Labor Day rooted in union movement
Not many people know what Brian Israel does. It’s not because he’s secretive or does anything new. It’s because he’s a millwright.
Hundreds of years before labor leader Peter McGuire proposed an annual celebration of the American worker and Congress made Labor Day a national holiday in 1894, millwrights were making, grinding, pressing, shaping, or fixing mechanical parts that made mills, now called factories, go.
Israel, 32, is one of the modern day millwrights, precision workers who can keep conveyor belts conveying, get escalators to go up and down, and bring power plants back on line.
The son and grandson of union carpenters, Israel received his training as a millwright from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.