It’s only fitting that a Labor Day parade will wind its way through the streets of Dundalk, which once was a working-class stronghold in Baltimore.
Today’s parade kicks off at 9 a.m. at the Sollers Point Road entrance to Dundalk Community College, although it might be more apt to call it a march since in Baltimore you can’t have a real parade without majorettes and people lining the sidewalk in lawn chairs.
But there will be a Dixieland band made up of members of the American Federation of Musicians, Local No. 40-543, whose repertoire runs more toward Louie Armstrong than Pete Seeger.
“Let’s say we’ll be walking through Dundalk,” said Jack Hook, secretary-treasurer of the musicians union who some might remember as a late-1950s trombonist at the old Greenspring Inn.
The “Solidarity Sextet” combo will ride on a flatbed truck, followed by Bill Otremba’s restored 1965 Chevy Corvair, the sexy deathtrap upon which Ralph Nader made his career as a consumer advocate.
In all, perhaps a hundred folks with banners and empathy for those people who do the day-to-day jobs that keep the country moving will walk together. Anyone passing by is welcome to join in — twirl an American-made baton if you can find one — but if you want a hot dog or a soda pop, you’ll have to run into a convenience store.
“Politicians are invited, but they usually show up in an election year,” said Bill Barry, who founded the parade four years ago and teaches sociology and union history at the Dundalk college.
“This little parade doesn’t solve any big problems, but it’s something we do for visibility,” said Barry.
To that end, the Baltimore Metropolitan AFL-CIO ran a booth at this year’s Maryland State Fair in Timonium, which ends today.
Volunteers who staffed the booth noticed something significant: People under a certain age — generally those born just before or during the Reagan Administration — tended to be negative about organized labor. Older folks — those living on pensions or approaching retirement — came up to say thank you.
“Unions lost at least one generation through neglect,” said Barry. “Ask anyone on the street: ‘Who speaks for the working class?’ No one knows.”
A big push of organized labor at last week’s Democratic National Convention in Denver was to jump start the stalled Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to start and join unions without punishment.
“That’s our No.. 1 priority here,” said Baltimore AFL-CIO President Ernie Grecco by telephone from the convention.
National AFL-CIO President John Sweeney — this year’s speaker at the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Leaders in Labor lecture series — addressed the convention last Tuesday.
“The Bush Administration, with the support of Sen. McCain,” said Sweeney, “ … turned our economy into a threshing machine for big business.”
At the beginning of each semester, Barry asks the young people in his sociology classes if they regularly read a newspaper. About five hands go up.
He then asks how many of them have complaints about conditions where they work. Every hand goes up. As does every hand when he asks if they honestly believe they are underpaid. Then he has their attention and proceeds to teach.
“When the parade is over today, we’ll gather in a park and witness to each other about what unionism means to us,” said Barry. “Last year, when we finished, there was a group of Bethlehem Steel widows who’d been cheated out of their husband’s pensions waiting for us.
“It was very moving.”
