Happy Labor Day! Let’s Keep Building Together
- 3 minutes ago
- 3 min read
(via the IFT)
Every Labor Day, we hear the simple story of how workers organized and their organizing won them rights. This is true. But it leaves out a crucial point: our rights as workers were always secured in struggle. They were won by people practicing solidarity—standing together and refusing to accept half measures.
W.E.B. Du Bois teaches us this in Black Reconstruction in America. During the Civil War, enslaved Africans didn’t wait for permission to be free. They left plantations by the thousands, crossed warring lines, and refused to keep the Confederate economy running. They went on strike. Du Bois called it a general strike. Perhaps one of the most consequential labor actions this country has ever witnessed. The government didn’t hand down emancipation from above. It caught up to what was already happening on the ground. And then the government responded with the Emancipation Proclamation.
You can trace that same thread through labor history—from immigrant garment workers organizing for safe workplaces to the Black Pullman Porters bringing Jim Crow refugees north for sanctuary. Organizing. Transformation. This is what Labor Day is all about. Solidarity. Understanding that meaningful change comes from people standing together.
That same spirit lives in our state workers, too. Everyday, IFT members in state service keep Illinois running—processing benefits, protecting public health, caring for our most vulnerable residents. Their work is public service in its truest form, and their fight for fair pay, safe working conditions, and respect on the job is the same fight our educators are waging for full-funded schools. This Labor Day, we stand with them, too.
Our struggle as workers is also for the common good.
Our push for our school communities to be fully funded is not just a budget line item. It is a demand to our governor and other political leaders that they keep a promise they made to students nearly a decade ago. Illinois has a $6.8 billion EBF adequacy gap, not including the more than a billion dollars of underfunding at the higher education level. Every year lawmakers wait, students in underfunded districts fall further behind.
We will win because we are right — our students deserve fully-funded school communities, from preschool to higher education.
In order to win what our young people need, we need you to be ready to mobilize for action during the veto session in Springfield. We’re locking down our date now. Local leaders from around the state are engaging their state reps and senators. And we are supporting these actions in solidarity. We sent updated letters to House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, Senate President Don Harmon, and Governor JB Pritzker requesting immediate engagement on solutions to the persistent underfunding of our schools.
Read the letters:
Our members are speaking up too.Educators and members are putting this fight in front of the public through op-eds:
You can take action!
Contact your state legislators and urge them to support full EBF funding this veto session.
Share the letters and op-eds with colleagues, friends, and family.
Watch for updates from IFT as the veto session approaches and be ready to act together.
We must continue the collective fight for students and state workers, because meaningful change has only ever come from people standing together.
Happy Labor Day, and welcome back to the school year. Let’s keep building together.
In solidarity,
Stacy Davis Gates, IFT President
Cyndi Oberle-Dahm,IFT Executive Vice President
Pankaj Sharma,IFT Secretary-Treasurer
John Miller,IFT Membership Secretary
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