HAPPY JUNETEENTH!!
I want to share an employment attorneys perspective on the importance of this holiday.
On June 19, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation the enslaved people of Texas were finally informed of their freedom; the last people in the country to be told. US forces landed at Galveston and cavalry units were sent out to issue a proclamation:
“All slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
This was a powerful Labor and Employment message. Equality of rights was certainly not achieved then in either employment or social justice. Many anti-discrimination laws have had to follow. Yet this day and that announcement was an important factor and foundation in our development of employment laws and employment relationships.
That proclamation and those subsequent laws have greatly benefitted all employees in a wide variety of ways. So the wording of that 6/19/1865 proclamation on “employer and hired laborer" is significant for Labor & Employment law, and for all of the rest of us as well.
-Bob Gregg
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