Today in Labor History from Biglabor.com

Today in labor history for the week of September 6, 2010
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September 06
One of the worst disasters in the history of U.S. anthracite mining occurred at the Avondale Mine, near Scranton, Pa., when a fire originating from a furnace at the bottom of a 237 foot shaft roared up the shaft, killing 110 miners - 1869

Tony Boyle, former president of the United Mine Workers, is charged with murder in the 1969 deaths of former UMW rival Joseph A. Yablonski and his wife and daughter - 1973

September 07
Federal employees win the right to receive Workers' Compensation insurance - 1916

September 08
Employers give in to the demands of striking miners in McKees Rock, Pa., agree to improved working conditions, 15 percent hike in wages and elimination of a "pool system" that gave foremen control over each worker’s pay - 1909

Workers give up their Labor Day weekend holidays to keep the munitions factories working to aid in the war effort. Most Labor Day parades are canceled in respect for members of the Armed Services - 1942

United Farm Workers union begins historic national grape boycott and strike, Delano, Calif. - 1965

Some 2,600 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) workers begin what is to be a successful six-day strike for higher pay and against a two-tier wage system - 1997

September 09
In convention at Topeka, Kansas, delegates create the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America. The men who repaired the nation's rail cars were paid 10 or 15 cents an hour, working 12 hours a day, often seven days a week - 1890

More than 1,000 Boston police officers strike after 19 union leaders are fired for organizing activities. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge announced that none of the strikers would be rehired, mobilized the state police, and recruited an entirely new police force from among unemployed veterans of the Great War (World War I) - 1919

Sixteen striking Filipino sugar workers on the Hawiian island of Kauai are killed by police; four police died as well. Many of the surviving strikers were jailed, then deported - 1924

September 10
Polish, Lithuanian and Slovak miners are gunned down—19 dead, more than 50 wounded—by the Lattimer Mine's sheriff deputies in Hazelton, Pa. Most were shot in the back. The miners were marching peacefully and without weapons for collective bargaining and civil liberty - 1897

September 11
Some 75,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia end a ten-week strike after winning an eight hour day, semi-monthly pay, and the abolition of overpriced company-owned stores, where they had been forced to shop. (Remember the song, "16 Tons," by coal miner’s son Merle Travis, in which there’s this line: "I owe my soul to the company store.") - 1897

More than 3,000 people died when suicide highjackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Among the dead were 634 union members, the majority of them New York City firefighters and police on the scene when the towers fell - 2001

Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life Norma Rae of the movies, dies at age 68. She worked at a J.P. Stevens textile plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. when low pay and poor working conditions led her to become a union activist - 2009

September 12
Eugene V. Debs, labor leader and socialist, sentenced to 10 years for opposing World War I. While in jail Debs received 1 million votes for president - 1918

Forty-nine people are killed, 200 injured in explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, New Jersey - 1940

New York City’s Union Square, the site of the first Labor Day in 1882, is officially named a national historic landmark. The square has long been a focal point for working class protest and political expression - 1998

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

August 30
President Franklin Roosevelt's Wealth Tax Act increases taxes on rich citizens and big business, lowers taxes for small businesses - 1935

OSHA publishes scaffold safety standard, designed to protect 2.3 million construction workers and prevent 50 deaths and 4,500 injuries annually - 1996

August 31
10,000 striking miners began a fight at Blair Mountain, W.Va., for recognition of their union, the UMWA. Federal troops were sent in, and miners were forced to withdraw 5 days later, after 16 deaths - 1921

The Trade Union Unity League is founded as an alternative to the American Federation of Labor, with the goal of organizing along industrial rather than craft lines. An arm of the American Communist Party, the League claimed 125,000 members before it dissolved in the late 1930s - 1929

"Solidarity" workers movement founded as a strike coordination committee at Lenin Shipyards, Gdansk, Poland. The strike launched a wave of unrest in the Soviet Union that ultimately led to its dissolution in 1991 - 1980

325,000 unionists gathered in Washington, D.C. for a Solidarity Day march and rally for workplace fairness and healthcare reform - 1991

September 01
The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers is founded at a meeting in Chicago, the product of two separate brotherhoods created over the previous 13 years - 1893

Walter Reuther, a founder of the United Auto Workers and president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations when it merged with the AFL in 1955, born - 1907

A three-week strike in Woonsocket, R.I., part of a national movement to obtain a minimum wage for textile workers, resulted in the deaths of three workers. Ultimately more than 420,000 workers struck nationally - 1934

In Hawaii, some 26,000 sugar workers represented by the Longshoremen’s union begin what is to become a successful 79-day strike that shuts down 33 of the 34 sugar plantations on the islands. The strike brought an end to Hawaii's paternalistic labor relations and impacted political and social institutions throughout the then-territory - 1946

Int'l Metal Engravers & Marking Device Workers Union changed its name to International Association of Machinists - 1956

Some 20,000 Pennsylvania Railroad shop workers effectively halt operations in 13 states for two days. It was the first shutdown in the company's 114-year history - 1960

The Journeymen Barbers, Hairdressers and Cosmetologists' Int'l Union of America merged with United Food & Commercial Workers - 1980

Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of the United States & Canada merged with Int'l Brotherhood of Pottery & Allied Workers to become Glass, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers - 1982

Aluminum, Brick & Clay Workers Int'l Union merged with United Glass & Ceramic Workers of North America to form Int'l Union of Aluminum, Brick & Glass Workers - 1982

Brotherhood of Railway, Airline & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees changed name to Transportation-Communications Union - 1987

Coopers International Union of North Amercia merged with Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers Int'l Union - 1992

September 02
White and Chinese immigrants battle in Rock Springs, Wyo. fueled by racial tensions and the practice of Union Pacific Raiload of hiring lower-paid Chinese over whites. At least 25 Chinese died and 15 more were injured. Rioters burned 75 Chinese homes - 1885

President Eisenhower signs legislation expanding Social Security by providing much wider coverage and including 10 million additional Americans, most of them self-employed farmers, with additional benefits - 1954

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was signed by President Ford, regulating and insuring pensions and other benefits, and increasing protections for workers - 1974

September 03
Some 300 musicians working in Chicago movie houses strike to protest their impending replacement by talking movies - 1928

Twenty-five workers die, unable to escape a fire at the Imperial Poultry processing plant in Hamlet, NC. Managers had locked fire doors to prevent the theft of chicken nuggets. The plant had operated for 11 years without a single safety inspection - 1991

International Brotherhood of Bookbinders merged with Graphic Arts International Union - 1972

September 05
20,000 to 30,000 marchers participate in New York's first Labor Day parade, demanding the eight-hour day - 1882

"Palmer raids" on all IWW halls and offices in 48 cities in U.S. Alexander Palmer, U.S. Attorney General, was rounding up radicals and leftists - 1917

Ten thousand angry textile strikers, fighting for better wages and working conditions, besiege a factory in Fall River, Mass., where 300 strikebreakers are working. The scabs are rescued by police using tear gas and pistols on the strikers - 1934

General strike begins across U.S. maritime industry, stopping all shipping. The strikers were objecting to the government's post-war National Wage Stabilization Board order that reduced pay increases negotiated by maritime unions - 1946

August 23
The U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations is formed by Congress, during a period of great labor and social unrest. After three years, and hearing witnesses ranging from Wobblies to capitalists, it issued an 11-volume report frequently critical of capitalism. The New York Herald characterized the Commission's president, Frank P. Walsh, as "a Mother Jones in trousers" - 1912

Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, accused of murder and tried unfairly, were executed on this day. The case became an international cause and sparked demonstrations and strikes throughout the world - 1927

Seven merchant seamen crewing the SS Baton Rouge Victory lost their lives when the ship was sunk by Viet Cong action en route to Saigon - 1966

Farm Workers Organizing Committee (to later become United Farm Workers of America) granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1966

August 24
The Mechanics Gazette, believed to be the first U.S. labor newspaper, is published in Philadelphia, the outgrowth of a strike by Carpenters demanding a shorter, 10-hour day. The strike lost but labor journalism blossomed: within five years there were 68 labor newspapers across the country, many of them dailies - 1827

The Gatling Gun Co. – manufacturers of an early machine gun – writes to B&O Railroad Co. President John W. Garrett during a strike, urging their product be purchased to deal with the "recent riotous disturbances around the country." Says the company: "Four or five men only are required to operate (a gun), and one Gatling ... can clear a street or block and keep it clear" - 1877

August 25
Birth of Allan Pinkerton, whose strike-breaking detectives ("Pinks") gave us the word "fink" - 1819

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters founded at a meeting in New York City. A. Philip Randolph became the union's first organizer - 1925

August 26
Fannie Sellins and Joseph Starzeleski are murdered by coal company guards on a picket line in Brackenridge, Penn. Sellins was a United Mine Workers of America organizer and Starzeleski was a miner - 1919

After two-thirds of the states had ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, women win their long struggle for the vote - 1920

With America in the depths of the Great Depression, the Comptroller of the Currency announces a temporary halt on foreclosures of first mortgages - 1932

In what some may consider one of the many management decisions that was to help cripple the American auto industry over the following decades, Ford Motor Co. produces its first Edsel. Ford dropped the project two years later after losing approximately $350 million - 1957

More than 1,300 bus drivers on Oahu, Hawaii begin what is to become a five week strike - 2003

August 27
Some 14,000 Chicago teachers who have gone without pay for several months finally collect about $1,400 each - 1934

President Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later - 1950

August 28
The march for jobs and freedom—the Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have A Dream" speech march—is held in Washington, D.C. with 250,000 participating - 1963

August 29
Dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady Club vote 57-15 to be represented by SEIU Local 790. Their first union contract, ratified eight months later, guaranteed work shifts, protection against arbitrary discipline and termination, automatic hourly wage increases, sick days, a grievance procedure, and removal of one-way mirrors from peep show booths - 1996

Northwest Airlines pilots, after years of concessions to help the airline, begin what is to become a two-week strike for higher pay - 1998

August 16
George Meany, plumber, founding AFL-CIO president, born in City Island, Bronx. In his official biography, George Meany and His Times, he said he had "never walked a picket line in his life." He also said he took part in only one strike (against the United States Government to get higher pay for plumbers on welfare jobs) - 1894

Congress passes the National Apprenticeship Act, establishing a national advisory committee to research and draft regulations establishing minimum standards for apprenticeship programs. It was later amended to permit the Labor Dept. to issue regulations protecting the health, safety and general welfare of apprentices, and to encourage the use of contracts in their hiring and employment - 1937

National Agricultural Workers Union merges into Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen - 1960

International Union of Wood, Wire & Metal Lathers merges with United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners - 1979

August 17
IWW War Trials in Chicago, 95 go to prison for up to 20 years - 1918

Bakery & Confectionery Workers International Union of America merges with Tobacco Workers International Union to become Bakery, Confectionery & Tobacco Workers - 1978

August 18
Radio station WEVD, named for Eugene V. Debs, goes on the air in New York City, operated by The Forward Association as a memorial to the labor and socialist leader - 1927

Founding of the American Federation of Government Employees, following a decision by the National Federation of Federal Employees (later to become part of the Intl. Assn. of Machinists) to leave the AFL - 1932

August 19
First edition of IWW "Little Red Song Book" (pictured above) published - 1909

Some 2,000 United Railroads streetcar service workers and supporters parade down San Francisco’s Market Street in support of pay demands and against the company’s anti-union policies. The strike failed in late November in the face of more than 1,000 strikebreakers, some of them imported from Chicago - 1917

Founding of the Maritime Trades Dept. of the AFL-CIO, to give "workers employed in the maritime industry and its allied trades a voice in shaping national policy" - 1946

Phelps-Dodge copper miners in Morenci and Clifton Ariz. are confronted by tanks, helicopters, 426 state troopers and 325 National Guardsmen brought in to walk strikebreakers through picketlines in what was to become a failed three-year fight by the Steelworkers and other unions - 1983

Some 4,400 mechanics, cleaners and custodians, members of AMFA at Northwest Airlines, strike the carrier over job security, pay cuts and workrule changes. The 14-month strike was to fail, with most union jobs lost to replacements and outside contractors - 2005

August 21
Slave revolt led by Nat Turner begins in Southampton County, Va. - 1831

August 22
Five flight attendants form the Air Line Stewardesses Association, the first labor union representing flight attendants. They were reacting to an industry in which women were forced to retire at the age of 32, remain single, and adhere to strict weight, height and appearance requirements. The association later became the Association of Flight Attendants, now a division of the Communications Workers of America - 1945

Joyce Miller, a vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers, becomes first female member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council - 1980

International Longshore & Warehouse Union granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1988

August 09
Twenty people, including at least nine firefighters, are killed in Boston’s worst fire. It consumed 65 downtown acres and 776 buildings over 12 hours - 1872

Knights of Labor strike New York Central railroad, ultimately to be defeated by scabbing - 1890

Nine men and one woman meet in Oakland, Calif. to form what was to become the 230,000-member California School Employees Association, representing school support staff throughout the state - 1927

United Papermakers & Paperworkers merge with Int'l Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite & Paper Mill Workers of the US & Canada to become United Paperworkers International Union - 1972

73,000 Bell Atlantic workers end a successful two-day strike over wages and limits on contracting out of work - 1998

The United Steel Workers and Amicus, the largest manufacturing union in the United Kingdom, announce formation of a strategic alliance to work on a range of mutual concerns - 2005

August 10
The Air Line Pilots Association is founded at a meeting in Chicago attended by 24 activists from across the country - 1931

President Roosevelt signs amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act, broadening the program to include dependents and survivors' benefits - 1939

Construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway begins. Ultimately 22,000 workers spent five years building the 2,342 mile route from the Atlantic to the northernmost part of the Great Lakes - 1954

I.W. Abel, president of the United Steel Workers of America from 1965 to 1977, dies at age 79 - 1987

August 11
Federal troops drive some 1,200 jobless workers from Washington D.C. Led by unemployed activist Charles "Hobo" Kelley the group's "soldiers" include young journalist Jack London and William Haywood, a young miner-cowboy called "Big Bill" - 1884

One hundred "platform men" employed by the privately owned United Railroads streetcar service in San Francisco abandon their streetcars, tying up many of the main lines in and out of the city center - 1917

International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union receives CIO charter - 1937

August 12
The national Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners is founded in Chicago in a gathering of 36 carpenters from 11 cities - 1881

Coal company guards kill 7, wound 40 miners who are trying to stop scabs, Virden, Ill. - 1898

With the news that their boss, Florenz Ziegfeld, was joining the Producing Managers’ Assn., the chorus girls in his Ziegfield Follies create their own union, the Chorus Equity Assn. They were helped by a big donation from superstar and former chorus girl Lillian Russell. In 1955 the union merged with the Actor’s Equity Assn - 1919

Teamsters official William Grami is kidnapped, bound and beaten near Sebastopol, Calif. He was leading a drive to organize apple plant workers in the area - 1955

The North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA— was concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, despite protests from labor, environmental and human rights groups. It went into effect in January, 1994 - 1992

What was to become a 232-day strike by major league baseball players over owners' demands for team salary caps began on this day; 938 games were cancelled - 1994

August 13
Striking miners at Tracy City, Tenn., capture their mines and free 300 state convict strikebreakers. The convicts had been "leased" to mine owners by officials in an effort to make prisons self-supporting and make a few bucks for the state. The practice started in 1866 and lasted for 30 years - 1892

Newspaper Guild members begin three-month strike of Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, shutting the publication down in their successful fight for union recognition - 1936

Civil rights leader and union president A. Philip Randolph strongly protests the AFL-CIO Executive Council's failure to endorse the August 28 "March on Washington" - 1963

August 14
President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, providing, for the first time ever, guaranteed income for retirees and creating a system of unemployment benefits - 1935

Members of the upstart Polish union Solidarity seize the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. Sixteen days later the government officially recognizes the union. Many consider the event the beginning of the end for the Iron Curtain - 1980

August 15
Populist social commentator Will Rogers killed in a plane crash, Point Barrow, Alaska. One of his many classic lines: "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts" - 1935

President Richard M. Nixon announces a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents in an attempt to combat inflation - 1971

Gerry Horgan, chief steward of CWA Local 1103 and NYNEX striker in Valhalla, NY, is struck on the picket line by a car driven by the daughter of a plant manager and dies the following day. What was to become a four-month strike over healthcare benefits was in its second week - 1989

August 02
Hatch Act is passed, limiting political activity of executive branch employees of the federal government - 1939

August 03
Uriah Smith Stephens born in Cape May, NJ. A tailor by trade, in 1869 he led nine Philadelphia garment workers to found the Knights of Labor - 1821

Florence Reece dies in Knoxville, Tenn. at 86. She was a Mine Workers union activist and author of "Which Side Are You On?", written after her home was ransacked by Harlan County county sheriff J.H. Blair and his thugs during a 1931 strike - 1986

15,000 air traffic controllers strike. President Reagan threatens to fire any who do not return to work within 48 hours, saying they "have forfeited their jobs" if they do not. Most stay out, and are fired August 5 - 1981

August 04
The Amalgamated Assn. of Iron and Steel Workers is formed. It partnered with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, CIO in 1935; both organizations disbanded in 1942 to form the new United Steelworkers - 1876

185,000 Teamsters begin what is to become a successful 15-day strike at United Parcel Service over excessive use of part-timers - 1997

August 05
Using clubs, police route 1,500 jobless men who had stormed the plant of the Fruit Growers Express Co. in Indiana Harbor, Indiana, demanding jobs - 1931

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) took effect today. The first law signed by President Clinton, it allows many workers time off each year due to serious health conditions or to care for a family member - 1993

August 06
Cigarmakers' International Union of America merges with Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union - 1974

American Railway Supervisors Association merges with Brotherhood of Railway, Airline & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees - 1980

Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of the US & Canada merges with Brotherhood of Railway, Airline & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees - 1986

Eugene Debs and three other trade unionists arrested after Pullman Strike - 1894

Actors Equity is recognized by producers after stagehands honor their picket lines, shutting down almost every professional stage production in the country. Before unionizing, it was common practice for actors to pay for their own costumes, rehearse long hours without pay, and be fired without notice - 1919

United Slate, Tile & Composition Roofers, Damp & Waterproof Workers Association change name to Roofers, Waterproofers & Allied Workers - 1978

Some 675,000 employees struck ATT Corp. over wages, job security, pension plan changes and better health insurance. It was the last time CWA negotiated at one table for all its Bell System members: divestiture came a few months later. The strike was won after 22 days - 1983

Television writers, members of The Writers Guild of America, end a 22-week strike with a compromise settlement - 1988

August 08
Delegates to the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly elect 35-year-old Charles James, leader of the Boot and Shoe Workers local union, as their president. He was the first African-American elected to that leadership post in St. Paul, many believe the first in the nation - 1902

Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of North America merge with Retail Clerks International Union to become United Food & Commercial Workers - 1979

Cesar Chavez is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, becoming the first Mexican-American ever to receive the honor - 1994

July 26
In Chicago, 30 workers are killed by federal troops, more than 100 wounded at the "Battle of the Viaduct" during the Great Railroad Strike - 1877

President Grover Cleveland appoints a United States Strike Committee to investigate the causes of the Pullman strike and the subsequent strike by the American Railway Union. Later that year the commission issues its report, absolving the strikers and blaming Pullman and the railroads for the conflict - 1894

Battle of Mucklow, W.Va. in coal strike. An estimated 100,000 shots were fired; 12 miners and four guards were killed - 1912

President Truman issues Executive Order 9981, directing equality of opportunity in armed forces - 1948

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) took effect today. It requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to qualified disabled employees and bans discrimination against such workers - 1992

July 28
Women shoemakers in Lynn, Mass. create Daughters of St. Crispin, demand pay equal to that of men - 1869

Harry Bridges is born in Australia. He came to America as a sailor at age 19 and went on to help form and lead the militant International Longshore and Warehouse Union for more than 40 years - 1901

A strike by Paterson, N.J. silk workers for an eight-hour day, improved working conditions ends after six months, with the workers’ demands unmet. During the course of the strike, approximately 1,800 strikers were arrested, including Wobblie leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - 1913

Federal troops burn the shantytown built near the U.S. Capitol by thousands of unemployed WWI veterans, camping there to demand a bonus they had been promised but never received - 1932

Nine miners are rescued in Sommerset, Pa. after being trapped for 77 hours 240 feet underground in the flooded Quecreek Mine - 2002

July 29
The Coast Seamen's Union merges with the Steamship Sailor's Union to form the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific - 1891

A preliminary delegation from Mother Jones' March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia to Pres. Theodore Roosevelt's summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, publicizing the harsh conditions of child labor, arrives today. They are not allowed through the gates - 1903

Following a five-year table grape boycott, Delano-area growers file into the United Farm Workers union hall in Delano, Calif. to sign their first union contracts - 1970

July 30
President Lyndon Johnson signs the Medicare Act, providing federally-funded health insurance for senior citizens - 1964

Former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappears. Presumed to be dead, his body has never been found - 1975

United Airlines agrees to offer domestic-partner benefits to employees and retirees worldwide - 1999

July 31
Members of the National Football League Players Association begin what is to be a two-day strike, their first. The issues: pay, pensions, the right to arbitration and the right to have agents - 1970

The Great Shipyard Strike of 1999 ends after Steelworkers at Newport News Shipbuilding ratify a breakthrough agreement which nearly doubles pensions, increases security, ends inequality, and provides the highest wage increases in company and industry history to nearly 10,000 workers at the yard. The strike lasted 15 weeks - 1999

August 01
After organizing a strike of metal miners against the Anaconda Company, Wobblie organizer Frank Little is dragged by six masked men from his Butte, Mont. hotel room and hung from the Milwaukee Railroad trestle. Years later writer Dashiell Hammett would recall his early days as a Pinkerton detective agency operative and recount how a mine company representative offered him $5,000 to kill Little. Hammett says he quit the business that night - 1917

Sid Hatfield, police chief of Matewan, W. Va., a longtime supporter of the United Mine Workers union, is murdered by company goons. This soon led to the Battle of Blair Mountain, a labor uprising also referred to as the Red Neck War - 1921

Police in Hilo, Hawaii open fire on 200 demonstrators supporting striking waterfront workers. The attack became known as "the Hilo Massacre" - 1938

A 17-day, company-instigated wildcat strike in Philadelphia tries to bar eight African-American trolley operators from working. Transport Workers Union members stay on the job in support of the men - 1944

Government & Civic Employees Organizing Committee merges into State, County & Municipal Employees - 1956

Ten-month strike against Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel wins agreement guaranteeing defined-benefit pensions for 4,500 Steelworkers - 1997

July 19
Women's Rights Convention opens in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Delegates adopt a Declaration of Women's Rights and call for women's suffrage - 1848

An amendment to the 1939 Hatch Act, a federal law whose main provision prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity, is amended to also cover state and local employees whose salaries include any federal funds - 1940

July 20
New York City newsboys, many so poor that they were sleeping in the streets, begin a two-week strike. Several rallies drew more than 5,000 newsboys, complete with charismatic speeches by strike leader Kid Blink, who was blind in one eye. The boys had to pay publishers up front for the newspapers; they were successful in forcing the publishers to buy back unsold papers - 1899

Postal unions, Postal Service sign first labor contract in the history of the federal government - 1971

July 21
Local militiamen are called out against striking railroad workers in Pittsburgh. The head of the Pennsylvania Railroad advises giving the strikers "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." Instead, the militiamen joined the workers. Meanwhile, federal troops are sent to Baltimore, where they kill 10 strikers and wound 25 - 1877

Compressed air explosion kills 20 workers constructing railroad tunnel under the Hudson River - 1880

Radio station WCFL, owned and operated by the Chicago Federation of Labor, takes to the airwaves with two hours of music. The first and only labor-owned radio station in the country, WCFL was sold in 1979 - 1926

A die-cast operator in Jackson, Mich. is pinned by a hydraulic Unimate robot, dies five days later. Incident is the first documented case in the U.S. of a robot killing a human - 1984

July 22
Newly unionized brewery workers in San Francisco, mostly German socialists, declare victory after the city’s breweries give in to their demands for free beer, the closed shop, freedom to live anywhere (they had typically been required to live in the breweries), a 10-hour day, six-day week, and a board of arbitration - 1886

A bomb was set off during a "Preparedness Day"

parade in San Francisco, killing 10 and injuring 40 more. Tom Mooney, a labor organizer, and Warren Billings, a shoe worker, were convicted of the crime, but both were pardoned 23 years later - 1916

July 23
Anarchist Alexander Berkman shoots and stabs but fails to kill steel magnate Henry Clay Frick in an effort to avenge the Homestead massacre 18 days earlier, in which nine strikers were killed. Berkman also tried to use what was, in effect, a suicide bomb, but it didn't detonate - 1892

Northern Michigan copper miners strike for union recognition, higher wages and eight-hour day. By the time they threw in the towel the following April, 1,100 had been arrested on various charges and Western Federation of Miners President Charles Moyer had been shot, beaten and forced out of town - 1913

Aluminum Workers Int'l Union merges with The United Brick & Clay Workers of America to form Aluminum, Brick & Clay Workers - 1981

July 24
The United Auto Workers and the Teamsters form the Alliance for Labor Action (ALA), later to be joined by several smaller unions. The ALA's agenda included support of the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Viet Nam. It disbanded after four years following the death of UAW President Walter Reuther - 1968

The U.S. minimum wage increases to $6.55 per hour today. The original minimum, set in 1938 by the Fair Labor Standards Act, was 25 cents per hour - 2008

July 25
Workers stage a general strike – believed to be the nation’s first – in St. Louis, in support of striking railroad workers. The successful strike was ended when some 3,000 federal troops and 5,000 deputized special police killed at least eighteen people in skirmishes around the city - 1877

New York garment workers win closed shop and firing of scabs after 7-month strike - 1890

The Teamsters and Service Employees unions break from the AFL-CIO during the federation's 50th convention to begin the Change to Win coalition, ultimately comprised of seven unions. They say they want more emphasis on organizing and less on electoral politics - 2005

July 12
Bisbee, Ariz. deports Wobblies; 1,186 miners sent into desert in manure-laden boxcars. They had been fighting for improved safety and working conditions - 1917

The Screen Actors Guild holds its first meeting. Among those attending: future horror movie star (Frankenstein’s Monster) and union activist Boris Karloff - 1933

Detroit newspaper workers begin 19-month strike against Gannett, Knight-Ridder - 1995

July 14
The Great Uprising nationwide railway strike begins in Martinsburg, W.Va. after railroad workers are hit with their second pay cut in a year. In the following days, strike riots spread through 17 states. The next week, federal troops were called out to force an end to the strike - 1877

Woody Guthrie, writer of "This Land is Your Land" and "Union Maid," born in Okemah, Okla. - 1912

Italian immigrants and anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted in Massachusetts of murder and payroll robbery – unfairly, most historians agree – after a two-month trial, and are eventually executed. Fifty years after their deaths the state's governor issued a proclamation saying they had been treated unfairly and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." - 1921

Robert Gray, an African-American sharecropper and leader of the Share Croppers Union, is murdered in Cap Hill, Alabama - 1931

A half-million steelworkers begin what is to become a 116-day strike that shutters nearly every steel mill in the country. Management wanted to dump contract language limiting its ability to change the number of workers assigned to a task or to introduce new work rules or machinery that would result in reduced hours or fewer employees - 1959

July 16
Ten thousand workers strike Chicago's International Harvester operations - 1919

San Francisco Longshoreman's strike spreads, becomes four-day general strike - 1934

July 17
Two ammunition ships explode at Port Chicago, Calif., killing 322, including 202 African-Americans assigned by the Navy to handle explosives. It was the worst home-front disaster of World War II. The resulting refusal of 258 African-Americans to return to the dangerous work underpinned the trial and conviction of 50 of the men in what is called the Port Chicago Mutiny - 1944

July 18
The Brotherhood of Telegraphers begins an unsuccessful three-week trike against the Western Union Telegraph Co - 1883

Hospital workers win 113-day union recognition strike in Charleston, S.C. - 1969

July 05
During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, which had drastically reduced wages, buildings constructed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jackson park were set ablaze, reducing seven to ashes - 1894

National Labor Relations Act, providing workers rights to organize and bargain collectively, passes Congress - 1935

July 06
Two strikers and a bystander are killed, 30 seriously wounded by police in Duluth, Minn. The workers, mostly immigrants building the city’s streets and sewers, struck after contractors reneged on a promise to pay $1.75 a day - 1889

Two barges, loaded with Pinkerton thugs hired by the Carnegie Steel Co., landed on the south bank of the Monongahela River in Homestead, Penn. seeking to occupy Carnegie Steel Works and put down a strike by members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers - 1892

Rail union leader Eugene V. Debs is arrested during the Pullman strike, described by the New York Times as "a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital" that involved some 250,000 workers in 27 states at its peak - 1894

Transit workers in New York begin what is to be an unsuccessful 3-week strike against the then-privately owned IRT subway. Most transit workers labored seven days a week, up to 11.5 hours a day - 1926

July 07
Striking New York longshoremen meet to discuss ways to keep new immigrants from scabbing. They were successful, at least for a time. On July 14, 500 newly arrived Jews marched straight from their ship to the union hall. On July 15, 250 Italian immigrants stopped scabbing on the railroad and joined the union - 1882

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones begins "The March of the Mill Children", when, accompanied part of the way by children, she walked from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt's home on Long Island to protest the plight of child laborers. One of her demands: reduce the childrens' work week to 55 hours - 1903

Cloakmakers begin what is to be a two-month strike against New York City sweatshops - 1910

Some 500,000 people participate when a two-day general strike is called in Puerto Rico by more than 60 trade unions and many other organizations. They are protesting privatization of the island's telephone company - 1998

Labor organizer Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor born on Staten Island, NY. Among her activities: investigating child labor in glass factories and mines, and working undercover in meat packing plants to verify for federal investigators the nightmarish working conditions that author Upton Sinclair had revealed in "The Jungle" - 1862

The Pacific Mail Steamship Co. fires all employees who had been working an eight hour day, then joins with other owners to form the "Ten-Hour League Society" for the purpose of uniting all mechanics "willing to work at the old rates, neither unjust to the laborers nor ruinous to the capital and enterprise of the city and state." The effort failed - 1867

Founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W., or Wobblies) concludes in Chicago. Charles O. Sherman, a former American Federation of Labor organizer, is elected president - 1905

July 09
The worst rail accident in U.S. history occurred when two trains pulled by 80-ton locomotives collided head-on at Dutchman’s curve in west Nashville, Tenn. 101 people died, another 171 were injured - 1918

New England Telephone "girls" strike for seven-hour workday, $27 weekly pay after four years' service - 1923

New York City subway system managers in the Bronx attempt to make cleaning crews on the IRT line work faster by forcing the use of a 14-inch squeegee instead of the customary 10-inch tool. Six workers are fired for insubordination; a two-day walkout by the Transport Workers Union wins reversal of the directive and the workers’ reinstatement - 1935

United Packinghouse, Food & Allied Workers merge with Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen - 1968

Five thousand demonstrators rally at the state capitol in Columbia, S.C. in support of the "Charleston Five," labor activists charged with felony rioting during a police attack on a 2000 longshoremen's picket of a non-union crew unloading a ship - 2001

July 10
Mary McLeod Bethune, educator and civil rights activist, born - 1875

14,000 federal and state troops finally succeed in putting down the strike against the Pullman Palace Car Co., which had been peaceful until July 5, when federal troops intervened in Chicago, against the repeated protests of the Governor and Chicago’s mayor. Some 34 American Raily Union members were killed by troops over the course of the strike - 1894

A powerful explosion rips through the Rolling Mill coal mine in Johnstown, Pa., killing 112 miners, 83 of whom were immigrants from Poland and Slovakia - 1902

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce holds a mass meeting of more than 2,000 merchants to organize what was to become a frontal assault on union strength and the closed shop. The failure of wages to keep up with inflation after the 1906 earthquake had spurred multiple strikes in the city - 1916

Sidney Hillman dies at age 59. He led the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, was a key figure in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and was a close advisor to Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt - 1946

July 11
Striking coal miners in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho dynamite barracks housing Pinkerton management thugs - 1892

A nine-year strike, the longest in the history of the United Auto Workers, began at the Ohio Crankshaft Division of Park-Ohio Industries Inc. in Cuyahoga Heights, Ohio. Despite scabs, arrests and firings, UAW Local 91 members hung tough and in 1992 won a fair contract - 1983

June 28
Birthday of machinist Matthew Maguire, who many believe first suggested Labor Day. Others believe it was Peter McGuire, a carpenter - 1850

President Grover Cleveland signs legislation declaring Labor Day an official U.S. holiday - 1894

The federal government sues the Teamsters to force reforms on the union, the nation's largest. The following March, the government and the union sign a consent decree requiring direct election of the union's president and creation of an Independent Review Board - 1988

June 29
What is to be a 7-day streetcar strike begins in Chicago after several workers are unfairly fired. Wrote the police chief at the time, describing the strikers’ response to scabs: "One of my men said he was at the corner of Halsted and Madison Streets, and although he could see fifty stones in the air, he couldn't tell where they were coming from." The strike was settled to the workers’ satisfaction - 1885

Jesus Pallares, founder of the 8,000-member coal miners union, Liga Obrera de Habla Esanola, is deported as an "undesirable alien." The union operated in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado - 1936

The Boilermaker and Blacksmith unions merge to become International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers - 1954

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in CWA v. Beck that, in a union security agreement, a union can collect as dues from non-members only that money necessary to perform its duties as a collective bargaining representative - 1988

June 30
Emma Goldman, women's rights activist and radical, born in Lithuania. She came to the U.S. at age 17 - 1869

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founded in Chicago - 1905

Alabama outlaws the leasing of convicts to mine coal, a practice that had been in place since 1848. In 1898, 73 percent of the state's total revenue came from this source. 25 percent of all black leased convicts died - 1928

The Walsh-Healey Act took effect today. It requires companies that supply goods to the government to pay wages according to a schedule set by the Secretary of Labor - 1936

Up to 40,000 New York construction workers demonstrated in midtown Manhattan, protesting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s awarding of a $33 million contract to a nonunion company. Eighteen police and three demonstrators were injured. "There were some scattered incidents and some minor violence," Police Commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Post. "Generally, it was a pretty well-behaved crowd." - 1998

July 01
Steel workers in Cleveland begin what was to be an 88-week strike against wage cuts - 1885

Homestead, Pennsylvania steel strike. Seven strikers and three Pinkertons killed as Andrew Carnegie hires armed thugs to protect strikebreakers - 1892

The Amalgamated Assn. of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers stages what is to become an unsuccessful three-month strike against U.S. Steel Corp. Subsidiaries - 1901

Some 1,100 streetcar workers strike in New Orleans, spurring the creation of the po’ boy sandwich by a local sandwich shop owner and one-time streetcar man. "Whenever we saw one of the striking men coming," Bennie Martin later recalled, "one of us would say, ‘Here comes another poor boy.’" Martin and his wife fed any striker who showed up - 1929

Nat'l Assn. of Post Office & General Service Maintenance Employees, United Fed. of Postal Clerks, Nat'l Fed. of Post Office Motor Vehicle Employees & Nat'l Assn. of Special Delivery Messengers merge to become American Postal Workers Union - 1971

International Jewelry Workers Union merges with Service Employees International Union - 1980

Graphic Arts International Union merges with International Printing & Graphic Communications Union to become Graphic Communications International Union, now a conference of the Teamsters - 1983

Copper miners begin a years-long long, bitter strike against Phelps-Dodge in Clifton, Ariz. Republican Gov. Bruce Babbitt repeatedly deployed state police and National Guardsmen to assist the company over the course of the strike, which broke the union - 1983

Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union merges with International Ladies' Garment Workers Union to form Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees - 1995

International Chemical Workers Union merges with United Food & Commercial Workers Int'l Union - 1996

July 02
President Johnson signs Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forbidding employers and unions from discriminating on the basis of race, color, gender, nationality, or religion - 1964

July 03
Children, employed in the silk mills in Paterson, N.J., went on strike for 11-hour day and 6-day week. A compromise settlement resulted in a 69-hour work work week - 1835

Feminist and labor activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman born in Hartford, Conn. Her landmark study, "Women and Economics", was radical: it called for the financial independence of women and urged a network of child care centers - 1860

July 04
Albert Parsons joins the Knights of Labor. He later became an anarchist and was one of the Haymarket martyrs - 1876

AFL dedicates its new Washington, D.C. headquarters building at 9th St. and Massachusetts Ave. NW. The building, still standing, later became headquarters for Plumbers and Pipefitters - 1916

Five newspaper boys from the Baltimore Evening Sun died when the steamer they were on, the Three Rivers, caught fire near Baltimore, Md. They are remembered every year at a West Baltimore cemetery, toasted by former staffers of the now-closed newspaper - 1924

Two primary conventions of the United Nations' International Labor Organization come into force: Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize - 1950

June 21
In England, a compassionate parliament declares that children can't be required to work more than 12 hours a day. And they must have an hours' instruction in the Christian Religion every Sunday and not be required to sleep more than two in a bed - 1802

10 miners accused of being militant "Molly Maguires" are hanged in Pennsylvania. A private corporation initiated the investigation of the 10 through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested them, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. "The state provided only the courtroom & the gallows," a judge said many years later - 1877

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right of unions to publish statements urging members to vote for a specific congressional candidate, ruling that such advocacy is not a violation of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act - 1948

100,000 unionists and other supporters march in solidarity with striking Detroit News and Detroit Free Press newspaper workers - 1997

June 22
Violence erupted during a coal mine strike at Herrin, Ill. Thirty-six were killed, 21 of them non-union miners - 1922

Congress overrides President Harry Truman's veto of the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. The law weakened unions and let states exempt themselves from union requirements. Twenty states immediately enacted open shop laws and two more did so later - 1947

OSHA issues standard on cotton dust to protect 600,000 workers from byssinosis, also known as "brown lung" - 1978

The newly-formed Jobs With Justice stages its first big support action, backing 3,000 picketing Eastern Airlines mechanics at Miami Airport - 1987

A majority of the 5,000 textile workers at six Fieldcrest Cannon textile plants in Kannapolis, N.C., vote for union representation after an historic 25-year fight - 1999

Birth of Agnes Nestor, president of the International Glove Workers Union and longtime leader of the Chicago Women's Trade Union League. She began work in a glove factory at age 14 - 1880

17 workers are killed as methane explodes in a water tunnel under construction in Sylmar, Calif. - 1971

June 25
More than 8,000 people attend the dedication ceremony for The Haymarket Martyrs Monument in Chicago, honoring those framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886 - 1893

Fair Labor Standards Act passes Congress, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week - 1938

At the urging of black labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, Franklin Roosevelt issues an executive order barring discrimination in defense industries - 1941

Congress passes the Smith-Connally War Labor Disputes Act over Pres. Franklin Roosevelt’s veto. It allows the federal government to seize and operate industries threatened by strikes that would interfere with war production. It was hurriedly created after the third coal strike in seven weeks - 1943

21 workers are killed when a fireworks factory near Hallett, Okla. explodes - 1985

Decatur, Ill. police pepper-gas workers at A.E. Staley plant gate one year into the company's two and one-half year lockout of Paperworkers Local 7837 - 1994

June 26
Members of the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, refuse to handle Pullman cars, in solidarity with Pullman strikers. Two dozen strikers were killed over the course of the strike - 1894

June 27
The Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the "Wobblies," is founded at a convention in Chicago. The Wobblie motto: "An injury to one is an injury to all." - 1905

Congress passes the National Labor Relations Act, creating the structure for collective bargaining in the United States - 1935

A 26-day strike of New York City hotels by 26,000 workers – the first such walkout in 50 years – ends with a five-year contract calling for big wage and benefit gains - 1985

A.E. Staley locks out 763 workers in Decatur, Ill. The lockout was to last two and one-half years – 1993

June 14
The first commercial computer, UNIVAC I, is installed at the U.S. Census Bureau - 1951

June 15
The Metal Trades Department of what is now the AFL-CIO is founded - 1908

The Congress of Industrial Organizations expels the Fur and Leather Workers union and the American Communications Association for what it describes as communist activities - 1947

Battle of Century City, as police in Los Angeles attack some 500 janitors and their supporters during a peaceful Service Employees International Union demonstration against cleaning contractor ISS. The event generated public outrage that resulted in recognition of the workers' union and spurred the creation of an annual June 15 Justice for Janitors Day – 1990

June 16
Eight local unions organize the International Fur Workers Union of U.S. and Canada. The union later merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen - 1913

Railroad union leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs speaks in Canton, Ohio on the relation between capitalism and war. Ten days later he is arrested under the Espionage Act, eventually sentenced to 10 years in jail - 1918

National Industrial Recovery Act becomes law, establishes the right to unionize, sets maximum hours and minimum wages for every major industry, abolishes sweatshops and child labor - 1933

Inacom Corp., once the world's largest computer dealer, sends most of its 5,100 employees an e-mail instructing them to call a toll-free phone number; when they call, a recorded message announces they have been fired - 2000

June 17
Susan B. Anthony goes on trial in Canandaigua, N.Y. for casting her ballot in a federal election the previous November, in violation of existing statutes barring women from the vote - 1873

Twelve trade unionists meet in Pittsburgh to launch a drive to organize all steelworkers. It was the birth of the United Steelworkers of America (then called the Steel Workers Organizing Committee). By the end of the year 125,000 workers joined the union in support of its $5-a-day wage demand - 1936

June 18
Union and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph and others meet with Pres. Roosevelt about a proposed July 1 March on Washington to protest discrimination in war industries. A week later, Roosevelt orders that the industries desegregate - 1941

The first important sit-down strike in American history is conducted by workers at a General Tire Co. factory in Akron, Ohio. The United Rubber Workers union was founded a year later – 1934

The Women’s Day Massacre in Youngstown, Ohio, when police use tear gas on the women and children, including at least one infant in his mother's arms, during a strike at Republic Steel. One union organizer later recalled, "When I got there I thought the Great War had started over again. Gas was flying all over the place and shots flying and flares going up and it was the first time I had ever seen anything like it in my life..." - 1937

ILWU begins a four day general strike in sugar, pineapple, and longshore to protest convictions under the anti-communist Smith Act of seven activists, "the Hawaii Seven." The convictions were later overturned by a federal appeals court - 1953

June 20
The American Railway Union, headed by Eugene Debs, is founded. In the Pullman strike a year later, the union was defeated by federal injunctions and troops, and Debs was imprisoned for violating the injunctions - 1893

Henry Ford recognizes the United Auto Workers, signs contract for workers at River Rouge plant – 1941

Striking African American auto workers are attacked by KKK, National Workers League, and armed white workers at Belle Isle amusement park in Detroit. Two days of riots follow, 34 people are killed, more than 1,300 arrested - 1943

The Taft-Hartley Labor Management Relations Act, curbing strikes, is vetoed by President Harry S Truman. The veto was overridden three days later by a Republican-controlled Congress – 1947

Oil began traveling through the Alaska pipeline. Seventy thousand people worked on building the pipeline, history's largest privately-financed construction project – 1977

Evelyn Dubrow, described by the New York Times as organized labor's most prominent lobbyist at the time of its greatest power, dies at age 95. The International Ladies' Garment Workers Union lobbyist once told the Times that "she trudged so many miles around Capitol Hill that she wore out 24 pairs of her Size 4 shoes each year." She retired at age 86 - 2006

June 07
Militia sent to Cripple Creek, Colo., to suppress Western Federation of Miners strike – 1904

Sole performance of Pageant of the Paterson (NJ) Strike, created and performed by 1,000 mill workers from the silk industry strike, New York City – 1913

Striking textile workers battle police in Gastonia, N.C. Police Chief O.F. Aderholt is accidentally killed by one of his own officers. Six strike leaders are convicted of “conspiracy to murder” and are sentenced to jail for from 5 to 20 years - 1929

The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, later to become the United Steel Workers of America, is formed in Pittsburgh - 1936

Founding convention of the United Food and Commercial Workers. The merger brought together the Retail Clerks International Union and the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butcher Workmen of North America - 1979

The United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club announce the formation of a strategic alliance to pursue a joint public policy agenda under the banner of Good Jobs, A Clean Environment, and A Safer World - 2006

June 08
A battle between the Militia and striking miners at Dunnville, Colo. ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later – 1904

Some 35,000 members of the Machinists union begin what is to become a 43-day strike – the largest in airline history – against five carriers. The mechanics and other ground service workers wanted to share in the airlines’ substantial profits - 1966

The earliest recorded strike by Chinese immigrants to the U.S. occurred when stonemasons brought to San Francisco to build the three-story Parrott granite building - made from Chinese prefabricated blocks - struck for higher pay - 1852

New York City drawbridge tenders, in a dispute with the state over pension issues, leave a dozen bridges open, snarling traffic in what the Daily News described as "the biggest traffic snafu in the city's history" - 1971

June 09

Helen Marot is born in Philadelphia to a wealthy family. She went on to organize the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union in New York, and organized and led the city's 1909-1910 Shirtwaist Strike. In 1912, she was a member of a commission investigating the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire - 1865

U.S. Supreme Court rules in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. that preliminary work activities, where controlled by the employer and performed entirely for the employer's benefit, are properly included as working time. The decision is known as the "portal to portal case" - 1946

President Kennedy signs a law mandating equal pay to women who are performing the same jobs as men (Equal Pay Act) – 1963

June 11
Representatives from the AFL, Knights of Labor, populists, railroad brotherhoods and other trade unions hold a unity conference in St. Louis but fail to overcome their differences - 1894

Police shoot at maritime workers striking United Fruit Co. in New Orleans; 1 killed, 2 wounded – 1913

John L. Lewis dies. A legendary figure, he was president of the United Mine Workers from 1920 to 1960 and a driving force behind the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations - 1969

June 12
Fifty thousand members of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen employed in meatpacking plants walk off their jobs; demands include equalization of wages and conditions

throughout U.S. plants - 1904

260 die in Butte mine disaster; 14,000 strike against unsafe conditions – 1917

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidates two sections of a Florida law: one required state licensing of paid union business agents, the other required registration with the state of all unions and their officers - 1945

Major League Baseball strike begins, forces cancellation of 713 games. Most observers blamed team owners for the strike: they were trying to recover from a court decision favoring the players on free agency - 1981

Tony Mazzocchi born in Brooklyn, N.Y. An activist and officer in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, he was a mentor to Karen Silkwood, a founder of the Labor Party and a prime mover behind the 1970 passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act - 1926

May 31
Rose Will Monroe, popularly known as Rosie the Riveter, dies in Clarksville, Ind. During WWII she helped bring women into the labor force - 1997

June 01
The Ladies Federal Labor Union Number 2703, based in Illinois, was granted a charter from the American Federation of Labor. Women from a wide range of occupations were among the members, who ultimately were successful in coalescing women’s groups interested in suffrage, temperance, health, housing, and child labor reform to win state legislation in these areas - 1888

Union Carpenters win a 25-cents-per-day raise, bringing wages for a nine-hour day to $2.50 - 1898

Congress passes the Erdman Act, providing for voluntary mediation or arbitration of railroad disputes and prohibiting contracts that discriminate against union labor or release employees from legal liability for on-the-job injuries - 1898

12,500 longshoremen strike the Pacific coast, from San Diego to Bellingham. Demands included a closed shop and a wage increase to 55 cents an hour for handling general cargo - 1916

Farm workers under the banner of the new United Farm Workers Organizing Committee strike at Texas’s La Casita Farms, demand $1.25 as a minimum hourly wage - 1966

Dakota Beef meatpackers win 7-hour sit-down strike over speed-ups, St. Paul, Minn. – 2000

June 02
Twenty-six journeymen printers in Philadelphia stage the trade’s first strike in America over wages: a cut in their $6 weekly pay - 1786.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President Harry Truman acted illegally when he ordered the Army to seize the nation’s steel mills to avert a strike - 1952

Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and Textile Workers Union of America merge to form Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union – 1976

A Federal child labor law, enacted two years earlier, was declared unconstitutional – 1918

June 04
The AFL-CIO opens its new headquarters building, in view of the White House - 1956

June 05
Thirty-five members of the Teamsters, concerned about the infiltration of organized crime in the union and other issues, meet in Cleveland to form Teamsters for a Democratic Union - 1976

A general strike by some 12,000 autoworkers and others in Lansing, Mich. shuts down the city for a month in what was to become known as the city’s “Labor Holiday.” The strike was precipitated by the arrest of nine workers, including the wife of the auto workers local union president: the arrest left three children in the couple’s home unattended - 1937

May 24
After 14 years of construction and the deaths of 27 workers, the Brooklyn Bridge over New York’s East River opens. Newspapers call it “the eighth wonder of the world” - 1883

2,300 members of the United Rubber Workers, on strike for 10 months against five Bridgestone-Firestone plants, agree to return to work without a contract. They had been fighting demands for 12-hour shifts and wage increases tied to productivity gains - 1995

May 25
Philip Murray is born in Scotland. He went on to emigrate to the U.S., become founder and first president of the United Steelworkers of America, and head of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1940 until his death in 1952 - 1886

Two company houses occupied by non-union coal miners were blown up and destroyed during a strike against the Glendale Gas & Coal Co. in Wheeling, W. Va. – 1925

Thousands of unemployed WWI veterans arrive in Washington, D.C. to demand a bonus they had been promised but never received. They built a shantytown near the U.S. Capitol but were burned out by U.S. troops after two months - 1932

The notorious 11-month Remington Rand strike begins. The strike spawned the "Mohawk Valley (NY) formula," described by investigators as a corporate plan to discredit union leaders, frighten the public with the threat of violence, employ thugs to beat up strikers, and other tactics. The National Labor Relations Board termed the formula "a battle plan for industrial war." - 1936

May 26
Men and women weavers in Pawtucket, R.I. stage nation's first "co-ed" strike - 1824

Western Federation of Miners members strike for eight-hour day, Cripple Creek, Colo. – 1894

One hundred thousand steel workers and miners in mines owned by steel companies strike in seven states. The Memorial Day Massacre, in which ten strikers were killed by police at Republic Steel in Chicago, took place four days later, on May 30 - 1937

Battle of the Overpass (pictured above), Ford thugs beat United Auto Workers organizers – 1937

At least 30,000 workers in Rochester, N.Y. participate in a general strike in support of municipal workers who had been fired for forming a union - 1946

May 29
Animators working for Walt Disney begin what was to become a successful five-week strike for recognition of their union, the Screen Cartoonists' Guild. The animated feature "Dumbo" was being created at the time and, according to Wikipedia, a number of strikers are caricatured in the feature as clowns who go to "hit the big boss for a raise" - 1941

A contract between the United Mine Workers and the U.S. government establishes one of the nation's first union medical and pension plans, the multi-employer UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund - 1946

May 30
Police open fire on striking steelworkers at Republic Steel in South Chicago, killing ten and wounding more than 160 - 1937

The Ground Zero cleanup at the site of the World Trade Center is completed 3 months ahead of schedule due to the heroic efforts of more than 3,000 building tradesmen & women who had worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for the previous 8 months – 2002

Twelve Starbucks baristas in a mid-town Manhattan store, declaring they couldn’t live on $7.75 an hour, signed cards demanding representation by the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies. Management roadblocks continue to deny the workers their union to this day - 2004

May 18
In what may have been baseball’s first labor strike, the Detroit Tigers refuse to play after team leader Ty Cobb is suspended: he went into the stands and beat a fan who had been heckling him. Cobb was reinstated and the Tigers went back to work after the team manager’s failed attempt to replace the players with a local college team: their pitcher gave up 24 runs - 1912

Amalgamated Meat Cutters union organizers launch a campaign in the nation’s packinghouses, an effort that was to bring representation to 100,000 workers over the following two years - 1917

Big Bill Haywood, a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies), dies in exile in the Soviet Union - 1928

Atlanta transit workers, objecting to a new city requirement that they be fingerprinted as part of the employment process, go on strike. They relented and returned to work six months later - 1950

Insurance Agents International Union and Insurance Workers of America merge to become Insurance Workers International Union (later to merge into the UFCW) - 1959

Oklahoma jury finds for the estate of atomic worker Karen Silkwood, orders Kerr-McGee Nuclear Co. to pay $505,000 in actual damages, $10 million in punitive damages for negligence leading to Silkwood’s plutonium contamination - 1979

Shootout in Matewan, W. Va. between striking union miners (led by Police Chief Sid Hatfield) and coal company agents. Ten died, including seven agents - 1920

The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, formed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, formally becomes the United Steelworkers of America - 1942

31 dockworkers are killed, 350 workers and others are injured when four barges carrying 467 tons of ammunition blow up at South Amboy, New Jersey. They were loading mines that had been deemed unsafe by the Army and were being shipped to the Asian market for sale - 1950

May 20
The Railway Labor Act took effect today. It was the first federal legislation protecting workers’ rights to form unions - 1926

May 21
Italian activists and anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, widely believed to have been framed for murder, go on trial today. They eventually are executed as part of a government campaign against dissidents – 1921

The “Little Wagner Act” is signed in Hawaii, guaranteeing pineapple and sugar workers the right to bargain collectively. After negotiations failed a successful 79-day strike shut down 33 of the territory’s 34 plantations and brought higher wages and a 40-hour week - 1945

Nearly 100,000 unionized SBC Communications Inc. workers begin a four-day strike to protest the local phone giant’s latest contract offer - 2004

May 22
Eugene V. Debs imprisoned in Woodstock, Ill. for role in Pullman strike - 1895

May 23
An estimated 100,000 textile workers, including more than 10,000 children, strike in the Philadelphia area. Among the issues: 60-hour workweeks, including night hours, for the children - 1903

Ten thousand strikers at Toledo, Ohio’s Auto-Lite plant repel police who have come to break up their strike for union recognition. The next day, two strikers are killed and 15 wounded when National Guard machine gun units open fire. Two weeks later the company recognized the union and agreed to a 5 percent raise - 1934

U.S. railroad strike starts, later crushed when President Truman threatens to draft strikers – 1946

The Granite Cutters International Association of America merges with Tile, Marble, Terrazzo, Finishers & Shopmen, which five years later merged into the Carpenters – 1983

May 10
Thanks to an army of thousands of Chinese and Irish immigrants, who laid 2,000 miles of track, the nation’s first transcontinental railway line was finished by the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines at Promontory Point, Utah – 1869

U.S. & Canadian workers form Western Labor Union. It favors industrial organization and independent labor party politics - 1898

A federal bankruptcy judge frees United Airlines from responsibility for pensions covering 120,000 employees - 2005

May 11
Nationwide railway strike begins at Pullman, Ill. 260,000 railroad workers ultimately joined the strike to protest wage cuts by the Pullman Palace Car Co. - 1894

May 12
Laundry & Dry Cleaning International Union granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1958

International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots merges with Longshoremens’ Association - 1971

The Canadian government establishes the Department of Labour. It took the U.S. another four years - 1909

Thousands of yellow cab drivers in New York City go on a one day strike in protest of proposed new regulations. “City officials were stunned by the (strike’s) success,” the New York Times reported - 1998

May 14
Milwaukee brewery workers begin 10-week strike, demanding contracts comparable to East and West coast workers. The strike was won because Blatz Brewery accepts their demands, but Blatz was ousted from the Brewers Association for “unethical” business methods - 1953

May 15
The Library Employees’ Union is founded in New York City, the first union of public library workers in the United States. A major focus of the union was the inferior status of women library workers and their low salaries - 1917

The first labor bank opens in Washington, D.C., launched by officers of the Machinists. The Locomotive Engineers opened a bank in Cleveland later that year - 1920

Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathon Kwitney reports that AFL-CIO President George Meany, Sec.-Treas. Lane Kirkland and other union officials are among the 60 leading stockholders in the 15,000 acre Punta Cana, Dominican Republic resort. When the partners needed help clearing the land, the Dominican president sent troops to forcibly evict stubborn, impoverished tobacco farmers and fishermen who had lived there for generations, according to Kwitney’s expose - 1973

May 16
Minneapolis general strike backs Teamsters, who are striking most of the city’s trucking companies - 1934

U.S. Supreme Court issues Mackay decision, which permits the permanent replacement of striking workers. The decision had little impact until Ronald Regan’s replacement of striking air traffic controllers (PATCO) in 1981, a move that signalled antiunion private sector employers that it was OK to do likewise - 1938

Black labor leader and peace activist A. Philip Randolph dies. He was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and first black on the AFL-CIO executive board, and a principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington - 1979

May 03
Four striking workers are killed, at least 200 wounded, when police attack a demonstration on Chicago’s south side at the McCormick Harvesting Machine plant. The Haymarket Massacre is to take place the following day - 1886

Eugene V. Debs and other leaders of the American Railway Union are jailed for six months for contempt of court in connection with Pullman railroad car strike - 1895

Pete Seeger, folksinger and union activist, born in Patterson, N.Y. Among his songs: “If I Had A Hammer” and “Turn, Turn, Turn” - 1919

May 04
Haymarket massacre. A bomb is thrown as Chicago police start to break up a rally for strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. A riot erupts, 11 police and strikers die, mostly from gunfire, and scores more are injured - 1886

May 05
National Typographical Union founded, Cincinnati, Ohio. It was renamed the International Typographical Union in 1869, in acknowledgment of Canadian members. When the ITU merged into CWA in 1986 it was the oldest existing union in the U.S. - 1852

On Chicago’s West Side, police attack Jewish workers as they try to march into the Loop to protest slum conditions - 1886

Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested in Boston for murder and payroll robbery. Eventually they are executed for a crime most believe they did not commit - 1920

Heavily armed deputies and other mineowner hirelings attack striking miners in Harlan County, Ky., starting the Battle of Harlan County - 1931

John J. Sweeney, president of the Service Employees Intl. Union from 1980 to 1995, then president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009, born in The Bronx, N.Y. - 1934

Lumber strike begins in Pacific Northwest, will involve 40,000 workers by the time victory is achieved after 13 weeks: union recognition, a 50 cent per hour minimum wage and an eight-hour day - 1937

The U.S. unemployment rate drops to a 30-year low of 3.9 percent; the rate for blacks and Hispanics is the lowest ever since the government started tracking such data - 2000

May 06
Works Projects Administration (WPA) established, provided work opportunities for millions during the Great Depression - 1935

400 black women working as tobacco stemmers walk off the job in a spontaneous revolt against poor working conditions and a $3 weekly wage at the Vaughan Co. in Richmond, Va. - 1937

May 07
The Knights of St. Crispin union is formed at a secret meeting in Milwaukee. It grew to 50,000 members before being crushed by employers later that year - 1867

Two die, 20 are injured in “Bloody Tuesday” as strikebreakers attempt to run San Francisco streetcars during a strike by operators. The strike was declared lost in 1908 after many more deaths, including several in scab-operated streetcar accidents - 1907

Philadelphia’s longest transit strike ends after 44 days. A key issue in the fight was the hiring and use of part-timers - 1977

May 08
The constitution of the Brotherhood of the Footboard was ratified by engineers in Detroit, Mich. Later became the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers - 1863

Jerry Wurf, who was to serve as president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) from 1964 to his death 1981, born in New York City. The union grew from about 220,000 members to more than 1 million during his presidency - 1919

About 200 construction workers in New York City attack a crowd of Viet Nam war protesters four days after the Kent State killings. More than 70 people were injured, including four police officers. Peter Brennan, head of the New York building trades, was honored at the Nixon White House two weeks later, eventually named Secretary of Labor - 1970

12,000 Steelworker-represented workers at Goodyear Tire & Rubber win an 18-day strike for improved wages and job security - 1997

May 09
Japanese workers strike at Oahu, Hawaii’s Aiea Plantation, demanding the same pay as Portugese and Puerto Rican workers. Ultimately 7,000 workers and their families remained out until August, when the strike was broken - 1909

Legendary Western Federation of Miners leader William “Big Bill” Haywood goes on trial for murder in the bombing death of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, who had brutally suppressed the state’s miners. Haywood ultimately was declared innocent - 1907

Longshoremen’s strike to gain control of hiring leads to general work stoppage, San Francisco Bay area - 1934

Hollywood studio mogul Louis B. Mayer recognizes the Screen Actors Guild. SAG leaders reportedly were bluffing when they told Mayer that 99 percent of all actors would walk out the next morning unless he dealt with the union. Some 5,000 actors attended a victory gathering the following day at Hollywood Legion Stadium; a day later, SAG membership increased 400 percent - 1937

United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and his wife May die in a plane crash as they travel to oversee construction of the union’s education and training facility at Black Lake, Mich. - 1971

4,000 garment workers, mostly Hispanic, strike for union recognition at the Farah Mfg. Co. in El Paso, Tex. - 1972

April 26
The U.S. House of Representatives passes House Joint Resolution No. 184, a constitutional amendment to prohibit the labor of persons under 18 years of age. The Senate approved by the measure a few weeks later, but it was never ratified by the states and is still technically pending - 1924

On the orders of President Roosevelt, the U.S. Army seizes the Chicago headquarters of the unionized Montgomery Ward & Co. after management defies the National Labor Relations Board - 1944

James Oppenheim’s poem “Bread and Roses” published in IWW newspaper “Industrial Solidarity” - 1946

President Dwight Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450: Security Requirements for Government Employment. The order listed “sexual perversion” as a condition for firing a federal employee and for denying employment to potential applicants - 1953

United Wallpaper Craftsmen & Workers of North America merges with Pulp, Sulfite & Paper Mill Workers - 1958

American Federation of Hosiery Workers merges with Textile Workers Union of America - 1965

Congress creates OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The AFL-CIO sets April 28 as “Workers Memorial Day” to honor the hundreds of thousands of workers killed and injured on the job every year - 1970.

First “Take Our Daughters to Work Day,” promoted by the Ms. Foundation, to boost self-esteem of girls with invitations to a parent’s workplace - 1993

April 29
Coxey’s Army (pictured above) of 500 unemployed civil war veterans reaches Washington, DC - 1894

When their demand that only union men be employed was refused, members of the Western Federation of Miners dynamited and destroyed the $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Company at Wardner, Idaho - 1899

April 30
An explosion at the Everettville mine in Everettville, W. Va., kills 109 miners, many of whom lie in unmarked graves to this day - 1927

Cigar makers in Cincinnati warn there could be a strike in the Fall if factory owners continue to insist that they pay 30 cents per month for gas consumed at work during mornings and evenings - 1883

Eight-hour day demonstration in Chicago, and other cities, begins tradition of May Day as international labor holiday – 1886

Nineteen machinists working for the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad gather in a locomotive pit to decide what to do about a wage cut. They vote to form a union, which later became the International Association of Machinists - 1888

The Cooks’ and Waiters’ Union strikes in San Francisco, demanding one day of rest per week, a ten-hour work day and a union shop for all restaurants in the city - 1901

Mother Jones’ 100th birthday celebrated at the Burgess Farm in Adelphi, Md. She died six months later - 1930

New York City’s Empire State Building officially opens. Construction involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, and hundreds of Mohawk iron workers. Five workers died during construction - 1931

Congress enacts amendments to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, extending protections to the employees of state and local governments – protections which didn’t take effect until 1985 because of court challenges and regulation-writing problems - 1974

International Molders & Allied Workers Union merges with Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers International Union - 1988

Woodworkers of America International merges with International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers - 1994

International Leather Goods, Plastics & Novelty Workers Union merges with Service Employees International Union - 1996

Rallies in cities across the U.S. for what organizers call “A Day Without Immigrants.” An estimated 100,000 immigrants and sympathizers gathered in San Jose, Calif., 200,000 in New York, 400,000 each in Chicago and Los Angeles. In all, there were demonstrations in at least 50 cities - 2006

May 02
Chicago's first Trades Assembly, formed three years earlier, sponsors a general strike by thousands of workers to enforce the state's new eight hour day law. The one-week strike was unsuccessful - 1867

Birth of Richard Trevellick, a ship carpenter, founder of American National Labor Union and later head of the National Labor Congress, America’s first national labor organization - 1830

Pres. Herbert Hoover declares that the stock market crash six months earlier was just a "temporary setback" and the economy would soon bounce back. In fact the Great Depresssion was to continue and worsen for several more years - 1930

In Germany, Adolph Hitler issues an edict abolishing all labor unions, part of his effort to ban any political opposition - 1933

February 01
The Collar Laundry Union forms in Troy, N.Y, raises earnings for female laundry workers from two dollars to 14 dollars a week - 1864

25,000 Paterson, NJ silk workers strike for eight-hour work day and improved working conditions. 1,800 were arrested over the course of the six-month walkout, led by the Wobblies. They returned to work on their employers’ terms - 1913

International Brotherhood of Firemen & Oilers merge with Service Employees International Union - 1995

February 02
Sixteen thousand silk workers in Paterson, NJ and 32,000 in Lawrence, Mass. strike for shorter work week with no cut in pay - 1919

Legal secretary Iris Rivera fired for refusing to make coffee; secretaries across Chicago protest - 1977

The 170-day lockout (although management called it a strike) of 22,000 steelworkers by USX Corp. ends with a pay cut but greater job security. It was the longest work stoppage in the history of the U.S. steel industry - 1987

February 03
U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act banning child labor and establishing the 40-hour work week - 1941

February 04
"Big Bill" Haywood born in Salt Lake City, Utah: Leader of Western Federation of Miners, Wobblies (IWW) founder - 1869

Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man launched the 1955 Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott and the birth of the civil rights movement, is born in Tuskeege, Ala. - 1913

Thirty-seven thousand maritime workers on the West Coast strike for wage increases - 1937

February 05
First daily labor newspaper, "N.Y. Daily Sentinel", begins publication - 1830

President Bill Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave Act. The law requires most employers of 50 or more workers to grant up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for a family or medical emergency - 1993

In what turns out to be a bad business decision, Circuit City fires 3,900 experienced sales people because they're making too much in commissions. Sales plummet. Duh. - 2003

February 06
Ironworkers from six cities meet in Pittsburgh to form the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers of America. Their pay in Pittsburgh at the time: $2.75 for a nine-hour day – 1896

Philadelphia shirtwaist makers vote to accept arbitration offer and end walkout as Triangle Shirtwaist strike winds down. One year later 146 workers, mostly young girls aged 13 to 23, were to die in a devastating fire at the New York City sweatshop - 1910

Seattle General Strike begins. The city was run by a General Strike Committee for six days as tens of thousands of union members stopped work in support of 32,000 striking longshoremen - 1919

January 25
Sojourner Truth addresses 1st Black Women’s Rights convention - 1851

The Sheet Metal Workers International Association (SMWIA) is founded as the Tin, Sheet Iron and Cornice Workers’ International Association - 1888

United Mine Workers of America founded in Columbus, Ohio. The union’s constitution barred racial, religious and ethnic discrimination - 1890

The Supreme Court upholds “Yellow Dog” employment contracts, which forbid membership in labor unions. Yellow Dog contracts remained legal until 1932 - 1915

January 26
In what could be considered the first workers’ compensation agreement in America, pirate Henry Morgan pledges his underlings 600 pieces of eight or six slaves to compensate for a lost arm or leg. Also part of the pirate’s code, reports Roger Newell: shares of the booty were equal regardless of race or sex, and shipboard decisions were made collectively. - 1695

Samuel Gompers, first AFL president, born in London, England. He emigrated to the U.S. as a youth - 1850

The Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America chartered by the AFL – 1897

Two day sitdown strike in Brooklyn power plant leads to major organizing in New York subways - 1937

A handful of American companies announce nearly 60,000 layoffs today, as the recession that began during the George W. Bush presidency charges full-tilt toward what has become known as the Great Recession - 2009

January 27
New York City maids organize to improve working conditions – 1734

A group of Detroit African-American auto workers known as the Eldon Avenue Axle Plant Revolutionary Union Movement leads a wildcat strike against racism and bad working conditions. They are critical of both automakers and the UAW, condemning the seniority system and grievance procedures as racist - 1969

January 29
Responding to unrest among workers building the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Pres. Andrew Jackson orders first use of American troops to suppress a labor dispute - 1834

Sit-down strike helps establish United Rubber Workers as a national union, Akron, Ohio - 1936

Newly-elected President Barack Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for women and minorities to win pay discrimination suits - 2009

January 31

12,000 pecan shellers in San Antonio, Tex. – mostly Latino women – walk off their jobs at 400 factories in what was to become a three-month strike against wage cuts. Strike leader Emma Tenayuca was eventually hounded out of the state - 1938

Ida M. Fuller is the first retiree to receive an old-age monthly benefit check under the new Social Security law. She paid in $24.75 between 1937 and 1939 on an income of $2,484; her first check was for $22.54 - 1940

Union and student pressure forces Harvard university to adopt new labor policies raising wages for lowest-paid workers - 2002

Five months after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans school board fires every teacher in the district in what the United Teachers of New Orleans sees as an effort to break the union and privatize the school system - 2005

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

January 18
"Take This Job and Shove It," by Johnny Paycheck, is listed by Billboard magazine as the most popular song in the U.S. - 1978

January 19
Twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, N.J. - 1915

3,000 members of the Filipino Federation of Labor strike the plantations of Oahu, Hawaii. Their ranks swell to 8,300 as they are joined by members of the Japanese Federation of Labor - 1920

Yuba City, Calif. labor contractor Juan V. Corona found guilty of murdering 25 itinerant farm workers he employed during 1970 and 1971 - 1973

Bruce Springsteen makes an unannounced appearance at a benefit for laid-off 3M workers, Asbury Park, NJ - 1986

January 21
750,000 steel workers walk out in 30 states, largest strike in U.S. history to that time - 1946

Postal Workers begin four-day strike at the Jersey City, N.J. bulk and foreign mail center - 1974

January 22
Birth of Terence V. Powderly, leader of the Knights of Labor - 1849

January 24
Krueger Cream Ale, the first canned beer, goes on sale in Richmond, Va. Pabst was the second brewer in the same year to sell beer in cans, which came with opening instructions and the suggestion: "cool before serving" - 1935

Federal minimum wage increases to 75¢ an hour - 1952

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

January 11
The IWW-organized “Bread & Roses” textile strike of 32,000 women and children begins in Lawrence, Mass. It lasted 10 weeks and ended in victory. The first millworkers to walk out were Polish women who, upon collecting their pay, exclaimed that they had been cheated and promptly abandoned their looms - 1912

Ford Motor Co. announces it will eliminate 35,000 jobs while discontinuing four models and closing five plants - 2002

January 12
Novelist Jack London is born. His classic definition of a scab—someone who would cross a picketline and take a striker's job: "After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles" - 1876

Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson orders police to raid an open-air mass meeting of shipyard workers in an attempt to prevent a general strike. Workers were brutally beaten. The strike began the following month, with 60,000 workers walking out in solidarity with some 25,000 metal tradesmen - 1919

Pres. Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board to mediate labor disputes during World War II. Despite the fact that 12 million of the nation’s workers were women – to rise to 18 million by war’s end – the panel consisted entirely of men - 1942

President John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 10988, guaranteeing federal workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively - 1962

January 13
The original Tompkins Square Riot (pictured above). As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children with billy clubs. Declared Abram Duryee, the Commissioner of Police: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw..." - 1874

(Exact date uncertain) As the nation debates a constitutional amendment to reign in the widespread practice of brutally overworking children in factories and fields, U.S. District Judge G.W. McClintic expresses concern, instead, about child idleness - 1924

January 14
Clinton-era OSHA issues confined spaces standard to prevent more than 50 deaths and 5,000 serious injuries annually for workers who enter confined spaces - 1993

Some 14,000 General Electric employees strike for two days to protest the company's mid-contract decision to shift an average of $400 in additional health care co-payments onto each worker - 2003

The Pentagon, to this day the largest office building in the world, is dedicated just 16 months after groundbreaking. At times of peak employment 13,000 workers labored on the project - 1943

January 16
The United States Civil Service Commission was established as the Pendleton Act went into effect - 1883

Thousands of Palmer Raids detainees win right to meet with lawyers and attorney representation at deportation hearings. "Palmer" was Alexander Mitchell Palmer, U.S. Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson. Palmer believed Communism was "eating its way into the homes of the American workman," and Socialists were causing most of the country's social problems - 1920

Former UAW President Leonard Woodcock dies in Ann Arbor, Mich. at age 89. He had succeeded Walter Reuther and led the union from 1970 to 1977 - 2001

January 17
Radical labor organizer and anarchist Lucy Parsons leads hunger march in Chicago; IWW songwriter Ralph Chaplin writes "Solidarity Forever" for the march - 1915

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

January 04
Angered by increasing farm foreclosures, members of Iowa's Farmers Holiday Association threaten to lynch banking representatives and law officials who institute foreclosure proceedings for the duration of the Great Depression - 1933

8,000 NYC social workers strike, demand better conditions for welfare recipients - 1965

Legendary Transport Workers Union leader Mike Quill, other TWU leaders jailed for violating anti-strike court injunction in 4-day-old New York City transit walkout involving 35,000 members. A settlement was reached Jan. 13 – 1966

United Paperworkers International Union merges with Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union to form Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers International Union - 1999

January 05
The nation’s first Black labor convention was held in Washington, D.C., with 214 delegates forming the Colored National Labor Union - 1869

Ford Motor Company raised wages from $2.40 for a 9-hour day to $5 for an 8 hour day in effort to keep the unions out - 1914

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins. Ten of the eleven deaths on the job came when safety netting beneath the site – the first-ever use of such equipment – failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen other workers were saved by the net over the course of construction. They became members of the (informal) Halfway to Hell Club - 1933

United Mine Workers reformer Joseph Yablonski and his family murdered by goons hired by union president Tony Boyle - 1970

January 06
The Toronto Trades and Labour Council endorses the principle of equal pay for equal work between men and women - 1882

8,000 workers strike at Youngstown Sheet & Tube. The following day the strikers’ wives and other family members join in the protest. Company guards use tear gas bombs and fire into the crowd; three strikers are killed, 25 wounded - 1916

January 07
Wobblie Tom Mooney, accused of a murder by bombing in San Francisco, pardoned and freed after 22 years in San Quentin - 1939

The presidents of 12 of the nation’s largest unions meet and call for reuniting the American labor movement, which split into two factions in 2005 when when seven unions left the AFL-CIO and formed a rival federation. The meeting followed signals from President-elect Barack Obama that he would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices. Unions from both sides of the split participated in the meeting. The split continues to this day - 2009

January 08
American Federation of Labor charters a Mining Department - 1912

The AFL Iron and Steel Organizing Committee ends the “Great Steel Strike.” Some 350,000 to 400,000 steelworkers had been striking for more than three months, demanding union recognition. The strike failed - 1920

January 09
A Mediation Commission appointed by President Woodrow Wilson finds that "industry’s failure to deal with unions" is the prime reason for labor strife in war industries - 1918

Eighty thousand Chicago construction workers strike - 1922

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union leads Missouri Highway sit-down of 1,700 families. They had been evicted from their homes so landowners wouldn't have to share government crop subsidy payments with them - 1939

January 10
In what is described as the worst industrial disaster in state history, the Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, Mass., collapses, trapping 900 workers, mostly Irish women. More than 100 die, scores more injured in the collapse and ensuing fire. Too much machinery had been crammed into the building - 1860

Birthdate of Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, first AFL woman organizer. In 1880 she organized the Woman’s Bookbinder Union and in 1903 was a founder of the National Women’s Trade Union League - 1864

Wobblie organizer and singer Joe Hill allegedly kills two men during a grocery store hold-up in Utah. He ultimately hangs for the crime despite much speculation that he was framed - 1914

The Supreme Court lets stand implementation of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) despite the lack of an Environmental Impact Statement - 1944

Former AFL-CIO President George Meany dies at age 85. The one-time plumber led the labor federation from the time of the AFL and CIO merger in 1955 until shortly before his death - 1980

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

December 28
Auto workers begin sit-down strike for union recognition at GM’s Fisher Body plant in Cleveland - 1936

December 29
After years of intensive lobbying by the labor movement, a comprehensive national safety law is enacted as President Nixon signs the Occupational Safety & Health Act of 1970, creating the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) - 1970

More than 15,000 United Steel Workers members at 16 Goodyear Tire & Rubber plants end an 86-day strike, ratify three-year contract - 2006

December 30
Gathering in the back room of Behrens’ cigar shop in Sedalia, Missouri, 33 railroad clerks form Local Lodge Number 1 of a union they named the Order of the Railroad Clerks of America - 1899

GM sit-down strike spreads to Flint, Mich., will last 44 days before ending in union victory - 1936

December 31
60,000 unemployed workers rally at a Pittsburgh stadium - 1931

United Mine Workers reformer Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, his wife and daughter are murdered by hit men hired by union president Tony Boyle, who was to be convicted of the crime and eventually die in prison - 1969

OSHA adopts a grain handling facilities standard to protect 155,000 workers at nearly 24,000 grain elevators from the risk of fire and explosion from highly combustible grain dust - 1987

January 01
Women weavers form union, Fall River, Mass - 1875

John L. Lewis is elected president of the United Mine Workers. Fifteen years later he is to be a leader in the formation of what was to become the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) - 1920

With the Great Depression in full force, the year 1932 opens with 14 million unemployed, national income down by 50%, breadlines that include former shopkeepers, businessmen and middle-class housewives. Charity is overwhelmed: only one-quarter of America’s unemployed are receiving any help at all - 1932

Workers begin to acquire credits toward Social Security pension benefits. Employers and employees became subject to a tax of one percent of wages on up to $3,000 a year - 1937

Adolph Strasser, head of the Cigar Maker’s Union and one of the founders of the AFL in 1886, died on this day in Forest Park, Ill. - 1939

Members of the Transport Workers Union and Amalgamated Transit Union working for the New York transit system begin what is to be a successful 12 day strike. Fiery TWU leader Mike Quill, jailed for several days during the strike, then hospitalized, died three days after his release from the hospital - 1966

Railway Patrolmen’s International Union merges with Brotherhood of Railway, Airline & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees - 1969

The federal minimum wage increases to $2.65 per hour - 1978

International Typographical Union, nation’s oldest union, merges with Communications Workers of America - 1987

United Furniture Workers of America merges with Int’l Union of Electronic, Electrical, Technical, Salaried & Machine Workers to become International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine & Furniture Workers - 1987

National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians merges with Communications Workers of America - 1994

International Union of Allied & Industrial Workers of America merges with United Paperworkers International - 1994

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) takes effect, over objections of labor - 1994

Mechanics Educational Society of America merges with United Automobile Workers - 1997

Bakery, Confectionery & Tobacco Workers Int’l Union merges with American Federation of Grain Millers to form Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers Int’l Union - 1999

January 02
Conference of 23 industrial unionists in Chicago leads to formation of IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as Wobblies - 1905

In what became known as Palmer Raids, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer arrests 4,000 foreign-born labor agitators. He believed Communism was “eating its way into the homes of the American workman,” and Socialists were causing most of the country’s social problems - 1920

An underground explosion at Sago Mine in Tallmansville, W. Va., traps 12 miners and cuts power to the mine. Eleven men die, mostly by asphyxiation. The mine had been cited 273 times for safety violations over the prior 23 months - 2006

January 03
The ship Thetis arrives in Hawaii with 175 Chinese field workers bound to serve for five years at $3 per month - 1852

Wobblie Tom Mooney tried in San Francisco for Preparedness Day bombing - 1917

In a familiar scene during the Great Depression, some 500 farmers, black and white, their crops ruined by a long drought, march into downtown England, Ark., to demand food for their starving families, warning they would take it by force if necessary. Town fathers frantically contacted the Red Cross; each family went home with two weeks’ rations - 1931

The Supreme Court rules against the closed shop, a labor-management agreement that only union members can be hired and must remain members to continue on the job - 1949

December 21
Powered by children 7 to 12 years old working dawn to dusk, Samuel Slater’s thread-spinning factory goes into production in Pawtucket, R.I., launching the Industrial Revolution in America. By 1830, 55 per cent of the mill workers in the state were youngsters, many working for less than $1 per week - 1790

Supreme Court rules that picketing is unconstitutional. Chief Justice (and former president) William Howard Taft declared that picketing was, in part, "an unlawful annoyance and hurtful nuisance..." - 1921

December 22
A group of building trades unions from the Midwest meet in St. Louis to form the National Building Trades Council. The Council disbanded after several years of political and jurisdictional differences - 1897

Amid a widespread strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers, approximately 250 alleged “anarchists,” “communists,” and “labor agitators” were deported to Russia, marking the beginning of the so-called “Red Scare” - 1919

N.Y. City transit strike ends after 60 hours with a 37-month settlement. Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint was sentenced to 10 days in jail for the illegal walkout and the union fined $2.5 million - 2005

December 23
AFL officers found in contempt of court for urging a labor boycott - 1908

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest employer, with 1.4 million "associates," agrees to settle 63 wage and hour suits across the U.S., for a grand total of between $352 million and $640 million. It was accused of failure to pay overtime, requiring off-the-clock work, and failure to provide required meal and rest breaks - 2008

December 24
72 copper miners’ children die in panic caused by company stooge at Calumet, Mich. The stooge shouted “fire” up the stairs into a crowded hall where the children had gathered. They were

crushed against closed doors when they tried to flee - 1913

December 25
A dynamite bomb destroyed a portion of the Llewellyn Ironworks in Los Angeles, where a bitter strike was in progress - 1910

December 26
Knights of Labor founded. Constitution bars from membership “parasites,” including stockbrokers and lawyers - 1869

December 27
President Roosevelt seizes the railroads to avert a nationwide strike. His decision to temporarily place the railroads under the “supervision” of the War Department prompts the five railroad brotherhoods to agree to his offer to arbitrate the wage dispute - 1943

December 14
Daniel DeLeon, socialist scholar and labor organizer, born - 1852

Some 33,000 striking members of the Machinists end a 69-day walkout at Boeing after winning pay and benefit increases and protections against subcontracting some of their work overseas - 1995

December 15
AFL convention passes a one-cent per capita assessment to aid the organization of women workers. (Exact date uncertain) - 1913

The Kansas national guard is called out to subdue from two thousand to six thousand protesting women who were going from mine to mine attacking non-striking miners in the Pittsburgh coal fields. The women made headlines across the state and the nation: they were christened the "Amazon Army" by the New York Times - 1921

Eight days after the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, the AFL pledges that there will be no strikes in defense-related plants for the duration of World War II - 1941

Meeting in its biennial convention, the AFL-CIO declares “unstinting support” for “measures the Administration might deem necessary to halt Communist aggression and secure a just and lasting peace” in Viet Nam - 1967

Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers union organizer Clinton Jencks, who led New Mexico zinc miners in the strike depicted in the classic 1954 movie “Salt of the Earth,” dies of natural causes in San Diego at age 87 - 2005

December 16
The National Civic Federation is formed by business and labor leaders, most prominently AFL president Sam Gompers, as a vehicle to resolve conflicts between management and labor. Not all unionists agreed with the alliance. The group turned increasingly conservative and labor withdrew after Gompers’ 1924 death - 1900

New York City’s Majestic Theater becomes first in the U.S. to employ women ushers - 1902

The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen & Switchmen’s Union of North America merge to become United Transportation Union - 1968

Eight female bank tellers in Willmar, Minn. begin the first strike against a bank in U.S. history. At issue: they were paid little more than half what male tellers were paid. The strike ended in moral victory but economic defeat two years later - 1977

December 17
Int’l Union of Aluminum, Brick & Glass Workers merges with United Steelworkers of America - 1996

December 18
General Motors announces it is closing 21 North American plants over the following four years and slashing tens of thousands of jobs - 1991

December 19
An explosion in the Darr Mine in Westmoreland Co., Penn. kills 239 coal miners. 71 of the dead share a common grave in Olive Branch Cemetary. Dec 1907, was the worst month in US coal mining history, with over 3,000 dead - 1907

A 47-day strike at Greyhound Bus Lines ends with members of the Amalgamated Transit Union accepting a new contract containing deep cuts in wages and benefits. Striker Ray Phillips died during the strike, run over on a picket line by a scab Greyhound trainee - 1983

26 men and 1 woman are killed in the Wilberg Coal Mine Disaster near Orangeville, Utah. The disaster has been termed the worst coal mine fire in the state’s history. Federal mine safety officials issued 34 safety citations after the disaster but had inspected the mine only days before and declared it safe - 1984

December 20
Delegates to the AFL convention in Salt Lake City endorse a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote - 1899.

The first group of 15 Filipino plantation workers recruited by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association arrive in Hawaii. By 1932 more than 100,000 Filipinos will be working in the fields - 1906

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) takes effect today - 1970

Thousands of workers began what was to be a two-day strike of the New York City transit system over retirement, pension and wage issues. The strike violated the state’s Taylor Law; TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint was jailed for ten days and the union was fined $2.5 million - 2005

December 07
Heywood Broun born in New York City. Journalist, columnist and co-founder, in 1933, of The Newspaper Guild - 1888

Steam boiler operators from 11 cities across the country meet in Chicago to form the National Union of Steam Engineers of America, the forerunner to the International Union of Operating Engineers. Each of the men represented a local union of 40 members or fewer - 1896

More than 1,600 protesters staged a national hunger march on Washington, D.C. to present demands for unemployment insurance - 1931

United Hatters, Cap & Millinery Workers International Union merges into Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union - 1982

December 08
25 unions found the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in Columbus, Ohio; Cigarmaker’s union leader Samuel Gompers is elected president. The AFL’s founding document’s preamble reads: “A struggle is going on in all of the civilized world between oppressors and oppressed of all countries, between capitalist and laborer...” - 1886

114-day newspaper strike begins, New York City - 1962

President Bill Clinton signs The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - 1993

December 09
Ratification of a new labor agreement at Titan Tire of Natchez, Miss. ends the longest strike in the history of the U.S. tire industry, which began May 1, 1998 at the company's Des Moines, Iowa, plant - 2001

December 10
First sit-down strike in U.S. called by IWW at General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y. - 1906

International Human Rights Day, commemorating the signing at the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, in part: “Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests” - 1948

December 11
Ten days after an Illinois State mine inspector approved coal dust removal techniques at New Orient mine in West Frankfort, the mine exploded, largely because of coal dust accumulations, killing 119 workers - 1951

Forty thousand workers go on general strike in London, Ontario—a city with a population of 300,000—protesting cuts in social services - 1995

December 12
A U.S. immigration sweep of six Swift meat plants results in arrests of nearly 1,300 undocumented workers - 2006

December 13
Death in San Antonio, Tex. of Samuel Gompers, president and founder of the American Federation of Labor - 1924

November 30
“Fighting Mary” Eliza McDowell, also known as the “Angel of the Stockyards,” born in Chicago. As a social worker she helped organize the first women’s local of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in 1902 – 1854

Mother Jones died at the Burgess Farm in Adelphi, Md.; “I’m not a lady, I’m a hell-raiser!” - 1930

More than 12,000 members of the Insurance Agents Union strike in 35 states and Washington D.C. against the Prudential Insurance Co. - 1951

Unionists and activists shut down World Trade Organization meeting, Seattle, Wash. - 1999

December 01
The Ford Motor Co. introduced the continuous moving assembly line which could produce a complete car every two-and-a-half minutes - 1913

Kellogg cereal adopts 6-hour day - 1930

Ten thousand pickets jam the sidewalk in front a Boston Store in Milwaukee in support of retail workers striking for union recognition. The workers returned in mid-January with a small pay raise but no recognition - 1934

African American Rosa Parks refuses to go to the back of a Montgomery, Ala. bus, fueling the growing civil rights movement's campaign to win desegregation and end the deep South's "Jim Crow" laws - 1955

United Garment Workers of America merge with United Food & Commercial Workers International Union - 1994

Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers & Allied Workers International Union & United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum & Plastics Workers of America merge with International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers - 1996

December 02
A Chicago "slugger," paid $50 by labor unions for every scab he "discouraged," described his job in an interview: "Oh, there ain't nothing to it. I gets my fifty, then I goes out and finds the guy they wanna have slugged, then I gives it to ‘im" - 1911

December 03
Textile strikers win 10-hour day, Fall River, Mass. - 1866

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes an ordinance setting an eight-hour workday for all city employees - 1867

General strike begins in Oakland, Calif., started by female department store clerks - 1946

The express passenger train "20th Century Limited" ends over 60 years of service when it takes its last run from New York City to Chicago - 1967

5,000 union construction workers in Oahu, Hawaii march to City Hall in protest of a proposed construction moratorium by the City Council - 1976

Arrests began today in Middleton, NJ of teachers striking in violation of a no-strike law. Ultimately 228 educators were jailed for up to seven days before they were released following the Middleton Township Education Association's agreement to take the dispute to mediation - 2001

December 04
UAW President Walter Reuther elected president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations - 1951

Cesar Chavez jailed for 20 days for refusing to end United Farm Workers' grape boycott - 1970

December 05
Unionists John T. and James B. McNamara were sentenced to 15 years and life, respectively, after confessing to dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during a drive to unionize the metal trades in the city. Twenty people died in the bombing. The newspaper was strongly conservative and anti-union - 1911

Ending a 20-year split, the two largest labor federations in the U.S. merge to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million - 1955

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney welcomes the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, declaring "No deal is better than a bad deal" - 1999

December 06
African American delegates meet in Washington, D.C., to form the Colored National Labor Union as a branch of the all-white National Labor Union created three years earlier. Unlike the NLU, the CNLU welcomed members of all races. Isaac Myers was the CNLU's founding president; Frederick Douglas became president in 1872 - 1869

International Glove Workers Union of America merges into Amalgamated Clothing Workers - 1961

November 23
History’s first recorded strike, by Egyptians working on public works projects for King Ramses III in the Valley of the Kings. They were protesting having gone 20 days without pay – portions of grain – and put their tools down. Exact date estimated, described as within “the sixth month of the 29th year” of Ramses’ reign in “The Spirit of Ancient Egypt,” by Ana Ruiz - 1170BC

Troops were dispatched to Cripple Creek, Colo. to control rioting by striking coal miners - 1903

Mine Workers President John L. Lewis walks away from the American Federation of Labor to lead the newly-formed Committee for Industrial Organization. The CIO and the unions created under its banner organized six million industrial workers over the following decade - 1935

November 24
Led by Samuel Gompers, who would later found the American Federation of Labor, Cigarmakers International Union Local 144 is chartered in New York City - 1875

November 25
Some 10,000 New Orleans workers, black and white, participate in a solidarity parade of unions comprising the Central Trades and Labor Assembly. The parade was so successful it was repeated the following two years - 1883

Teachers strike in St. Paul, Minn., the first organized walkout by teachers in the country. The month-long “strike for better schools” involving some 1,100 teachers—and principals—led to a number of reforms in the way schools were administered and operated - 1946

1,550 typesetters begin what is to become a victorious 22-month strike against Chicago newspapers - 1947

George Meany becomes president of the American Federation of Labor following the death four days earlier of William Green - 1952

November 26
Six young women burn to death and 19 more die when they leap from the fourth-story windows of a blazing factory in Newark, N.J. The floors and stairs were wooden; the only door from which the women could flee was locked - 1910

November 27
1,200 workers sit down at Midland Steel, forcing recognition of the United Auto Workers, Detroit - 1936

The pro-labor musical revue, “Pins & Needles,” opens on Broadway with a cast of International Ladies Garment Workers Union members. The show ran on Friday and Saturday nights only, because of the casts’ regular jobs. It ran for 1,108 performances before closing - 1937

November 28
William Sylvus, founder of the National Labor Union, born - 1828

Some 400 New York City photoengravers working for the city’s newspapers, supported by 20,000 other newspaper unionists, begin what is to become an 11-day strike, shutting down the papers - 1953

November 29
Clerks, teamsters and building service workers at Boston Stores in Milwaukee strike at the beginning of the Christmas rush. The strike won widespread support – at one point 10,000 pickets jammed the sidewalks around the main store – but ultimately was lost. Workers returned to the job in mid-January with a small pay raise and no union recognition - 1934

National Labor Relations Board rules that medical interns can unionize and negotiate wages and hours - 1999

November 16
A county judge in Punxutawney, Pa. grants an injunction requested by the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Co. forbidding strikers from speaking to strikebreakers, posting signs declaring a strike is in progress, or even singing hymns. Union leaders termed the injunction “drastic.” - 1927

November 17
The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York is founded "to provide cultural, educational and social services to families of skilled craftsmen." The Society remains in existence to this day - 1785

International Brotherhood of Longshoremen change name to Longshoremen’s Association - 1959

November 18
Seattle printers refuse to print anti-labor ad in newspaper - 1919

31 men died on Lake Michigan with the sinking of the Carl D. Bradley during one of the worst storms in the lake’s history. The 623-foot ship, carrying limestone, broke in two. Four crewmen survived - 1958

November 19
Joe Hill, labor leader and song writer, executed in Utah on what many believe was a framed charge of murder. Before he died he declared: “Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize.” - 1915

The nation’s first automatic toll collection machine is used at the Union Toll Plaza on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway - 1954

November 20
First use of term “scab,” by Albany Typographical Society - 1816

The time clock is invented by Willard Bundy, a jeweler in Auburn, N.Y. Bundy’s brother Harlow starts mass producing them a year later - 1888

Mine fire in Telluride, Colo., kills 28 miners, prompts union call for safer work conditions - 1901

78 miners are killed in an explosion at the Consolidated Coal Company’s No. 9 mine in Farmington, W. Va. - 1968

November 21
Six miners striking for better working conditions under the IWW banner were killed and many wounded in the Columbine Massacre at Lafayette, Colo. Out of this struggle Colorado coal miners gained lasting union contracts - 1927

The United Auto Workers Union strikes 92 General Motors plants in 50 cities to back up worker demands for a 30 percent raise. 200,000 workers are out - 1945

Staten Island and Brooklyn are linked by the new Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time and still the longest in the U.S. Joseph Farrell, an apprentice Ironworker on the project, told radio station WNYC: "The way the wind blows over this water it would blow you right off the iron. That was to me and still is the most treacherous part of this business. When the wind grabs you on the open iron, it can be very dangerous." Three workers died over the course of the five year project - 1964

A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas kills 85 hotel employees and guests and sends 650 injured persons, including 14 firefighters, to the hospital. Most of the deaths and injuries were caused by smoke inhalation - 1980

Congress approves the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), to take effect Jan. 1 of the following year - 1993

November 22
20,000 female garment workers are on strike in New York; Judge tells arrested pickets: “You are on strike against God” - 1909

The district president of the American Federation of Labor and two other white men are shot and killed in Bogalusa, Ala. as they attempt to assist an African-American organizer working to unionize African-American workers at the Great Southern Lumber Co. - 1919

November 09
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, a partner to the Civilian Conservation Corps, to create construction jobs, mainly improving or constructing buildings and bridges - 1933

Committee for Industrial Organization founded by eight unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The eight want more focus on organizing mass production industry workers - 1935

Philip Murray, first president of the United Steelworkers Organizing Committee, first president of the United Steelworkers of America, and president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations for 12 years following the death of John L. Lewis, dies at age 66 - 1952

November 10
Sit-down strike begins at Austin, Minn. Hormel plant with the help of a Wobbly organizer, leading to the creation of the Independent Union of All Workers - 1933

The ship Edmund Fitzgerald – the biggest carrier on the Great Lakes – and crew of 29 are lost in a storm on Lake Superior while carrying ore from Superior, Wisc. to Detroit. The cause of the sinking was never established - 1975

Tile, Marble, Terrazzo Finishers, Shop Workers & Granite Cutters International Union merges into United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners - 1988

November 11
Haymarket martyrs hanged, convicted in the bombing deaths of eight police during a Chicago labor rally - 1887

A confrontation between American Legionnaires and Wobblies during an Armistice Day Parade in Centralia, Ill. results in six deaths. One Wobbly reportedly was beaten, his teeth bashed in with a rifle butt, castrated and hanged: local officials listed his death as a suicide - 1919

57 crewmen on three freighters die over a three-day period when their ships sink during a huge storm over Lake Michigan - 1940

November 12
Ellis Island in New York closes after providing the gateway for 12 million immigrants from 1892 to 1924. From 1924 to 1954 it was mostly used as a detention and deportation center for undocumented immigrants - 1954

“Chainsaw Al” Dunlap announces he is restructuring the Sunbeam Corp. and lays off 6,000 workers—half the workforce. Sunbeam later nearly collapsed after a series of scandals under Dunlap’s leadership that cost investors billions of dollars - 1996

November 13
259 miners died in the underground Cherry Mine fire. As a result of the disaster, Illinois established stricter safety regulations and in 1911, the basis for the state’s Workers Compensation Act was passed - 1909

A Western Federation of Miners strike is crushed by the militia in Butte, Mont. - 1914

The Holland Tunnel opens, running under the Hudson River for 1.6 miles and connecting the island of Manhattan in New York City with Jersey City, NJ. Thirteen workers died over its seven-year-long construction - 1927

November 14
Trade unions formed the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Organizations, later becoming the AFL. Under the leadership of Samuel Gompers and Peter McGuire, the AFL became the most influential labor organization in the nation - 1881

The American Railway Supervisors Association is formed at Harmony Hall in Chicago by 29 supervisors working for the Chicago & North Western Railway. They organized after realizing that those railroaders working under their supervision already had the benefits of unionization and were paid more for working fewer hours - 1934

The Depression-era Public Works Administration agrees with New York City today to begin a huge slum clearance project covering 20 acres in Brooklyn, where low cost housing for 2,500 families will be completed. It was the first of many such jobs-and-housing projects across the country - 1934

The National Federation of Telephone Workers – later to become the Communications Workers of America – is founded in New Orleans - 1938

To “organize workers into a powerful industrial union,” United Mine Workers of America President, John L. Lewis called a meeting in Pittsburgh’s Islam Grotto, founding the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) - 1938

Jimmy Carter-era OSHA publishes standard reducing permissible exposure of lead, protecting 835,000 workers from damage to nervous, urinary and reproductive systems - 1978

November 15
Founding convention of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions is held in Pittsburgh. It urges enactment of employer liability, compulsory education, uniform apprenticeship and child and convict labor laws. Five years later it changes its name to the American Federation of Labor - 1881

Railroad union leader & socialist Eugene V. Debs receives a million votes for President while imprisoned - 1920

President Reagan signs a bill designating a federal holiday honoring the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to be observed on the third Monday of January - 1983

November 03
Striking milk drivers dump thousands of gallons of milk on New York City streets - 1921

November 04
Populist humorist Will Rogers was born on this day near Oologah, Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). One of his many memorable quotes: “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.” - 1879

Some 3,000 dairy farmers demonstrate in Neillsville, Wisc., ultimately leading to the freeing of jailed leaders of a milk strike over low prices set by large dairy plants. Tons of fresh milk were dumped on public roads, trains carrying milk were stopped, some cheese plants were bombed during the fight - 1933

After a struggle lasting more than two years, 6,000 Steelworkers members at Bridgestone/ Firestone win a settlement in which strikers displaced by scabs got their original jobs back. The fight started when management demanded that the workers accept 12-hour shifts - 1996

November 05
Eugene V. Debs - labor leader, socialist, three-time candidate for president and first president of the American Railway Union, born - 1855

Everett, Wash., massacre, at least seven Wobblies killed, 50 wounded and an indeterminate number missing - 1916

Some 12,000 television and movie writers begin what was to become a three-month strike against producers over demands for an increase in pay for movies and television shows released on DVD and for a bigger share of the revenue from work delivered over the Internet - 2007

November 06
A coal mine explosion in Spangler, Pa. kills 79. The mine had been rated gaseous in 1918, but at the insistence of new operators it was rated as non-gaseous even though miners had been burned by gas on at least four occasions - 1922

November 07
Some 1,300 building trades workers in eastern Massachusetts participated in a general strike on all military work in the area to protest the use of open-shop (a worksite in which union membership is not required as a condition of employment) builders. The strike persisted for a week in the face of threats from the U.S. War Department - 1917

President Eisenhower’s use of the Taft-Hartley Act is upheld by the Supreme Court, breaking a 116-day steel strike - 1959

Lemuel Ricketts Boulware dies in Delray Beach, Fla. at age 95. As a GE vice president in the 1950s he created the policy known as Boulwarism, in which management decides what is "fair" and refuses to budge on anything during contract negotiations. IUE President Paul Jennings described the policy as "telling the workers what they are entitled to and then trying to shove it down their throats." - 1990

November 08
20,000 workers, black and white, stage general strike in New Orleans, demanding union recognition and hour and wage gains - 1892

President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces plans for the Civil Works Administration to create four million additional jobs for the Depression-era unemployed. The workers ultimately laid 12 million feet of sewer pipe and built or made substantial improvements to 255,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, 3,700 playgrounds, and nearly 1,000 airports (not to mention 250,000 outhouses still badly needed in rural America) - 1933

October 26
After eight years and at least 1,000 worker deaths – mostly Irish immigrants – the 350-mile Erie Canal opens, linking the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. Father John Raho wrote to his bishop that "so many die that there is hardly any time to give Extreme Unction to everybody. We run night and day to assist the sick" - 1825

October 27
The New York City subway, the first rapid-transit system in America, opens. More than 100 workers died during the construction of the first 13 miles of tunnels and track - 1904

The National Negro Labor Council is formed in Cincinnati to unite black workers in the struggle for full economic, political and social equality. The group was to function for five years before disbanding, having forced many AFL and CIO unions to adopt non-discrimination policies - 1951

October 28
The Gateway Arch, a 630 ft high parabola of stainless steel marking the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial on the waterfront of St. Louis, Missouri is completed after two and one-half years. Although it was predicted 13 lives would be lost in construction, not a single Ironworker died - 1965

October 29
Wall street crashes – "Black Tuesday" – throwing the world's economy into a years-long crisis including an unemployment rate in the U.S. that by 1933 hit nearly 25 percent - 1929

October 30
Ed Meese, attorney general in the Ronald Regan administration, urges employers to begin spying on workers "in locker rooms, parking lots, shipping and mail room areas and even the nearby taverns" to try to catch them using drugs - 1986

October 31
Tennessee sends in leased convict laborers to break a coal miners strike in Anderson County. The miners revolted, burned the stockades, and sent the captured convicts by train back to Knoxville - 1891

After 14 years of labor by 400 stone masons, the Mt. Rushmore sculpture is completed in Keystone, South Dakota - 1941

Int'l Alliance of Bill Posters, Billers & Distributors of the United States & Canada surrenders its AFL-CIO charter and is disbanded - 1971

November 01
Nation's first general strike for 10 hour day; Philadelphia - 1835

Malbone tunnel disaster in New York City; inexperienced scab motorman crashes five-car train during strike, 97 killed, 255 injured - 1918

United Stone & Allied Products Workers of America merge with United Steelworkers of America - 1972

Honda assembles the first-ever Japanese car manufactured in a U.S. plant, in Marysville, Ohio. By 2009 the plant was making 440,000 cars a year and Honda – just one of the foreign manufacturers with multiple plants operating in the U.S. – said it had sold 20 million cars since its American operation launched - 1982

October 19
The J.P. Stevens textile company is forced to sign its first union contract after a 17-year struggle in North Carolina and other southern states - 1980

October 20
Eugene V. Debs, U.S. labor leader and socialist, dies in Elmhurst, Ill. Among his radical ideas: an eight-hour workday, pensions, workman's compensation, sick leave and social security. He ran for president from a jail cell in 1920 and got a million votes - 1926

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan writes to PATCO President Robert Poli with this promise: if the union endorses Reagan "I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety." He got the endorsement. Nine months after the election, he fires the air traffic controllers for engaging in an illegal walkout over staffing levels and working conditions - 1980

Death of Merle Travis, songwriter and performer who wrote "Sixteen Tons" & "Dark as a Dungeon" - 1983

October 22
Bank robber Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd is killed by FBI agents near East Liverpool, Ohio. He was a hero to the people of Oklahoma who saw him as a "Sagebrush Robin Hood," stealing from banks and sharing some of the proceeds with the poor - 1934

October 23
Explosion and fire at Phillips Petroleum refinery in Pasadena, Texas, kills 23 and injures 314 - 1989

John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees Intl. Union, elected president of AFL-CIO - 1995

Postal workers Joseph Cursseen and Thomas Morris die after inhaling anthrax at the Brentwood mail sorting center in Washington, D.C. Other postal workers are made ill. Letters containing the deadly spores had been addressed to U.S. Senate offices and media outlets - 2001

October 24
Strike of Teamsters, Scalesmen and Packers in New Orleans. City trade is paralyzed; within a week the walkout becomes a general strike, involving more than 20,000 whites and blacks together, in support of demands for union recognition and a 10-hour work day - 1892

The first U.S. federal minimum wage – 25 cents an hour – takes effect, thanks to enactment of the Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act. The law required an increase to 30 cents an hour one year from this date, and to 40 cents an hour on this date in 1945. The FLSA also established the 40-hour work week and forbade child labor in factories - 1938

AFL-CIO readmits Teamsters union to the labor federation, ending a 30-year expulsion for corruption. In 2005 the Teamsters again parted company with the AFL-CIO – along with a half-dozen other unions – over differences of approach on organizing and politics - 1987.

October 25
25,000 silk dye workers strike in Paterson, NJ - 1934

In what becomes known as the Great Hawaiian Dock Strike, a six-month struggle to win wage parity with mainland dock workers ends in victory - 1949

October 12
Company guards kill at least eight miners who are attempting to stop scabs, Virden, Ill. Six guards also were killed, and 30 persons wounded - 1898

2,000 workers demanding union recognition close down dress manufacturing, Los Angeles - 1933

October 13
American Federation of Labor votes to boycott all German-made products as a protest against Nazi antagonism to organized labor within Germany - 1934

Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union activist Karen Silkwood is killed in a suspicious car crash on her way to deliver documents to a newspaper reporter during a safety investigation of a plutonium processing plant, Okla. - 1974

More than 1,100 office workers strike Columbia University in New York City. The mostly female and minority workers win union recognition and pay increases - 1985

Hundreds of San Jose "Mercury News" newspaper carriers end 4-day walkout with victory - 2000

October 14
International Working People's Association founded in Pittsburgh, Penn. - 1883

October 15
Pres. Woodrow Wilson signs the Clayton Antitrust Act – often referred to as "Labor’s Magna Carta" – establishing that unions are not "conspiracies" under the law. It for the first time freed unions to strike, picket and boycott employers. In the years that followed, however, numerous state measures and negative court interpretations weakened the law - 1914

October 16
Abolitionist John Brown leads 18 men, including five free blacks, in an attack on the Harper's Ferry ammunition depot, the beginning of guerilla warfare against slavery - 1859

October 17
Labor activist Warren Billings is released from California's Folsom Prison. Along with Thomas J. Mooney, Billings had been pardoned for a 1916 conviction stemming from a bomb explosion during a San Francisco Preparedness Day parade. He had always maintained his innocence - 1939

"Salt of the Earth" strike begins by the mostly Mexican-American members of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union Local 890 in Bayard, N.M. Strikers' wives walked picket lines for seven months when their men were enjoined during the 14-month strike against the New Jersey Zinc Co. A great movie, see it! - 1950

Twelve New York City firefighters die fighting a blaze in midtown Manhattan - 1966

International Printing Pressmen's & Assistants' Union of North America merges with International Stereotypers', Electrotypers' & Platemakers' Union to become Printing & Graphic Communications Union - 1973

Industrial Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers of America merges with International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers - 1988

October 18
The "Shoemakers of Boston" - the first labor organization in what would later become the United States - was authorized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony - 1648

New York City agrees to pay women school teachers a rate equal to that of men - 1911

The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) was formed as a self-governing union, an outgrowth of the CIO's Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee. UPWA merged with the Meatcutters union in 1968, which merged with the Retail Clerks in 1979 to form the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW) - 1943

October 05
A strike by set decorators turns into a bloody riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, Calif. when scabs try to cross the picket line. The incident is still identified as "Hollywood Black Friday" and "The Battle of Burbank" - 1945

The UAW ends a three-week strike against Ford Motor Co. when the company agrees to a contract that includes more vacation days and better retirement and unemployment benefits - 1976

1,700 female flight attendants win 18-year, $37 million suit against United Airlines. They had been fired for getting married - 1986

October 07
Joe Hill, labor leader and song writer, born in Gavle, Sweden - 1879

Hollywood’s "Battle of the Mirrors." Picketing members of the Conference of Studio Unions disrupted an outdoor shoot by holding up large reflectors that filled camera lenses with blinding sunlight. Members of the competing IATSE union retaliated by using the reflectors to shoot sunlight back across the street. The battle went on all day, writes Tom Sito in "Drawing the Line" - 1946

October 08
Thirty of the city's 185 firefighters are injured battling the Great Chicago Fire, which burned for three days - 1871

Structural Building Trades Alliance organizes in Indianapolis with goal of eliminating jurisdictional strikes that were seriously disrupting the industry and shoring up the power of international unions over local building trades councils. Conflicts between large and small unions doomed the group and it disbanded six years later - 1902

In Poland, the union Solidarity and all other labor organizations are banned by the government - 1982

Upholsterers' International Union of North America merges with United Steelworkers of America - 1985

October 09
United Hebrew Trades is organized in New York by shirtmaker Morris Hillquit and others. Hillquit would later would become leader of the Socialist Party - 1888

October 10
Six days into a cotton field strike by 18,000 Mexican and Mexican-American workers in Pixley, Calif., four strikers are killed and six wounded; eight growers were indicted and charged with murder - 1933

October 11
The Miners’ National Association is formed in Youngstown, Ohio, with the goal of uniting all miners, regardless of skill or ethnic background - 1873

Nearly 1,500 plantation workers strike Olaa Sugar, on Hawaii’s Big Island - 1948

September 29
A report by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that the average weekly take home pay of a factory worker with three dependents is now $94.87 - 1962

September 30
29 strike leaders are charged with treason – plotting "to incite insurrection, rebellion & war against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" – for daring to strike the Carnegie Steel Co. in Homestead, Pa. Jurors refuse to convict them - 1892

Railroad shopmen in 28 cities strike the Illinois Central Railroad and the Harriman lines for an 8 hour day, improved conditions and union recognition, but railroad officials obtain sweeping injunctions against them and rely on police and armed guards to protect strikebreakers - 1915

Black farmers meet in Elaine, Ark. to establish the Progressive Farmers and Householders Union to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices. They are shot at by a group of whites, and return the fire. News of the confrontation spread and a riot ensued, leaving at least 100, perhaps several hundred blacks dead and 67 indicted for inciting violence - 1919

October 01
Twenty-one die when the L.A. Times building is dynamited during a citywide fight over labor rights and organizing. A union member ultimately confessed to the bombing, which he said was supposed to have occurred early in the morning when the building would have been largely unoccupied - 1910

Thousands of dairy farmers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Iowa strike in demand of higher prices for their milk - 1935

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was signed by President Nixon today, requiring medium to large employers to provide safe and healthy workplaces - 1970

United Transport Service Employees of America merges with Brotherhood of Railway, Airline & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees - 1972

Insurance Workers International Union merges with United Food & Commercial Workers International Union - 1983

Pattern Makers League of North America merges with International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers - 1991

Stove, Furnace & Allied Appliance Workers International Union of North America merges with International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers, & Helpers - 1994

Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union merges with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union - 1998

International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine & Furniture Workers merges with Communications Workers of America - 2000

October 02
American Federation of Labor officially endorses campaign for a six hour day, five day workweek - 1934

Joining with 400,000 coal miners already on strike, 500,000 CIO steel workers close down the nation’s foundries, steel and Iron mills, demanding pensions and better wages and working conditions - 1949

Starbucks Workers Union baristas at an outlet in East Grand Rapids, Mich., organized by the Wobblies, win their grievances after the National Labor Relations Board cites the company for labor law violations, including threats against union activists - 2007

October 03
The state militia is called in after 164 high school students in Kincaid, Ill. go on strike when the school board buys coal from the scab Peabody Coal Co. - 1932

The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America is founded in Camden, N.J. It eventually merged with the International Association of Machinists, in 1988 - 1933

Pacific Greyhound Lines bus drivers in seven western states begin what is to become a three-week strike, eventually settling for a 10.5 percent raise - 1945

The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) is formed as a self-governing union, an outgrowth of the CIO's Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee. UPWA merged with the Meatcutters union in 1968, which in turn merged with the Retail Clerks in 1979, forming the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW) - 1943

The United Auto Workers calls for a company wide strike against Ford Motor Co., the first since Ford’s initial contract with the union 20 years earlier - 1961

Folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie ("This Land is Your Land", "Union Maid" and hundreds of others) dies of Huntington's disease in New York at the age of 55 - 1967

October 04
Thirty-seven black striking Louisiana sugar workers were murdered when Louisiana militia, aided by bands of "prominent citizens," shot unarmed workers trying to get a dollar-per-day wage. Two strike leaders were lynched - 1887

President Truman orders the U.S. Navy to seize oil refineries, breaking a 20-state post-war strike - 1945

The United Mine Workers of America votes to reaffiliate with the AFL-CIO after years of on-and-off conflict with the federation. In 2009 the union’s one-time leader, Richard Trumka, becomes AFL-CIO President - 1961

Distillery, Wine & Allied Workers International Union merges with United Food & Commercial Workers International Union - 1995

September 21
Militia sent to Leadville, Colo., to break miners strike - 1896

Mother Jones leads a march of miners' children through the streets of Charleston, W. Va. - 1913

National Football League Players Assn. members begin what is to become a 57-day strike, their first regular-season walkout ever - 1982

Great Steel Strike begins; 350,000 workers demand union recognition. The AFL Iron and Steel Organizing Committee calls off the strike, their goal unmet, 108 days later - 1919

Martial law rescinded in Mingo County, W. Va. after police, U.S. troops and hired goons finally quell coal miners' strike - 1922

U.S. Steel announces it will cut the wages of 220,000 workers by 10 percent - 1931

United Textile Workers strike committee order strikers back to work after 22 days out, ending what was at that point the greatest single industrial conflict in the history of American organized labor. The strike involved some 400,000 workers in New England, the mid-Atlantic states and the South - 1934

Some 400,000 coal miners strike for higher wages in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and Ohio - 1935

The AFL expels the International Longshoremen's Association for racketeering; the union was readmitted to the then-AFL-CIO six years later - 1953

OSHA reaches its largest ever settlement agreement, $21 million, with BP Products North America following an explosion at BP's Texas City, Texas plant earlier in the year that killed 15 and injured 170 - 2005

Eleven Domino's employees in Pensacola, Fla. form the nation's first union of pizza delivery drivers - 2006

San Francisco hotel workers end a two-year contract fight, ratify a new five-year pact with their employers - 2006

September 23
The Workingman's Advocate of Chicago publishes the first installment of The Other Side, by Martin A. Foran, president of the Coopers' International Union. Believed to be the first novel by a trade union leader and some say the first working-class novel ever published in the U.S. - 1868

A coalition of Knights of Labor and trade unionists in Chicago launch the United Labor party, calling for an 8-hour day, government ownership of telegraph and telephone companies, and monetary and land reform. The party elects seven state assembly men and one senator - 1886

A 42-month strike by Steelworkers at Bayou Steel in Louisiana ends in a new contract and the ousting of scabs - 1996

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) signs legislation making the state the first to offer workers paid family leave - 2002

September 27
Striking textile workers in Fall River, Mass. demand bread for their starving children - 1875

The International Typographical Union renews a strike against the Los Angeles Times and begins a boycott that runs intermittently from 1896 to 1908. A local anti-Times committee in 1903 persuades William Randolph Hearst to start a rival paper, the Los Angeles Examiner. Although the ITU keeps up the fight into the 1920s, the Times remains nonunion to this day - 1893

International Ladies' Garment Workers Union begins strike against Triangle Shirtwaist Co. This would become the "Uprising of the 20,000," resulting in 339 of 352 struck firms—but not Triangle—signing agreements with the union. The Triangle fire that killed 246 would occur less than two years later - 1909

Twenty-nine west coast ports lock out 10,500 workers in response to what management says is a worker slowdown in the midst of negotiations on a new contract. The ports are closed for 10 days, reopen when Pres. George W. Bush invokes the Taft-Hartley Act - 2002

September 14
The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers union calls off an unsuccessful three-month strike against U. S. Steel Corporation subsidiaries - 1901

Gastonia, N.C. textile mill striker and songwriter Ella Mae Wiggins, 29, the mother of nine, is killed when local vigilantes, thugs and a sheriff's deputy force the pickup truck in which she is riding off the road and begin shooting - 1929

A striker is shot by a bog owner (and town elected official) during a walkout by some 1,500 cranberry pickers, members of the newly-formed Cape Cod Cranberry Pickers Union Local 1. State police were called, more strikers were shot and 64 were arrested. The strike was lost - 1933

Congress passes the Landrum-Griffin Act. The law expands many of the anti-labor provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, increasing union reporting requirements and restricting secondary boycotting and picketing - 1959

September 15
Some 5,000 female cotton workers in and around Pittsburgh, Pa. strike for a 10-hour day. The next day, male trade unionists become the first male auxiliary when they gather to protect the women from police attacks. The strike ultimately failed - 1845

President Kennedy signs off on a $900 million public-works bill for projects in economically depressed areas - 1962

More than 350,000 members of the United Auto Workers begin what is to become a 69-day strike against General Motors - 1970

International Association of Siderographers merges with International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers - 1992

September 16
More than 43,000 oil workers strike in 20 states, part of the post-war strike wave - 1945

September 17
75 workers die in explosion at Allegheny Arsenal, Pittsburgh, Penn. - 1862

At a New York convention of the National Labor Congress, Susan B. Anthony calls for the formation of a Working Women's Association. As a delegate to the Congress, she persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. But male delegates deleted the reference to the vote - 1868

One hundred thousand Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners go on strike. Their average annual wage is $250. They are paid by the ton, defined by Pennsylvania as 2,400 pounds but which mine operators have increased to as much as 4,000 pounds - 1900

National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) formed at a convention in Washington, D.C. - 1917

Some Depression-era weekly paychecks around the New York area: physician, $55.32; engineer, $40.68; clerk, $22.15; salesman, $25.02; laborer, $20; typist, $15.09 - 1933

Southern employers meeting in Greenville, N.C. ready their big counter-offensive to break the textile labor strikes that have hit the Eastern seaboard. Ultimately they deploy 10,000 national guardsmen and 15,000 deputies, but fail to drive hundreds of thousands of strikers back to work - 1934

A Southern Pacific train loaded with sugar beets strikes a makeshift bus filled with 60 migrant workers near Salinas, Calif., killing 32. The driver said the bus was so crowded he couldn't see the train coming - 1963

Ninety-eight United Mine Workers of America members and a minister occupy the Pittston Coal Company's Moss 3 preparation plant in Carbon, Va., beginning a year-long strike. Among other issues: management demands for drastic limitations in health and pension benefits for retire

d and disabled miners and their dependents and beneficiaries - 1989

September 18
A 20-month illegal lockout of 2,900 Steelworkers members at Kaiser Aluminum plants in three states ends when an arbitrator orders a new contract. Kaiser was forced to fire scabs and fork over tens of millions of dollars in back pay to union members - 1999

September 19
Chinese coal miners forced out of Black Diamond, Wash. - 1885

400,000 to 500,000 unionists converge on Washington D.C. for a Solidarity Day march and rally protesting Republican policies - 1981

September 20
Upton Sinclair, socialist and author of "The Jungle"—published on this day in 1906—born in Baltimore, MD - 1878

According to folklorist John Garst, steel-drivin’ man John Henry, a slave, outperformed a steam hammer on this date at the Coosa Mountain Tunnel or the Oak Mountain Tunnel of the Columbus and Western Railway (now part of the Norfolk Southern) near Leeds, Ala. Other researchers place the contest near Talcott, W. Va. - 1887

International Hod Carriers, Building & Common Laborers Union of America changes name to Laborers' International Union - 1965

September 07
Federal employees win the right to receive Workers' Compensation insurance - 1916

September 08
Employers give in to the demands of striking miners in McKees Rock, Pa., agree to improved working conditions, 15 percent hike in wages and elimination of a "pool system" that gave foremen control over each worker’s pay - 1909

Workers give up their Labor Day weekend holidays to keep the munitions factories working to aid in the war effort. Most Labor Day parades are canceled in respect for members of the Armed Services - 1942

United Farm Workers union begins historic national grape boycott and strike, Delano, Calif. - 1965

Some 2,600 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) workers begin what is to be a successful six-day strike for

higher pay and against a two-tier wage system - 1997

September 09
In convention at Topeka, Kansas, delegates create the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America. The men who repaired the nation's rail cars were paid 10 or 15 cents an hour, working 12 hours a day, often seven days a week - 1890

More than 1,000 Boston police officers strike after 19 union leaders are fired for organizing activities. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge announced that none of the strikers would be rehired, mobilized the state police, and recruited an entirely new police force from among unemployed veterans of the Great War (World War I) - 1919

Sixteen striking Filipino sugar workers on the Hawiian island of Kauai are killed by police. Many of the surviving strikers are jailed, then deported - 1924

September 10
Polish, Lithuanian and Slovak miners are gunned down—19 dead, more than 50 wounded—by the Lattimer Mine's sheriff deputies in Hazelton, Pa. Most were shot in the back. The miners were marching peacefully and without weapons for collective

bargaining and civil liberty - 1897

September 11
More than 3,000 people died when suicide highjackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Among the dead were 634 union members, the majority of them New York City firefighters and police on the scene when the towers fell - 2001

September 12
Eugene V. Debs, labor leader and socialist, sentenced to 10 years for opposing World War I. While in jail Debs received 1 million votes for president - 1918

Jobless workers march on grocery stores and seize food in Toledo, Ohio - 1932

United Rubber Workers formed in Akron, Ohio - 1935

Forty-nine people are killed, 200 injured in explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, New Jersey - 1940

Union Square in New York City, site of the first Labor Day in 1882, is named a national historic landmark - 1998

Septmeber 13
The Post Office Department orders 25,000 railway mail clerks to shoot to kill any bandits attempting to rob the mail - 1926

Eleven AFSCME-represented prison employees, 33 inmates die in four days of rioting at New York State’s Attica Prison and the retaking of the prison. The riot caused the nation to take a closer look at prison conditions, for inmates and their guards alike - 1971

August 24
The Gatling Gun Co. – manufacturers of an early machine gun – writes to B&O Railroad Co. President John W. Garrett during a strike, urging their product be purchased to deal with the "recent riotous disturbances around the country." Says the company: "Four or five men only are required to operate (a gun), and one Gatling ... can clear a street or block and keep it clear" - 1877

National Association of Letter Carriers formed - 1887

United Farm Workers Union begins lettuce strike - 1970

August 25
Birth of Allan Pinkerton, whose strike-breaking detectives ("Pinks") gave us the word "fink" - 1819

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters founded at a meeting in New York City. A. Philip Randolph became the union's first organizer - 1925

August 26
Fannie Sellins and Joseph Starzeleski are murdered by coal company guards on a picket line in Brackenridge, Penn. Sellins was a United Mine Workers of America organizer

and Starzeleski was a miner - 1919

After two-thirds of the states had ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, women win their long struggle for the vote - 1920

With America in the depths of the Great Depression, the Comptroller of the Currency announces a temporary halt on foreclosures of first mortgages - 1932

In what some may consider one of the many management decisions that was to help cripple the American auto industry over the following decades, Ford Motor Co. produces its first Edsel. Ford dropped the project two years later after losing approximately $350 million - 1957

More than 1,300 bus drivers on Oahu, Hawaii begin what is to become a five week strike - 2003

August 27
Some 14,000 Chicago teachers who have gone without pay for several months finally collect about $1,400 each - 1934

President Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later - 1950

August 28
The march for jobs and freedom—the Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have A Dream" speech march—is held in Washington, D.C. with 250,000 participating - 1963

August 29
Northwest Airlines pilots, after years of concessions to help the airline, begin what is to become a two-week strike for higher pay - 1998

August 30
President Franklin Roosevelt's Wealth Tax Act increases taxes on rich citizens and big business, lowers taxes for small businesses - 1935

OSHA publishes scaffold safety standard, designed to protect 2.3 million construction workers and prevent 50 deaths and 4,500 injuries annually - 1996

August 17
IWW War Trials in Chicago, 95 go to prison for up to 20 years - 1918

Bakery & Confectionery Workers International Union of America merges with Tobacco Workers International Union to become Bakery, Confectionery & Tobacco Workers - 1978

Year-long Hormel meatpackers' strike begins in Austin, Minn. - 1985

August 18
Radio station WEVD, named for Eugene V. Debs, goes on the air in New York City, operated by The Forward Association as a memorial to the labor and socialist leader - 1927

August 19
First edition of IWW "Little Red Song Book" published - 1909

Some 2,000 United Railroads streetcar service workers and supporters parade down San Francisco’s Market Street in support of pay demands and against the company’s anti-union policies. The strike failed in late November in the face of more than 1,000 strikebreakers, some of them imported from Chicago - 1917

Phelps-Dodge copper miners in Morenci and Clifton Ariz. are confronted by tanks, helicopters, 426 state troopers and 325 National Guardsmen brought in to walk strikebreakers through picketlines in what was to become a failed three-year fight by the Steelworkers and other unions - 1983

August 21
Slave revolt led by Nat Turner begins in Southampton County, Va. - 1831

August 22

International Broom & Whisk Makers Union disbanded - 1963

Joyce Miller, a vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers, becomes first female member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council - 1980

International Longshore & Warehouse Union granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1988

August 23
Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, accused of murder and tried unfairly, were executed on this day. The case became an international cause and sparked demonstrations and strikes throughout the world - 1927

Seven merchant seamen crewing the SS Baton Rouge Victory lost their lives when the ship was sunk by Viet Cong action en route to Saigon - 1966

Farm Workers Organizing Committee (to later become United Farm Workers of America) granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1966

August 10
The Air Line Pilots Association is founded at a meeting in Chicago attended by 24 activists from across the country - 1931

President Roosevelt signs amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act, broadening the program to include dependents and survivors' benefits - 1939

Construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway begins. Ultimately 22,000 workers spent five years building the 2,342 mile route from the Atlantic to the northernmost part of the Great Lakes - 1954

I.W. Abel, president of the United Steel Workers of America from 1965 to 1977, dies at age 79 - 1987

August 11
Federal troops drive some 1,200 jobless workers from Washington D.C. Led by unemployed activist Charles "Hobo" Kelley the group's "soldiers" include young journalist Jack London and William Haywood, a young miner-cowboy called "Big Bill" - 1884

International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union receives CIO charter - 1937

August 12
The national Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners is founded in Chicago in a gathering of 36 carpenters from 11 cities - 1881

Coal company guards kill 7, wound 40 miners trying to stop scabs, Virden, Ill. - 1898

Teamsters official William Grami is kidnapped, bound and beaten near Sebastopol, Calif. He was leading a drive to organize apple plant workers in the area - 1955

The North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA— was concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, despite protests from labor, environmental and human rights groups. It went into effect in January, 1994 - 1992

What was to become a 232-day strike by major league baseball players over owners' demands for team salary caps began on this day; 938 games were cancelled - 1994

August 13
Striking miners at Tracy City, Tenn., capture their mines and free 300 convict strikebreakers. The convicts had been "leased" to mineowners by officials in an effort to make prisons self-supporting and make a few bucks for the state. The practice started in 1866 and lasted for 30 years - 1892

Newspaper Guild members begin three-month strike of Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, shutting the publication down in their successful fight for union recognition - 1936

Civil rights leader and union president A. Philip Randolph strongly protests the AFL-CIO Executive Council's failure to endorse the August 28 "March on Washington" - 1963

August 14

President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, providing, for the first time ever, guaranteed income for retiress and creating a system of unemployment benefits - 1935

Members of the upstart Polish union Solidarity seize the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. Sixteen days later the government officially recognizes the union - 1980

Former AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland dies at age 77 - 1999

August 15

Populist social commentator Will Rogers killed in a plane crash, Point Barrow, Alaska. One of his many classic lines: "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts" - 1935

President Richard M. Nixon announces a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents in an attempt to combat inflation - 1971

August 16
George Meany, plumber, founding AFL-CIO president, born in City Island, Bronx - 1894

Homer Martin, early United Auto Workers leader, born in Marion, Ill. - 1902

Congress passes the National Apprenticeship Act, establishing a national advisory committee to research and draft regulations establishing minimum standards for apprenticeship programs. It was later amended to permit the Labor Dept. to issue regulations protecting the health, safety and general welfare of apprentices, and to encourage the use of contracts in their hiring and employment - 1937

National Agricultural Workers Union merges into Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen - 1960

International Union of Wood, Wire & Metal Lathers merges with United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners - 1979

July 20
Two killed, 67 wounded in Minneapolis truckers' strike—"Bloody Friday" - 1934

Postal unions, Postal Service sign first labor contract in the history of the federal government - 1971

July 21
Local militiamen are called out against striking railroad workers in Pittsburgh. The head of the Pennsylvania Railroad advises giving the strikers "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." Instead, the militiamen joined the workers. Meanwhile, federal troops are sent to Baltimore, where they kill 10 strikers and wound 25 - 1877

Compressed air explosion kills 20 workers constructing railroad tunnel under the Hudson River - 1880

IWW leads a strike at Hodgeman's Blueberry Farm in Grand Junction, Mich. - 1964

Radio station WCFL, owned and operated by the Chicago Federation of Labor, takes to the airwaves with two hours of music. The first and only labor-owned radio station in the country, WCFL was sold in 1979 - 1926

A die-cast operator in Jackson, Mich. is pinned by a hydraulic Unimate robot, dies five days later. Incident is the first documented case in the U.S. of a robot killing a human - 1984

July 22
Newly unionized brewery workers in San Francisco, mostly German socialists, declare victory after the city’s breweries give in to their demands for free beer, the closed shop, freedom to live anywhere (they had typically been required to live in the breweries), a 10-hour day, six-day week, and a board of arbitration - 1886

A bomb was set off during a "Preparedness Day" parade in San Francisco, killing 10 and injuring 40 more. Tom Mooney, a labor organizer, and Warren Billings, a shoe worker, were convicted of the crime, but both were pardoned 23 years later - 1916

July 23
Anarchist Alexander Berkman shoots and stabs but fails to kill steel magnate Henry Clay Frick in an effort to avenge the Homestead massacre 18 days earlier, in which nine strikers were killed. Berkman also tried to use what was, in effect, a suicide bomb, but it didn't detonate - 1892

Northern Michigan copper miners strike for union recognition, higher wages and eight-hour day. By the time they threw in the towel the following April, 1,100 had been arrested on various charges and Western Federation of Miners President Charles Moyer had been shot, beaten and forced out of town - 1913

Aluminum Workers Int'l Union merges with The United Brick & Clay Workers of America to form Aluminum, Brick & Clay Workers - 1981

July 24
The U.S. minimum wage increases to $6.55 per hour today. The original minimum, set in 1938 by the Fair Labor Standards Act, was 25 cents per hour - 2008

U.S. minimum wage rises to $7.25 per hour, up from $6.55 - 2009

July 25
New York garment workers win closed shop and firing of scabs after 7-month strike - 1890

The Teamsters and Service Employees unions break from the AFL-CIO during the federation's 50th convention to begin the Change to Win coalition, ultimately comprised of seven unions. They say they want more emphasis on organizing and less on electoral politics - 2005

July 26
In Chicago, 30 workers killed by federal troops, more than 100 wounded at the "Battle of the Viaduct" during the Great Railroad Strike - 1877

President Grover Cleveland appoints a United States Strike Committee to investigate the causes of the Pullman strike and the subsequent strike by the American Railway Union. Later that year the commission issues its report, absolving the strikers and blaming Pullman and the railroads for the conflict - 1894

Battle of Mucklow, W.Va. in coal strike - 1912

President Truman issues Executive Order 9981, directing equality of opportunity in armed forces - 1948

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) took effect today. It requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to qualified disabled employees and bans discrimination against such workers - 1992

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever;

CORRECTION: Former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, who deployed state police and the National Guard in 1983 to break the Phelps-Dodge Strike and bust the copper miner’s union was a Democrat, not a Republican (Labor History 6/30). “Another reminder that we need to keep the pressure on the Democrats as well to do the right thing by working folks,” writes CWA/TNG 32035 member Erik Brown, who caught the error. - "Union City Newsletter."

Today in labor history for the week of June 29, 2009
View past weeks in the Archives

June 29
What is to be a 7-day Streetcar strike begins in Chicago after several workers are unfairly fired. Wrote the police chief at the time, describing the strikers’ response to scabs: "One of my men said he was at the corner of Halsted and Madison Streets, and although he could see fifty stones in the air, he couldn't tell where they were coming from." The strike was settled to the workers’ satisfaction - 1885

IWW strikes Weyerhauser and other Idaho lumber camps - 1936

Jesus Pallares, founder of the 8,000-member coal miners union, Liga Obrera de Habla Esanola, is deported as an "undesirable alien." The union operated in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado - 1936

June 30
Emma Goldman, women's rights activist and radical, born in Lithuania. She immigrated to the U.S. at age 17 - 1869

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founded in Chicago - 1905

Alabama outlaws the leasing of convicts to mine coal, a practice that had been in place since 1848. In 1898, 73 percent of the state's total revenue came from this source. 25 percent of all black leased convicts died - 1928

The Walsh-Healey Act took effect today. It requires companies that supply goods to the government to pay wages according to a schedule set by the Secretary of Labor - 1936

Up to 40,000 New York construction workers demonstrated in midtown Manhattan, protesting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s awarding of a $33 million contract to a nonunion company. Eighteen police and three demonstrators were injured. "There were some scattered incidents and some minor violence," Police Commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Post. "Generally, it was a pretty well-behaved crowd." - 1998

July 01
Steel workers in Cleveland begin what was to be an 88-week strike against wage cuts - 1885

Homestead, Pennsylvania steel strike. Seven strikers and three Pinkertons killed as Andrew Carnegie hires armed thugs to protect strikebreakers - 1892

One million railway shopmen strike - 1922

Nat'l Assn. of Post Office & General Service Maintenance Employees, United Fed. of Postal Clerks, Nat'l Fed. of Post Office Motor Vehicle Employees & Nat'l Assn. of Special Delivery Messengers merge to become American Postal Workers Union - 1971

International Jewelry Workers Union merges with Service Employees International Union - 1980

Graphic Arts International Union merges with International Printing & Graphic Communications Union to become Graphic Communications International Union - 1983

Copper miners begin a years-long long, bitter strike against Phelps-Dodge in Clifton, Ariz. Republican Gov. Bruce Babbitt repeatedly deployed state police and National Guardsmen to assist the company over the course of the strike, which broke the union - 1983

Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union merges with International Ladies' Garment Workers Union to form Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees - 1995

International Chemical Workers Union merges with United Food & Commercial Workers Int'l Union - 1996

The Newspaper Guild merges with Communications Workers of America - 1997

United American Nurses affiliate with the AFL-CIO - 2001

July 02
President Johnson signs Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forbidding employers and unions from discriminating on the basis of race, color, gender, nationality, or religion - 1964

July 03
Children, employed in the silk mills in Paterson, N.J., went on strike for 11-hour day and 6-day week. A compromise settlement resulted in a 69-hour work work week - 1835

Feminist and labor activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman born in Hartford, Conn. Her landmark study, "Women and Economics", was radical: it called for the financial independence of women and urged a network of child care centers - 1860

July 04
Albert Parsons joins the Knights of Labor. He later became an anarchist and was one of the Haymarket martyrs - 1876

Five newspaper boys from the Baltimore Sun died when the steamer they were on, the Three Rivers, caught fire near Baltimore, Md. - 1924

With the Great Depression underway, some 1,320 delegates attended the founding convention of the Unemployed Councils of the U.S.A., organized by the U.S. Communist Party. They demanded passage of unemployment insurance and maternity benefit laws and opposed discrimination by race or sex. - 1930

Two primary conventions of the United Nations' International Labor Organization come into force: Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize - 1950

Battle of Rincon Hill, San Francisco, in longshore strike. 5,000 strikers fought 1,000 police, scabs and national guardsmen. Two strikers were killed, 109 people injured. The incident led to a General Strike - 1934

National Labor Relations Act, providing workers rights to organize and bargain collectively, passes Congress - 1935

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

June 22
Violence erupted during a coal mine strike at Herrin, Ill. Thirty-six were killed, 21 of them non-union miners - 1922

June 23
Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, goes to Butte, Mont. in an attempt to mediate a conflict between factions of the miner’s local there. It didn’t go well. Gunfight in the union hall killed one man; Moyer and other union officers left the building, which was then leveled in a dynamite blast - 1914

Congress overrides President Harry Truman's veto of the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. The law weakened unions and let states exempt themselves from union requirements. Twenty states immediately enacted open shop laws and two more did so later - 1947

OSHA issues standard on cotton dust to protect 600,000 workers from byssinosis, also known as "brown lung" - 1978

The newly-formed Jobs With Justice stages its first big support action, backing 3,000 picketing Eastern Airlines mechanics at Miami Airport - 1987

A majority of the 5,000 textile workers at six Fieldcrest Cannon textile plants in Kannapolis, N.C., vote for union representation after an historic 25-year fight - 1999

June 24
Birth of Albert Parsons, Haymarket martyr - 1848

Birth of Agnes Nestor, president of the International Glove Workers Union and longtime leader of the Chicago Women's Trade Union League. She began work in a glove factory at age 14 - 1880

17 workers are killed as methane explodes in a water tunnel under construction in Sylmar, Calif. - 1971

June 25
More than 8,000 people attend the dedication ceremony for The Haymarket Martyrs Monument in Chicago, honoring those framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886 - 1893

Fair Labor Standards Act passes Congress, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week - 1938

At the urging of black labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, Franklin Roosevelt issues an executive order barring discrimination in defense industries - 1941

21 workers are killed when a fireworks factory near Hallett, Okla. explodes - 1985

Decatur, Ill. police pepper-gas workers at A.E. Staley plant gate one year into the company's two and one-half year lockout of Paperworkers Local 7837 - 1994

June 26
Members of the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, refuse to handle Pullman cars, in solidarity with Pullman strikers. Two dozen strikers were killed over the course of the strike - 1894

June 27
The Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the "Wobblies," is founded at a convention in Chicago. The Wobblie motto: "An injury to one is an injury to all." - 1905

Congress passes the National Labor Relations Act, creating the structure for collective bargaining in the United States - 1935

A 26-day strike of New York City hotels by 26,000 workers – the first such walkout in 50 years – ends with a five-year contract calling for big wage and benefit gains - 1985

A.E. Staley locks out 763 workers in Decatur, Ill. The lockout was to last two and one-half years – 1993

June 28
Birthday of machinist Matthew Maguire, who many believe first suggested Labor Day. Others believe it was Peter McGuire, a carpenter - 1850

President Grover Cleveland signs legislation declaring Labor Day an official U.S. holiday - 1894

The federal government sues the Teamsters to force reforms on the union, the nation's largest. The following March, the two sides sign a consent decree requiring direct election of the union's president and creation of an Independent Review Board - 1988

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

The Congress of Industrial Organizations expels the Fur and Leather Workers union and the American Communications Association for what it describes as communist activities - 1947

Battle of Century City, as police in Los Angeles attack some 500 janitors and their supporters during a peaceful Service Employees International Union demonstration against cleaning contractor ISS. The event generated public outrage that resulted in recognition of the workers' union and spurred the creation of an annual June 15 Justice for Janitors Day – 1990

Eight local unions organize the International Fur Workers Union of U.S. and Canada. The union later merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen - 1913

Railroad union leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs speaks in Canton, Ohio on the relation between capitalism and war. Ten days later he is arrested under the Espionage Act, eventually sentenced to 10 years in jail - 1918

National Industrial Recovery Act becomes law, establishes the right to unionize, sets maximum hours and minimum wages for every major industry, abolishes sweatshops and child labor - 1933

Inacom Corp., once the world's largest computer dealer, sends most of its 5,100 employees an e-mail instructing them to call a toll-free phone number; when they call, a recorded message announces they have been fired - 2000

Susan B. Anthony goes on trial in Canandaigua, N.Y. for casting her ballot in a federal election the previous November, in violation of existing statutes barring women from the vote - 1873

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones leads a rally in Philadelphia to focus public attention on children mutilated in the state's textile mills. Three weeks later the 73-year-old will lead a march to New York City to plead with President Theodore Roosevelt to help improve conditions for the children - 1903

Twelve trade unionists meet in Pittsburgh to launch a drive to organize all steelworkers. It was the birth of the United Steelworkers of America (then called the Steel Workers Organizing Committee). By the end of the year 125,000 workers joined the union in support of its $5-a-day wage demand - 1936

Union and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph and others meet with Pres. Roosevelt about a proposed July 1 March on Washington to protest discrimination in war industries. A week later, Roosevelt orders that the industries desegregate - 1941

AFL President Sam Gompers and Secretary of War Newton Baker sign an agreement establishing a three-member board of adjustment to control wages, hours and working conditions for construction workers employed on government projects. The agreement protected union wage and hour standards for the duration of World War I - 1917

The first important sit-down strike in American history is conducted by workers at a General Tire Co. factory in Akron, Ohio. The United Rubber Workers union was founded a year later – 1934

ILWU begins a four day general strike in sugar, pineapple, and longshore to protest convictions under the anti-communist Smith Act of seven activists, "the Hawai’i Seven." The convictions were later overturned by a federal appeals court - 1953

The American Railway Union, headed by Eugene Debs, is founded. In the Pullman strike a year later, the union was defeated by federal injunctions and troops, and Debs was imprisoned for violating the injunctions - 1893

Henry Ford recognizes the United Auto Workers, signs contract for workers at River Rouge plant – 1941

The Taft-Hartley Labor Management Relations Act, curbing strikes, is vetoed by President Harry S Truman. The veto was overridden three days later by a Republican-controlled Congress – 1947

Oil began traveling through the Alaska pipline. Seventy thousand people worked on building the pipeline, history's largest privately-financed construction project – 1977

In England, a compassionate parliament declares that children can't be required to work more than 12 hours a day. And they must have an hours' instruction in the Christian Religion every Sunday and not be required to sleep more than two in a bed - 1802

100,000 unionists and other supporters march in solidarity with striking Detroit News and Detroit Free Press newspaper workers - 1997

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

A battle between the Militia and striking miners at Dunnville, Colo. ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later – 1904

Some 35,000 members of the Machinists union begin what is to become a 43-day strike – the largest in airline history – against five carriers. The mechanics and other ground service workers wanted to share in the airlines’ substantial profits - 1966

The earliest recorded strike by Chinese immigrants to the U.S. occurred when stonemasons brought to San Francisco to build the three-story Parrott granite building - made from Chinese prefabricated blocks - struck for higher pay - 1852

New York City drawbridge tenders, in a dispute with the state over pension issues, leave a dozen bridges open, snarling traffic in what the Daily News described as "the biggest traffic snafu in the city's history" - 1971

President Kennedy signs a law mandating equal pay to women who are performing the same jobs as men (Equal Pay Act) – 1963

Unions legalized in Canada - 1872

Representatives from the AFL, Knights of Labor, populists, railroad brotherhoods and other trade unions hold a unity conference in St. Louis but fail to overcome their differences - 1894

Police shoot at maritime workers striking United Fruit Co. in New Orleans; 1 killed, 2 wounded – 1913

Fifty thousand members of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen employed in meatpacking plants walk off their jobs; demands include equalization of wages and conditions throughout U.S. plants - 1904

260 die in Butte mine disaster; 14,000 strike against unsafe conditions – 1917

Major League baseball players begin what is to be a seven-week strike, generally seen as forced by owners frustrated over earlier bargaining and court losses on the free agency draft - 1981

American Railway Union, headed by Eugene V. Debs, founded – 1893

Medgar Evers, civil rights leader, assassinated – 1963

The first commercial computer, UNIVAC I, is installed at the U.S. Census Bureau - 1951

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

Union Carpenters win a 25-cents-per-day raise, bringing wages for a nine-hour day to $2.50 - 1898

3,500 immigrant miners begin Clifton-Morenci, Ariz. copper strike – 1903

12,500 longshoremen strike the Pacific coast, from San Diego to Bellingham. Demands included a closed shop and a wage increase to 55 cents an hour for handling general cargo - 1916

As many as 60,000 railroad shopmen strike to protest cuts in wages – 1922

Dakota Beef meatpackers win 7-hour sit-down strike over speed-ups, St. Paul, Minn. – 2000

June 02
Twenty-six journeymen printers in Philadelphia stage the trade’s first strike in America over wages: a cut in their $6 weekly pay - 1786.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President Harry Truman acted illegally when he ordered the Army to seize the nation’s steel mills to avert a strike - 1952

Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and Textile Workers Union of America merge to form Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union – 1976

June 03
International Ladies Garment Workers Union founded – 1900

A Federal child labor law, enacted two years earlier, was declared unconstitutional – 1918 (left: picture of child labor protestors)

June 04
The AFL-CIO opens its new headquarters building, in view of the White House - 1956

June 06
Speculator mine disaster. 164 killed at Butte, Mont. – 1917

Labor Party founding convention opens in Cleveland, Ohio – 1996

June 07
Militia sent to Cripple Creek, Colo., to suppress Western Federation of Miners strike – 1904

Sole performance of Pageant of the Patterson Strike, created and performed by 1,000 mill workers from the silk industry strike, New York City – 1913

The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, later to become the United Steel Workers of America, is formed in Pittsburgh - 1936

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

Two company houses occupied by non-union coal miners were blown up and destroyed during a strike against the Glendale Gas & Coal Co. in Wheeling, W. Va. – 1925

May 26
Men and women weavers in Pawtucket, R.I. stage nation’s first “co-ed” strike - 1824

Western Federation of Miners members strike for eight-hour day, Cripple Creek, Colo. – 1894

The Actors Equity Association founded in New York City - 1913

IWW Marine Transport Workers strike, Philadelphia – 1920

Battle of the Overpass, Ford thugs beat United Auto Workers organizers – 1937

May 28
The Ladies Shoe Binders Society formed in New York - 1835

At least 30,000 workers in Rochester, N.Y. participate in a general strike in support of municipal workers who had been fired for forming a union - 1946

May 29
Animators working for Walt Disney begin what was to become a successful five-week strike for recognition of their union, the Screen Cartoonists’ Guild. The animated feature “Dumbo” was being created at the time and, according to Wikipedia, a number of strikers are caricatured in the feature as clowns who go to “hit the big boss for a raise” - 1941

A contract between the United Mine Workers and the U.S. government establishes one of the nation’s first union medical and pension plans, the multi-employer UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund - 1946

May 30
Police open fire on striking steelworkers at Republic Steel in South Chicago, killing ten and wounding more than 160 - 1937

May 31
Rose Will Monroe, popularly known as Rosie the Riveter, dies in Clarksville, Ind. During WWII she helped bring women into the labor force - 1997

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

May 18
In what may have been baseball’s first strike, the Detroit Tigers refuse to play after team leader Ty Cobb is suspended: he went into the stands and beat a fan who had been heckling him. Cobb was reinstated and the Tigers went back to work after the team manager’s failed attempt to replace the players with a local college team: their pitcher gave up 24 runs - 1912

Amalgamated Meat Cutters union organizers launch a campaign in the nation’s packinghouses, an effort that was to bring representation to 100,000 workers over the following two years - 1917

Big Bill Haywood, a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies), dies in exile in the Soviet Union - 1928

Insurance Agents International Union and Insurance Workers of America merge to become Insurance Workers International Union (later to merge into the UFCW) - 1959

May 19
Explosion in Coal Creek, Tenn. kills 184 miners - 1902

Shootout in Matewan, W. Va. between striking union miners (led by Police Chief Sid Hatfield) and coal company agents. Ten died, including seven agents - 1920

The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, formed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, formally becomes the United Steelworkers of America - 1942

May 20
The Railway Labor Act took effect today. It was the first federal legislation protecting workers’ rights to form unions - 1926

9,000 rubber workers strike in Akron, Ohio - 1933

May 21
Italian activists and anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, widely believed to have been framed for murder, go on trial today. They eventually are executed as part of a government campaign against dissidents – 1921

Nearly 100,000 unionized SBC Communications Inc. workers begin a four-day strike to protest the local phone giant’s latest contract offer - 2004

May 22
Eugene V. Debs imprisoned in Woodstock, Ill. for role in Pullman strike - 1895

Civil Service Retirement Act of 1920 gives federal workers a pension - 1920

U.S. railroad strike starts, later crushed when President Truman threatens to draft strikers – 1946

The Granite Cutters International Association of America merges with Tile, Marble, Terrazzo,
Finishers & Shopmen, which five years later merged into the Carpenters – 1983

May 24
After 14 years of construction and the deaths of 27 workers, the Brooklyn Bridge over New York’s East River opens. Newspapers call it “the eighth wonder of the world” - 1883

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

Today in labor history for the week of May 11th, 2009

May 11
Nationwide railway strike begins at Pullman, Ill. 260,000 railroad workers ultimately joined the strike to protest wage cuts by the Pullman Palace Car Co. - 1894

May 12
Laundry & Dry Cleaning International Union granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1958

International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots merges with Longshoremens’ Association - 1971

May 13
Western Federation of Miners formed in Butte, Mont. - 1893

The Canadian government establishes the Department of Labour. It took the U.S. another four years - 1909

10,000 IWW dock workers strike in Philadelphia - 1913

Thousands of yellow cab drivers in New York City go on a one day strike in protest of proposed new regulations. “City officials were stunned by the (strike’s) success,” the New York Times reported - 1998

The first labor bank opens in Washington, D.C., launched by officers of the Machinists. The Locomotive Engineers opened a bank in Cleveland later that year - 1920

Death of IWW song writer T-Bone Slim, New York City - 1942

May 16
Minneapolis general strike backs Teamsters, who are striking most of the city’s trucking companies - 1934

U.S. Supreme Court issues Mackay decision, which permits the permanent replacement of striking workers. The decision had little impact until Ronald Regan’s replacement of striking air traffic controllers (PATCO) in 1981, a move that signaled antiunion private sector employers that it was OK to do likewise - 1938

May 17
First women’s anti-slavery conference, Philadelphia - 1838

Supreme Court outlaws segregation in public schools - 1954

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

Today in labor history for the week of May 4th, 2009
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