Happy St. Patrick’s Day! This article reminds us of the history of Irish immigrants and their important role in the labor movement.
Often overlooked, one of Ireland’s most important contributions to the United States and Canada is the labor movement. Millions of Irish immigrants settled in the growing industrial areas of North America following the great famine in the 1840s.
Predominantly unskilled blue collar workers, the earliest Irish settlers faced dangerous working conditions, low pay and on-the-job discrimination.
As journalist Harold Meyerson wrote in 2009:
When the Irish began arriving en masse in the 1840s, they were met with savage hostility by America’s largely Protestant native-born population and shunted into ghettos … In their occupational ghettos, laying railroad track and working on construction crews, they became America’s first distinct paid ethnic working class.
Some of those immigrant workers starting organizing, helping to form the first labor unions.
Mother Jones
For nearly a half-of-a-century one name was nearly synonymous with unions in the public’s mind: Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. Born in Cork, Ireland in 1837, she emigrated to the U.S. at the age of five. Losing her entire family to yellow fever in 1867, she devoted her life to the labor movement, helping to organize coal miners for more than 30 years.
Known for the saying, “pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” she continued to fight for working people and for the end to child labor up until her death in 1930 at the age of 93. more
“As we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this week, let us not forget all the hate, violence and discrimination Irish immigrants faced. The progress we made as an American people and a Labor Movement, we owe to the sacrifices and struggles of all immigrants. So this St. Patrick’s Day, let us toast all those who immigrate to our great country, be mindful of the hate and violence they currently face, and lend them our moral support – so that they too can work hard to achieve their American Dream – just as the Irish did.”
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