MUSKEGON, Mich. — When Theresa Kanoza arrived to the Labor Day festivities in downtown Muskegon, she had over two dozen copies of the novel The Women of the Copper Country in a box. By the time the event was over, they were all passed out.
“Well, in this book, it’s a historical novel,” Kanoza said during an interview with FOX 17. “It’s the strike of the copper mines in 1913. Women led it. Their husbands, fathers, and brothers were toiling in the mines, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.”
So, the women marched and striked for better wages, Kanoza said. The women marched every day beginning in September of that year. It lasted through the winter and ended by spring.
They didn’t win, she said. Wages never changed, and when the mines closed, many of the workers went to work in the auto industry in Michigan.
However, Kanoza said it’s important to remember them and their efforts on this day.
“Labor Day is a gathering where we can celebrate the rough time that the unions are and the American people are going through just to make it possible to have this day. To make sure that everybody has a living wage,” said Stephen Marshall, retired electrician of 30 years and a member of the IBEW Local Union 275.
Dozens of people lined the streets of downtown Muskegon for the annual Labor Day parade on Monday morning. Unions from mail services, public services, the healthcare industry, carpenters and millwrights walked, waved, and passed out candy in honor of the day.
“Back in the day when they first started, unions were needed to make work safe, and that’s still what they’re doing,” Marshall said. “We want our members to have a safe working environment. We want them to make enough money — a living wage — to support their family.”
Kanoza said that’s what the unions at Starbucks and Amazon are fighting for today.
“People are, their consciousness is being raised again,” Kanoza said while wearing a 1900s Edwardian dress and hat. “People are striking for the right to organize, for fair wages, better working conditions. It’s not a thing of 100 years ago. It’s still current, even more so right now.”
Kanoza teaches English at Muskegon Community College and grew up in a union home. Monday, she was with the organization Great Michigan Read, all dressed in 1900s garb, demonstrating what the women strikers looked like back then.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1983 there were 17.7 million union members. Today, there’s around 14 million.
She and others encouraged the public to get involved and support their cause to stop the downward trend.
“Think about the worker behind everything that we do. That it’s important to recognize the work that holds us all up and if we knew through COVID that it was essential, we should recognize that still,” Kanoza said. “We should support workers when there are strikes, you know, go out of our way to picket with them, to honk with them, to write letters with them for fair wages.”
