This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Sea Shanties and the Pleasure of Work. Last week’s show: 50 years of “Strike!” May 14 Milwaukee brewery workers begin 10-week strike, demanding contracts comparable to East and West coast workers. The strike was won when Blatz Brewery accepted their demands, but Blatz was ousted from the Brewers Association for “unethical” business methods - 1953 May 15 U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Samuel Gompers and other union leaders for supporting a boycott at the Buck Stove and Range Co. in St. Louis, where workers were striking for a nine-hour day. A lower court had forbidden the boycott and sentenced the unionists to prison for refusing to obey the judge’s anti-boycott injunction - 1906 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 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 Black labor leader and peace activist A. Philip Randolph dies. He was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black labor leader to sit on the AFL-CIO executive board, and a principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington - 1979 photo: A. Philip Randolph and other civil rights leaders on their way to Congress during the March on Washington, 1963. photo by Marion S. Trikosko, courtesy LOC Comments are closed.
|