ABSTRACT
This discussion of organized labor in the US touches on themes that lie tangled at the junction of social memory and history. It was in September 1990 that I first met the industrial workers who have been the key participants in my research – mainly aluminum plant employees and coalminers – at the Labor Day weekend festivities in Princeton, Indiana. One of the longest continuously running Labor Day celebrations in the US, it was first sponsored by the Knights of Labor in 1886, eight years before Labor Day became an official national holiday. Mostly a county fair, it is also partly an affirmation of the submerged history of the US labor movement. I will explore here the event’s longevity in a politically conservative region, the kinds of narrative it has deployed, and the possibilities it may or may not hold out for labor mobilization. Beyond the notions of union solidarity generated by this annual event, I will consider collective memories of actual past strikes and struggles in this area, and the ways in which these recollections and forms of memorialization intersect with contemporary capitalist restructurings to enable or thwart the potential for labor resistance.
