Iowa workers’ history at risk

In 1974, the Iowa Labor Collection was established and supported by the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Before then, no official archive was gathering the rich, hard-fought history of the Iowa labor movement. The physical collection has long been housed at the State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City, where I began working in December 2021, first as a practicum intern, then as a project archivist supported by the IFL.

Even though the Iowa City repository that collected these vital narratives has often had “tough times,” as IFL President Mark Smith once said, the dedicated work of SHSI archivists and librarians has been essential in preserving the stories of Iowa’s workers — the stories of coal miners, meatpackers, nurses, teachers, and countless others who fought for fair pay, dignity, and safe working conditions.

That heritage is now under attack.

The decision to shut down the Iowa City facility is more than a budget shift. It is an erasure. When we dismantle the institutions that preserve workers' voices, we signal that their struggles don’t matter.

We owe it to the working people of this state, past and present, to protect the places where their stories are held. The voices of working families, told in letters and diaries and photographs, are now at risk of vanishing. The labor history of Iowa is not expendable. It deserves a home. And it must be preserved.

Please join me in urging our state's leaders to safeguard Iowa’s labor history, before it’s taken from us.

Emma Barton-Norris

Cedar Rapids