Remember Frances Perkins this Labor Day, a champion of workers’ rights

As we continue to celebrate our country’s 250th year in 2026, we remember the American heroes who made this country what we know and love today. This Labor Day, Americans have a special opportunity to honor present-day workers alongside the people and movements from our past. 

Labor Day encourages us to remember America’s labor movement and the fight for workers’ rights as industrialization turned to globalization and now to the technological age. Workers have never had a greater champion than Frances Perkins, and it is a shame that more Americans do not know her by name.  

Perkins was the first woman to join a presidential Cabinet, serving in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration as secretary of Labor for 12 years. She became Labor secretary during the Great Depression, when there were 13 million jobless Americans — a quarter of the U.S. workforce at the time.

Turning crisis into opportunity, Perkins became the longest-serving secretary of Labor in American history. It is easy to understand why: Perkins was the architect behind........

© The Hill