136 Fun Facts About Labor Day

When is Labor Day celebrated in the United States?

First Monday in September: Congress fixed the date in June 1894, and Canada's Parliament chose the same Monday weeks later, so the two neighbours have shared the holiday ever since.

Which pageant did Atlantic City businessmen dream up in 1921 to keep tourists in town after Labor Day?

Miss America paid off at once: crowds packed the Boardwalk for the first contest, won by Margaret Gorman, a 16-year-old from Washington, D.C.

The first Labor Day parade in 1882 nearly failed to start because the few punctual marchers lacked what?

They had no music. Two hundred jewelers from Newark then arrived off the ferry with a band, spectators fell in behind, and the parade finally set off from City Hall.

Virginia's law forcing most schools to open after Labor Day was nicknamed after which park?

Kings Dominion and other Virginia attractions lobbied for the rule so families had one more holiday weekend to visit; the state repealed the 'Kings Dominion law' in 2019.

New York held the first Labor Day parade, but which western state first made it a legal holiday?

Oregon passed its law on February 21, 1887, beating New York, which had been first to introduce a bill, and acting seven years before Congress did.

Which Central Labor Union secretary is credited with first proposing Labor Day in 1882?

Descendants of two men with near-identical surnames still argue over which great-grandfather fathered the holiday; a Paterson newspaper called Maguire its 'undisputed author'.

Which AFL co-founder is credited with proposing Labor Day after seeing a labor festival in Canada in 1882?

Peter J. McGuire, a prominent labor leader and co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, is frequently cited for proposing the idea of Labor Day.

Roughly how many people packed the post-parade picnic on the first Labor Day in 1882?

Some 25,000 people filled the picnic grounds from afternoon into the night; even unions that skipped the march turned up for the speeches, cigars and lager kegs 'mounted in every conceivable place'.

Labor Day traditionally marks the unofficial end of which season in the United States?

For many, Labor Day weekend symbolizes the unofficial close of the summer season.

Which US president signed the 1894 act making Labor Day a national holiday?

Grover Cleveland signed the act on June 28, 1894, only days before he sent federal troops to Chicago to break a nationwide rail strike.

Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894 just as which railroad strike was spreading across the country?

The Pullman Strike's rail boycott began on June 26, 1894, and the holiday was signed two days later; within a week federal troops were in Chicago and the dispute turned deadly.

The first New York City Labor Day parade marched from City Hall to which location?

Union Square, where the marchers filed past a reviewing stand, was made a National Historic Landmark in 1997 chiefly as the site of that first parade; many carried on to a park at 42nd Street.

A labour festival in which Canadian city is said to have inspired the first American Labor Day parade in 1882?

Toronto had paraded for labour since an 1872 rally for striking printers, which pushed Canada to legalise unions; an American union leader who watched a later festival there took the idea home.

Which vice president urged Americans to 'speak softly and carry a big stick' at the Minnesota State Fair on Labor Day 1901?

Theodore Roosevelt gave the speech on September 2, 1901, and became president twelve days later, when William McKinley died of an assassin's bullet.

Labor Day's early-September date was pitched as sitting midway between which two holidays?

Fourth of July and Thanksgiving: the 1882 proposal liked early September for its fine weather and for breaking up the long stretch between the two public holidays.

What common tradition, alongside parades and barbecues, is associated with Labor Day celebrations?

Labor Day celebrations often include parades, barbecues, and family picnics.

During the Cold War, Soviet leaders reviewed huge 1 May parades from atop Lenin's tomb in which square?

Red Square turned on its hosts in 1990: protesters let into the parade booed Mikhail Gorbachev and the Kremlin leadership with shouts of 'Resign!' until they filed off the mausoleum.

Which major union, formed in 1881, was co-founded by the man who later claimed to have proposed Labor Day?

Peter J. McGuire founded the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in 1881.

On France's 1 May Labour Day, people traditionally give loved ones sprigs of which spring flower?

Lily of the valley, or muguet: Charles IX is said to have been handed a sprig as a lucky charm on 1 May 1561, and on that one day anyone in France may sell the flowers tax-free.

The 1935 Labor Day hurricane wrecked the Florida Keys railroad built by which tycoon?

Henry Flagler rode the first train into Key West in 1912 on a line mocked as 'Flagler's Folly'; after the storm the railway could not afford to rebuild and sold its roadbed and bridges to the state.

On what day of the week was New York's first Labor Day celebration held in 1882?

The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, organized by the Central Labor Union.

Along with Connecticut and Pennsylvania, which state had passed a Labor Day law by the end of the 1880s?

Nebraska, with Connecticut and Pennsylvania, followed the five states of 1887 before the decade was out; by 1894, 23 more had joined before Congress made the day a national holiday.

Which Pulitzer-winning William Inge play, filmed in 1955 with William Holden, unfolds on Labor Day in a small Kansas town?

Picnic follows a drifter who hops off a freight train on Labor Day morning and upends the town within 24 hours; the 1953 stage production gave Paul Newman his Broadway debut.

The US chose September for Labor Day partly out of wariness of May Day's ties to what kind of politics?

May Day's links to socialist and anarchist movements made U.S. officials prefer September; May 1 was later given patriotic observances instead, none of them legal public holidays.

Which New Mexico village celebrates its famous green chile harvest with a festival every Labor Day weekend?

Hatch bills itself as the chile capital of the world; its festival began in 1971 as a modest gathering of local farmers and has since drawn crowds of 30,000 to the village.

Which deadly 1886 Chicago clash made US officials wary of adopting May 1 as a labor holiday?

Haymarket Affair: a bomb thrown at police breaking up a labor rally set off violence that left seven officers dead, four men were hanged after a disputed trial, and workers abroad took up May 1 in memory.

Which computer pioneer bankrolled the US Festival, a giant open-air concert held in California over Labor Day weekend 1982?

Steve Wozniak, rich from Apple, set up a company called Unuson, short for 'Unite Us in Song', to stage it, and lost millions of dollars on the weekend.

China stretches its 1 May Labour Day holiday by reshuffling weekends, creating one of the breaks nicknamed what?

Golden Week: the long breaks were introduced in 1999 to boost domestic tourism; the May one was dropped after 2007 and brought back in 2019, with nearby weekend days worked to make up the time.

Roughly how many workers marched in the first Labor Day parade in New York in 1882?

About 10,000, and up to 20,000 by some reports; yet at the 10 a.m. start only a handful had turned up, and onlookers were urging the grand marshal to give up the idea.

What type of ordinances recognising Labor Day were passed in 1885 and 1886, before any state law?

Municipal ordinances came first, in 1885 and 1886; they set off a movement for state laws that had swept much of the country by the time Congress acted in 1894.

The first Labor Day march ended at 42nd Street's Reservoir Park, known today by what name?

Bryant Park: the square beside the Croton Reservoir was renamed in 1884 for the poet William Cullen Bryant, and the New York Public Library now stands where the reservoir was.

Which union leader was jailed for six months after the 1894 rail boycott?

Eugene V. Debs, head of the American Railway Union, defied a federal injunction during the 1894 rail boycott and served six months in the Woodstock, Illinois jail.

At the Minnesota State Fair, which always ends on Labor Day, Princess Kay of the Milky Way is sculpted in what?

Butter: each year's dairy princess sits for hours in a glass-walled refrigerator while a 90-pound block is carved into her likeness, a fair ritual since the 1960s.

The 1894 act made Labor Day a legal holiday only for which group?

The 1894 act gave the day only to federal workers; everyone else depended on their state legislature or their union, and all states, D.C. and the territories eventually made it statutory.

Newark jewelers marched into the first Labor Day parade playing a tune from Patience, an opera by which duo?

Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience had opened in London only the year before; the jewelers' band struck up 'When I First Put This Uniform On' as it turned onto lower Broadway.

The 1889 congress that called the first international 1 May workers' rallies met in which European capital?

Paris: the founding congress of the Second International met there and called the 1 May 1890 rallies to press for an eight-hour working day, on a date American unions had already chosen.

Which May 1 observance, created in 1921 as 'Americanization Day', did Congress make official in 1958?

Loyalty Day was created as an explicit replacement for the workers' rallies held on May 1; the same date was later also declared Law Day, and neither is a public holiday.

Roughly what share of American workers belonged to a labor union in 2025?

About 10 percent: the 2025 rate of 10.0% was half the 20.1% of 1983, and public-sector workers were more than five times as likely to be members as private-sector ones.

One man credited with founding Labor Day ran for vice president in 1896 as the nominee of which party?

Socialist Labor Party: Matthew Maguire ran with Charles Matchett in 1896, and later research suggests that he, not the union leader usually credited, first proposed the holiday.

Spectators at the first Labor Day parade filled windows, roofs and even which street fixtures?

Lamp posts and awning frames were 'occupied by persons anxious to get a good view', the New York Tribune reported; police, braced for a riot, had ringed City Hall by 9 a.m.

Which labor organization joined New York's Central Labor Union in promoting Labor Day and its first parade in 1882?

Knights of Labor: by one early account the parade was staged alongside an assembly the order was holding in New York, and its chapters then spread September celebrations across the US and Canada.

Held on a workday by design, the 1882 parade cost each marcher what?

Marchers forfeited a day's pay: the Central Labor Union chose a workday on purpose, since giving up wages was the point, a show of commitment to better conditions.

Bumbershoot, a Labor Day weekend arts festival whose name is slang for an umbrella, fills which US city?

Seattle launched it in 1971 as the city-funded Mayor's Arts Festival, hoping to lift local spirits after the near collapse of Boeing had sunk the region into a slump.

Burning Man, which ends on Labor Day, builds its temporary city in which northern Nevada desert?

Black Rock City rises on the Black Rock Desert's dry lake bed; the wooden Man burns on the Saturday night before the holiday, and the city is then taken apart under its leave-no-trace rule.

Cleveland's Labor Day air show alternates the Air Force Thunderbirds with which other jet team?

The Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds headline in alternate years; the show began in 1964 and took over the holiday weekend that the National Air Races had made a Cleveland tradition from 1929.

The NFL traditionally plays its season kickoff game on which day after Labor Day?

Thursday has opened most seasons since the Kickoff Game began in 2002; in 2012 it moved to Wednesday to avoid clashing with President Obama's convention speech, and the 2026 opener was a Wednesday too.

The national derby held each Labor Day weekend in Crisfield, Maryland, is a race between which creatures?

Crabs: the National Hard Crab Derby celebrates the town's crabbing trade, and Crisfield also crowns a Miss Crustacean each year.

Which country marks Labour Day on the fourth Monday in October, honouring Samuel Parnell's 1840 stand for an eight-hour day?

New Zealand: a Wellington workers' meeting in October 1840 is said to have backed Parnell's rule, resolving that anyone who broke it should be ducked in the harbour.

In the 2013 film Labor Day, which actor plays escaped convict Frank opposite Kate Winslet?

Josh Brolin's Frank is a convicted murderer on the run who makes a single mother and her son take him home just before the holiday weekend, then wins them over by fixing up the house.

Darlington's Labor Day race was NASCAR's only 500-miler until which race began in 1959?

The Daytona 500 arrived in 1959 to end the Southern 500's nine-year run as NASCAR's only race of that length; Darlington's race later left Labor Day weekend after 2003 and returned to it in 2015.

Who arranged the 1976 Labor Day telethon reunion of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin?

Frank Sinatra told Lewis only that he had 'a friend who loves what you do every year', then brought Dean Martin onstage; the estranged partners embraced to a standing ovation.

Who became Jerry Lewis's co-host on the Labor Day telethon in 1973?

Ed McMahon doubled up: Johnny Carson's announcer took a break from 'Heeere's Johnny!' each Labor Day to do the same job for Lewis, having first appeared on the show in 1968.

Which president proclaimed National Grandparents Day in the 1970s, setting it on the Sunday after Labor Day?

Jimmy Carter signed the first proclamation after a West Virginia campaigner gathered proclamations from 43 states, reviving a Senate resolution that had died in committee.

In the CFL's Labour Day Classic, the Saskatchewan Roughriders face which rival?

Winnipeg Blue Bombers: the rematch a week later in Winnipeg is the Banjo Bowl, named in 2004 after a Bombers kicker's jibe that Saskatchewan fans were banjo pickers.

The NHRA U.S. Nationals, a Labor Day drag race, runs at a raceway named for which city?

Indianapolis Raceway Park, in nearby Brownsburg, has hosted the U.S. Nationals since 1961; the event began at a Great Bend, Kansas airport in 1955.

Which novelist wrote a scathing 1935 piece on veterans killed in the Labor Day hurricane?

Ernest Hemingway rode out the storm at home in Key West, reached the veterans' camps by boat, and wrote in The New Masses that the men had been left in harm's way in hurricane season.

Samuel Parnell, whose 1840 refusal to work more than eight hours a day inspired a Labour Day, followed which trade?

Samuel Parnell, a carpenter, had seen London tradesmen work 12 to 14 hours a day, and agreed to build a merchant's store in the new colony only if he worked eight.

In the 2013 film Labor Day, fugitive Frank teaches Adele and Henry to bake what?

Peach pie: Frank shows them how to bake it during the holiday weekend, and the grown-up Henry later opens a bakery on the recipe; a magazine piece about it is how Frank finds him again.

Which director made the 2013 drama Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet, from Joyce Maynard's novel?

Jason Reitman meant it to follow Up in the Air, but Kate Winslet was not free, so he made Young Adult first and waited for her.

Melbourne's 1856 eight-hour-day march, the root of Victoria's Labour Day, began on building sites with which trade?

Stonemasons downed tools on 21 April 1856 and marched from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House, winning the shorter day with no loss of pay.

Which New York City borough hosts the West Indian Day Parade, a Caribbean carnival held every Labor Day?

Brooklyn got the carnival second-hand: it began in Manhattan, but its street permit there was revoked in 1964, and organisers re-established the parade on Crown Heights' Eastern Parkway.

Who traditionally leads walkers across the Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day each year?

Michigan's governor leads the five-mile walk, a custom begun by G. Mennen Williams at the bridge's 1958 dedication; it is the one day of the year pedestrians are allowed across.

Jerry Lewis's Labor Day telethon raised money to fight which group of diseases?

Muscular dystrophy: the 1966 show, aired by a single New York station, did so well that the Muscular Dystrophy Association made Labor Day weekend the date of every telethon that followed.

Texas Southern's Labor Day Classic football game is played against which other HBCU?

Prairie View A&M missed the 1990 game: the school had dropped football that year to save money, so Texas Southern played Hampton instead. The rivals compete for the Durley-Nicks Trophy.

Veterans killed in the 1935 Labor Day hurricane were in camps building which Florida road?

The Overseas Highway: the camps employed transient veterans on its construction, and the road's final gap to Key West was closed in 1938 using the ruined railway's bridges.

Which colour does an old American fashion rule say you should stop wearing after Labor Day?

White: by one account, well-off families of the early 1900s wore lighter, whiter outfits at summer resorts and packed them away on returning to the city, and the cut-off stuck as a rule.

Burning Man began in 1986 when a wooden figure was set alight on Baker Beach in which city?

San Francisco: in 1990 park police let the builders raise the statue on the beach but not light it, so the burn moved to the Nevada desert that same year.

Which comedian hosted the 2020 online revival of the Labor Day telethon that Jerry Lewis fronted for decades?

Kevin Hart's streamed version revived a show the charity had ended after 2014, saying television audiences and donors had changed their habits and pointing to the online Ice Bucket Challenge.

Which sport's US Open is played across the Labor Day holiday in New York every year?

Tennis: the Open moved to hard courts at Flushing Meadows in 1978, and Jimmy Connors, already a winner on grass and on clay, took that year's title to complete the set of all three surfaces.

Which Caribbean nation's Labour Day parade, held on the first Friday in June, is led by bands and Junkanoo performers?

The Bahamas owes the holiday to union leader Randol Fawkes, who steered it through the House of Assembly in 1961; since 2013 the day has carried his name.

Jamaica's Labour Day on 23 May replaced which colonial observance?

Empire Day, kept on 24 May for Queen Victoria's birthday, was abolished by a bill that put Labour Day in its place, on the anniversary of the 1938 labour unrest.

Detroit's Labor Day jazz festival began in 1980 in partnership with which festival?

Montreux lent its name: the event began as the Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival, with artists playing both, and kept the name through 1999 although the partnership had ended after 1991.

New York's West Indian carnival first took to the streets in 1947 in which Manhattan neighbourhood?

Harlem: Jessie Waddell and friends had held indoor costume parties there since the 1930s, and the Seventh Avenue parade ran from 1947 until its permit was revoked in 1964.

Which Jamaican prime minister relaunched Labour Day in 1972 as a day of community work?

Michael Manley, newly elected in 1972, asked Jamaicans to give the day to voluntary work and led by example, clearing land and planting along the Palisadoes Road himself.

Who clinched the Winston Million by winning the 1985 Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend?

Bill Elliott had already won two of NASCAR's four biggest races that year, so the Darlington victory made it three, paid out the $1 million bonus and earned him the nickname 'Million Dollar Bill'.

Trinidad and Tobago's Labour Day marks 1937 riots that began in which industry?

Oilfields: the strike began in the southern oilfields on 19 June 1937, and that day police tried to arrest the workers' leader, Uriah Butler, as he addressed a meeting at Fyzabad, where his statue now stands.

By 1922 the straw-hat cutoff had drifted from Labor Day to September 15, nicknamed what?

Felt Hat Day, September 15: newspapers warned readers the date was coming, and youths traditionally knocked off and stomped any straw hat seen afterwards, sparking New York's 1922 Straw Hat Riot.

Which president joined about 85,000 walkers on the 1992 Mackinac Bridge Walk?

George H. W. Bush's crossing drew the walk's record crowd; at the bridge's dedication in June 1958 only 68 people had walked it, before the event moved to Labor Day the next year.

Martin Luther King Jr. went to which city in 1968 to back striking sanitation workers carrying 'I Am a Man' signs?

Memphis: the men walked out after two colleagues were crushed to death in a garbage truck, and the city agreed to recognise their union twelve days after King was assassinated there.

The 1935 Labor Day hurricane still holds which record among storms that have struck the United States?

Most intense landfall: its central pressure of 892 millibars is the lowest recorded in a hurricane coming ashore in the US, reached only a day after it had first grown to hurricane strength.

Which Native American nation holds its National Holiday every Labor Day weekend, marking the constitution it adopted after the Trail of Tears?

Cherokee: the holiday in Tahlequah, the nation's capital, marks the 1839 constitution that sealed the reunion of eastern and western Cherokees, and the principal chief gives a State of the Nation address there.

Chicago's Labor Day weekend jazz festival grew out of 1970s tribute concerts to which bandleader and which saxophonist?

Ellington and Coltrane: a Grant Park tribute to Duke Ellington began after his death in 1974, a John Coltrane festival followed in 1978, and in 1979 the city merged them with a third event.

Japan's Labor Thanksgiving Day grew out of an ancient imperial festival giving thanks for which harvest?

Rice: in the Niiname-sai rite the emperor offers the new crop to the gods and tastes the rice himself; the US-led occupation wanted Shinto holidays gone, so the name changed in 1948.

National Grandparents Day, held the Sunday after Labor Day, has which official flower?

Forget-me-not: yet the day's founder, Marian McQuade, wanted a family day and was adamant that it should not be turned into a commercial holiday.

The 1922 Straw Hat Riot became a brawl when youths stomped the hats of which group?

The youths picked on dock workers who fought back; the fight stopped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge, and the hat-snatching spree went on for eight days.

When his first Labor Day telethon passed $1 million in 1966, what did Jerry Lewis do to the tote board?

Painted on another digit: the board had only six, so Lewis climbed a ladder and added a '1' by hand; doubters had not expected a holiday-weekend telethon on one New York station to work.

Lunch atop a Skyscraper, the 1932 photo of ironworkers on a beam, was taken on the RCA Building at which landmark?

Rockefeller Center staged the shot as a publicity stunt on the 69th floor of its rising RCA Building. Many people wrongly assume the men are building the Empire State Building.

Which wartime icon of women factory workers did Norman Rockwell paint for a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover?

Rosie the Riveter rests her loafer on a copy of Mein Kampf in Rockwell's painting. His model was a 19-year-old Vermont telephone operator, not a factory hand.

Which 1986 film, based on a Stephen King novella, follows four boys seeking a dead body over the Labor Day holiday?

Stand by Me unfolds in 1959 in the fictional town of Castle Rock. Rob Reiner adapted it from Stephen King's novella The Body.

Which carmaker astonished the world in 1914 by more than doubling most workers' wages to five dollars daily?

Ford brought in the five-dollar wage to stop constant staff turnover, and the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to its plants. In 1926 its factories moved to a five-day, 40-hour week.

Cesar Chavez's farmworkers won union contracts in 1970 after a nationwide consumer boycott of which California crop?

Grapes were the target of a five-year strike that Filipino farmworkers began in Delano in 1965. Chavez's union joined a week later, and the two groups merged into the United Farm Workers.

Which president fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers after giving them 48 hours to return to work?

Ronald Reagan dismissed 11,345 controllers and barred them from government service for life. He had once led a union himself, as president of the Screen Actors Guild.

The US Open, which runs across the Labor Day holiday, has a main stadium named for which tennis champion?

Arthur Ashe won the inaugural US Open in 1968, the first in which professionals could compete. The stadium named for him opened in 1997.

Americans eat hot dogs most often between which spring holiday and Labor Day, the peak of baseball season?

Memorial Day opens what the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council treats as hot dog season, and Labor Day closes it.

In which 1989 comedy do two employees pretend their dead boss is alive at his beach house over Labor Day?

Weekend at Bernie's sends two insurance workers to the Hamptons, where they puppeteer their boss's limbs so guests keep believing he is alive.

In which country is lily of the valley traditionally sold tax-free by anyone on the 1 May Labour Day holiday?

France knows the day as La Fête du Muguet, after the flower's French name. The custom took hold at the start of the 20th century as a symbol of spring.

Jimmy Hoffa, who vanished in 1975 and is thought to have been killed by the Mafia, led which union?

The Teamsters had Hoffa as their general president from 1957 to 1971. He disappeared after setting out for a meeting and was declared legally dead in 1982.

Which Upton Sinclair novel exposed grim conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants and prompted food safety laws?

The Jungle was meant to win sympathy for the workers, but its immediate impact was a public outcry over unsanitary meat. That pressure brought the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.

Which railroad folk hero beat a steam-powered drill in a race, then died with his hammer in his hand?

John Henry is said to have been a freedman who hammered steel drills into rock so railroad tunnels could be blasted. In the legend his heart gives out moments after he wins.

In which 1936 Charlie Chaplin film does the Tramp struggle to keep pace with a factory assembly line?

Modern Times was Chaplin's last outing as the Little Tramp. He planned it as his first talkie, then went back to a mostly silent format with sound effects.

Sally Field won an Oscar as a North Carolina textile worker who unionizes her mill in which 1979 film?

Norma Rae is based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton. In a pivotal scene she climbs on her work table with a cardboard sign, and the mill's machines stop one by one.

Which president formally opened his 1948 election campaign with a Labor Day speech in Detroit's Cadillac Square?

Harry Truman then covered more than 21,000 miles on whistle-stop train tours. A photo of him holding up a newspaper that wrongly announced his defeat became famous.

Jerry Lewis traditionally closed his Labor Day telethon by singing a song from which Rodgers and Hammerstein show?

Carousel gave Lewis his signature closer, You'll Never Walk Alone, which he sang to end each broadcast from 1966 to 2010.

Dragon Con, a pop culture fan convention founded in 1987, fills which Southern city's hotels over Labor Day?

Atlanta hosts Dragon Con across a cluster of downtown hotels, and attendance passed 80,000 in 2017.

Which rapper founded Made in America, a Labor Day festival launched in Philadelphia in 2012?

Jay-Z announced the festival at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in May 2012, and it ran in the city most years through 2022.

Which 1992 Disney film starring Christian Bale is loosely based on an 1899 strike against publisher Joseph Pulitzer?

Newsies was a box-office bomb, taking about $3 million against a $15 million budget. It then won a cult following on home video and was reborn as a Broadway stage show.

Which London-born cigar maker founded the American Federation of Labor and led it for nearly four decades?

Samuel Gompers was the federation's president from 1886 until his death in 1924, apart from a single year out of office.

Which Secretary of Labor, the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, held the post for a record twelve years?

Frances Perkins served from 1933 to 1945, longer than any other secretary of labor. The department's headquarters is now the Frances Perkins Building.

Which union organizer led a 1903 children's march from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt's home in New York?

Mother Jones, born Mary Harris, was a schoolteacher and dressmaker before becoming an organizer. In 1902 she was called the most dangerous woman in America.

A 44-day sit-down strike at General Motors plants in which city turned the United Auto Workers into a major union?

Flint held GM's most valuable plants, which thousands of workers occupied from December 1936 to February 1937. The win led to the unionization of the American car industry.

Which detective agency sent 300 agents by river to retake Carnegie's Homestead steel works from strikers in 1892?

Pinkerton agents were hired by Carnegie's manager Henry Clay Frick, but the strikers knew they were coming and defeated them in a fight on July 6.

The 146 garment workers killed in New York's 1911 Triangle factory fire made which item of clothing?

Women's blouses, then called shirtwaists, gave the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory its name. Locked stairwell doors trapped many workers, and the fire led to laws on factory safety.

The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, America's largest labor uprising, involved 10,000 armed workers from which industry?

Coal mining companies in southern West Virginia hired only non-union men, so 10,000 miners set out to unionize the coalfields. They met 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers in a five-day fight.

Solidarity Forever, Ralph Chaplin's 1915 union anthem, is sung to the tune of which Civil War song?

Battle Hymn of the Republic shares its melody with the soldiers' song John Brown's Body, which is why Chaplin's anthem can be sung to either.

Which state put the Latin motto Labor omnia vincit, meaning work conquers all, on its seal in 1907?

Oklahoma carried the phrase over from its territorial seal. It is adapted from a line by the Roman poet Virgil, and early American unions used it on their emblems too.

The word boycott comes from Captain Charles Boycott, a land agent shunned by his community in 1880 in which country?

Ireland's Land League organized the shunning in County Mayo, where Boycott managed an estate for the absentee landlord Lord Erne.

Which country star wrote and sang "9 to 5" for the 1980 workplace comedy of the same name, her acting debut?

Dolly Parton took 9 to 5 to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1981, her only solo single to top that chart.

Pope Pius XII created a 1 May feast in 1955 honouring whom as the patron of workers?

Saint Joseph the Worker's feast was introduced as the Church's own counterpart to the secular workers' holiday held on the same day.

Members of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union founded in Chicago in 1905, are known by what nickname?

Wobblies wanted every worker in a single body they called One Big Union, an idea still reflected in the group's constitution.

Which union leader organized railroad sleeping car porters in 1925 and later headed the 1963 March on Washington?

A. Philip Randolph built the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters into the first successful Black-led union in America. Bayard Rustin organized the 1963 march for him.

Which federation, created in 1935 by John L. Lewis, rejoined the American Federation of Labor twenty years later?

The Congress of Industrial Organizations began as a committee inside the AFL, organizing whole industries such as steel and cars rather than single crafts. The 1955 reunion created the AFL-CIO.

Which 1938 law created America's national minimum wage and the right to time-and-a-half overtime pay?

The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, also banned what it called oppressive child labor.

Southern Decadence, a five-day LGBTQ celebration held around Labor Day since 1972, takes place in which city?

New Orleans has hosted it since it began as a party among 40 to 50 friends, who were told to come dressed as their favourite decadent Southerner.

The Telluride Film Festival, first held in 1974 at the Sheridan Opera House, runs each Labor Day in which state?

Colorado's Telluride festival does not announce its line-up until the day before it opens, yet films such as Moonlight and Lady Bird had their American premieres there.

Darlington Raceway, the egg-shaped oval that stages NASCAR's Southern 500 around Labor Day, is in which state?

South Carolina's Darlington track is egg-shaped because a friend of the builder feared for his fishing pond, so one pair of turns was made tighter than the other.

Which folk singer wrote Union Maid in 1940 after being asked for a union song from a woman's point of view?

Woody Guthrie set his words to the tune of Red Wing, a 1907 standard that itself borrows from a piano piece by Robert Schumann.

Which photographer left teaching in 1908 to document child workers for the National Child Labor Committee?

Lewis Hine's pictures of young children working in harsh conditions helped bring about the 1916 Keating-Owen Act, America's first federal child labor law.

Which Swedish-born union songwriter was executed by firing squad in Utah in 1915 despite President Wilson's plea?

Joe Hill was born Joel Hägglund, and his satirical song The Preacher and the Slave became the most reprinted in his union's songbook.

The 1935 National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing the right to join a union, is better known by which senator's name?

Robert Wagner wrote the law, usually called the Wagner Act, which lets private-sector employees organize, bargain collectively and take action such as strikes.

Which 1954 Broadway show, based on the novel 7½ Cents, sets a romance amid labor troubles in a factory?

The Pajama Game won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and its dances were Bob Fosse's debut as a choreographer.

The Great New York State Fair, America's oldest state fair, runs for 13 days ending on Labor Day in which city?

Syracuse held the first fair in 1841, and the event made the city its permanent home in 1890.

Zozobra, a giant marionette nicknamed Old Man Gloom, is burned on the Friday before Labor Day in which state capital?

Santa Fe's ritual dates from 1924, when artist Will Shuster built and burned the first Zozobra in his backyard at a party for friends.

Which Ohio businessman led an army of unemployed workers on the first major protest march to Washington in 1894?

Jacob Coxey's march left a phrase behind: enough food to feed Coxey's Army, an old-fashioned way of saying far more food than is needed.

The 1905 Supreme Court case Lochner v. New York struck down a state law capping the working hours of which trade?

Bakers lost their legal limit on hours when the court ruled it violated freedom of contract. Joseph Lochner, who owned a bakery in Utica, had been charged under the 1895 Bakeshop Act.

Which state enacted America's first minimum wage law in 1912, a quarter-century before the national one?

Massachusetts acted after a campaign taken up by the Women's Trade Union League, and several other states soon followed suit.

Along with white clothing, which striped warm-weather cotton fabric was once considered off-limits after Labor Day?

Seersucker's name is said to come from a Persian phrase meaning milk and sugar, for its alternately smooth and puckered stripes.