Updated on August 29, 2024
Looking for powerful Labor Day lesson plans and resources? Help students understand the history of the labor movement and its current relevance at home and around the world. Checkout NewsHour’s website Journalism in Action on how journalists covered the role of civic engagement in U.S. history, including units on Exploitation: Labor and Immigration and the Muckrakers.
1. Lesson plan: Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire and migrant farm workers
Take a look at these primary sources of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist factory of 1911 and the hardships migrant workers have faced in the U.S. for decades. Be sure to check out the political cartoon activity that follows the lesson above here.
Screenshot of New-York Tribune. March 26, 1911 via Journalism in Action
Screenshot from New-York Tribune. March 26, 1911 via PBS NewsHour Classroom’s Journalism in Action
2. Lesson Plan: Dolores Huerta — a lifetime of activism
Learn about Dolores Huerta’s role as a labor leader, organizer and activist beginning with the California grape strike and boycott in 1965.
Press conference with the UFW leadership, Dolores Huerta, Richard César Chávez, and Rick Tejada-Flores, 1972. Photo Credit: Farmworker Movement Documentation Project
3. Lesson plan: How the Amazon Labor Union was formed
Learn more about the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and the role of the news media in covering unionizing efforts.
“This campaign should be the most talked about campaign in the country. … We’re talking about workers. Workers from the bottom who have nothing.” — Christian Smalls, president, Amazon Labor Union
Screenshot of Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, taken in March 20, 2022 on Krystal, Kyle & Friends. Credit: Krystal, Kyle & Friends
4. Mini-lessons on the muckrakers and the Progressive Era
Using Journalism in Action, NewsHour Classroom’s website on the history of journalism in America, take a closer look at the harsh conditions facing workers in the U.S. as reported by the muckrakers (journalists in the Progressive Era who exposed corruption and wrongdoing in business, housing and factories at the turn of the 19th century).
Ida Tarbell and Standard Oil (2 activities)
Upton Sinclair and the meatpacking industry
Jacob Riis and living conditions in NYC’s tenement housing
5. Lesson Plan: Role of labor unions today and in the past
United Auto Workers, Aramark workers carry strike signs while picketing outside the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. September 15, 2019. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
United Auto Workers, Aramark workers carry strike signs while picketing outside the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. September 15, 2019. Photo by Rebecca Cook/Reuters
6. Student activity: For Labor Day, explore this labor/management negotiation scenario
Use this lesson to engage students in the basics of labor negotiations through the lens of professional sports and a simulation activity that puts students in the seat of negotiators.
Supporters of the California Grape Boycott demonstrate in Toronto, Ontario, December, 1968.
Jessica Govea is in the center, front row, wearing poncho. The Delano grape labor strike was organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the United Farm Workers against grape growers in California. The strike began on September 8, 1965, and lasted more than five years.Photo of “United Farm Workers Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University
Supporters of the California Grape Boycott demonstrate in Toronto, Ontario, December, 1968. Credit: “United Farm Workers Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University
7. Student activity: The global effort in making a t-shirt
NPR’s Planet Money decided to make a t-shirt and follow the process of its creation around the globe. This lesson plan takes your class along for the ride by interspersing activities with NPR’s exciting video tour around the world.
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