CUNY academics explore history of labor in new calendar

The history of working people in the United States is marked by major milestones, from the first employee strike for better wages in the late 1700s to the current fight for a $15 minimum wage.

To fill in the key dates and developments between then and now, the City University of New York published a calendar and website this month that chronicles the history of America’s workers.

Richard Lieberman, the director of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at CUNY’s LaGuardia Community College, discussed the project recently in a video interview alongside two CUNY colleagues who joined him on the project, Adam Zalma and Stephen Weinstein.

CUNY partnered on the calendar with The New York Times in Education and the New York City Central Labor Council. The downloadable calendar is intended as a resource for students and teachers, especially in higher education.

Weinstein said that researching the project, which spanned topics such as agriculture, construction, organized labor, and more, showed “just how difficult and painful labor has been, and there’s no easy route to a steady employment.”

“Good times come and go,” Weinstein said, “but all too frequently labor is a difficult thing. It’s very hard.”

Lieberman added that the lessons of U.S. labor history are still relevant today.

“Women are still being ripped off,” he said. “What we show here in the calendar is the exploitation of women throughout the last 200 years hasn’t changed a bit, and it really does inform the present – and should make us a bit angry.”