Labor leaders, public officials and members of the local community will gather in Pennsauken on Friday, Sept. 1 to celebrate workers across our country at the annual AFL-CIO wreath-laying ceremony. This annual event has been held for over 120 years at the Peter J. McGuire Memorial, located at Arlington Cemetery, 1620 Cove Rd., Pennsauken, where the labor leader and “Father of Labor Day” is interred. The ceremony begins at 11:00 a.m.
McGuire is known for championing important labor causes that are considered commonplace today, such as the 40-hour work week, days off on the weekend, and child labor laws. His most famous achievement, remains an idea he proposed in May 1882, at the New York Central Labor Union, for a day to be set aside to celebrate the American worker and to celebrate the achievements of the labor movement. In New York that September, the first Labor Day parade and celebration was held. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed the law declaring Labor Day as a national holiday.
The current memorial in Pennsauken was sponsored and built by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and dedicated in 1952. In 2016, officials and VIPs were on hand to dedicate a new “welcome wall” to help mark the location of the Peter J. McGuire Memorial.
For more information about Peter J. McGuire and his accomplishments, be sure to read the 2015 article written by Robert Fisher-Hughes, AAP columnist and amateur historian, which can be found here.
