This is what we've forgotten in the last 50 years, this is what the lies the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute put out are meant to hide from us, this is what the Koch brothers don't want us to know. This is why the Great Recession continues.
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Don't let Hasler's talk of compromise at the end of the clip fool you - let's just say he was never negotiating in good faith - and got caught out. (Again, some things never change.)
Now there's plenty more to The Pajama Game than I've extracted here, but on Labor Day, these are parts that really resonate. (Although I won't object if you want to enjoy some of the other big numbers like Hey There, Hernando's Hideaway, or Steam Heat from the big union rally.) We don't have a five day work week, safety in the workplace, Social Security or any of the other things that should make it possible to live well on an honest day's wage for an honest day of work because billionaire job creators took pity on us, or market forces magically bestowed them on us. We got them through sweat, determination, organization, political action, and even bloodshed. And if we're going to get them back and keep them, we're going to have to keep fighting for them.
If you've never seen The Pajama Game, you may be able to find a copy of the movie, or a local production. It's a favorite of community theaters and school drama clubs. It's got some pretty pointed lessons for today, as well as some great music and a good story. It has a number of strong female characters who are real participants in the action. What's not to like?
Hope you're all having a good Labor Day weekend, that you all have good jobs to go back to, and that you still have hope that we can turn this thing around.