Hillsdale College’s Paul Moreno recalls the ironic source (”Affirmative Action’s Strange Career”) of the concept of “affirmative action” (links added by me):

….. The 1935 Wagner Act gave unions the power to organize mass-production industries. It was hailed as a crowning achievement, but civil- rights organizations at the time opposed the act because it did not prohibit racial exclusion–”the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Congress,” Urban League President Lester Granger called it. (Ironically, the term “affirmative action” made its statutory debut in the Wagner Act, giving to the National Labor Relations Board power to order employers guilty of unfair labor practices to take such “affirmative action” as reinstatement, back pay or promotion.)

By the end of World War II, the federal judiciary recognized the problem of the black worker under federal labor law, and imposed on unions a duty of “fair representation.” While not compelled to admit blacks as members, unions certified as exclusive bargaining agents could not use their monopoly power to disadvantage minority-group workers. Nevertheless, since the National Labor Relations Board consistently took the side of white unions, the onus of enforcing the fair representation doctrine fell on individual black workers.By the 1960s, two decades of executive orders and state fair employment laws to cease discrimination had made little impact on unions. And when Congress finally outlawed employment discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it included an exemption for “bona fide seniority systems,” in order to protect benefits that white workers had won at the expense of blacks over the previous generation.

In the process of trying to overcome this loophole, federal agencies devised the doctrine of “the present effects of past discrimination,” which lies at the heart of contemporary affirmative action theory.

The architects of affirmative action began to formulate the “present effects of past discrimination” principle, which they called the “rightful place” doctrine, in the late 1960s, and the federal courts eagerly adopted it. The Supreme Court endorsed it in the 1971 Griggs case. Although an employer may not intentionally discriminate, the under-representation of minority workers is regarded as perpetuating past discrimination.

This theory made sense with regard to already illegal and overt union discrimination. But it metastasized into our general principle of “disparate impact” — any policy that has racially disproportionate results is presumed unlawful, and thus encourages employers to adopt racial quotas.

And yet the Supreme Court effectively restored the seniority system exemption for unions in 1977 (actually 1976 — Ed.). After the unions had taken care of their senior members, the court then gave its imprimatur to “voluntary” quotas in the 1979 Weber case, in which the United Steelworkers set aside half of their skilled apprentice training slots for blacks, and shielded employers against “reverse discrimination” suits by white workers.

….. Critics usually point to federal bureaucrats and judges as the architects of affirmative action. They ought to remember the unions who provided the materials.

Read the whole thing, especially the earlier portions of the column that precede what I excerpted.

Personally, most of this preceded me, but I can say from summer-job and other experience in the early and mid-1970s that the most virulent, implacable anti-black sentiment (before the term “African-American” came into vogue) I have ever heard anywhere came from the mouths of more than a few longtime union members, up to and including union management, in relatively high-paid manufacturing jobs. Nobody else in my memory even comes close.

From the US Department of Labor’s web site:

The History of Labor Day
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Founder of Labor Day

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.

In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Labor Day Legislation

Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

A Nationwide Holiday

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.