Happy Mother’s Day from UFCW 401!

Mother’s Day has a long and vibrant international tradition of celebrating the crucial role that mothers play in our families and communities. This year, as this holiday arrives in times beset by economic turmoil, humanitarian crises and wars in various parts of the globe, we also take time to reflect on its activist origins.

Mother’s Day was founded as a call to action to improve families’ lives through health and peace. It was first established by Ann Jarvis in Appalachia in 1858, promoting sanitation to reduce high rates of infant mortality. (Her daughter Anna M. Jarvis would later lead the charge to make it into an official national holiday.) Julia Ward Howe took up the occasion to make a Mother’s Day call to women to promote peace and protest the carnage of conflicts like the then-recent American Civil War.

The anti-war and socially conscious origins of this day are starkly meaningful today. The majority of our members in UFCW Local 401 are women, many of them mothers trying to provide for families in a province hard-hit by an affordability crisis and a world where conflict and division are on the rise.

As a Union, we celebrate the vital contributions of mothers to our movement and to the families of every description that make up our diverse society. It’s a day to commemorate the invaluable role of mothers and to appreciate them not just once a year, but every day. We are proud to wish our members a very Happy Mother’s Day.

Posted on: May 12,2024