Putting the “labor” back in Labor Day

Revisit our conversation with writer and activist Kim Kelly on the resurgent power of unions, and what the future holds

Happy Labor Day! It’s a great time for grilling, but it’s also a great time to remember the labor in Labor Day. And it’s a great time to revisit our conversation with Kim Kelly.

Kelly is a journalist and activist, a contributor to The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among many others. She has made a career of explaining the labor movement to general audiences — even to readerships that may seem unlikely (if you’ve talked with a younger person lately about the idea of a general strike, there’s a good chance they learned about it through Kelly’s writing on the subject in Teen Vogue).

Kelly is the author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold Story of American Labor, a history of the struggle for workers’ rights in the United States that foregrounds the concurrent fights for race, class, and gender equity that shaped the union movement.

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The labor movement in this country is stronger than at any time in recent memory, winning real victories, but at the same time electoral democracy in the United States seems to be on the ropes. How does labor activism fit into the larger context of struggles over democracy?

Honestly, I think that the labor movement, especially over the past few years, really should be held up as a shining example of what our democratic process should look like, especially in terms of what the UAW and several other unions have done (or are now trying to do) with one member, one vote campaigns. They’re moving towards more direct democratic processes to elect their leaders, making sure that every member's vote actually counts.