This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Working People’s Hidden Histories; Last week's show: Labor history at the AFL-CIO & Labor Notes. July 1 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 Copper miners begin a years-long long, bitter strike against Phelps-Dodge in Clifton, Ariz. Democratic 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 July 2 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 3 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 July 4 AFL dedicates its new Washington, D.C. headquarters building at 9th St. and Massachusetts Ave. NW. The building later became headquarters for Plumbers and Pipefitters and the exterior of the building is now part of the Marriott Washington. - 1916 - David Prosten This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Labor history at the AFL-CIO & Labor Notes; Last week's show: Detroit Remains: Using historical archeology to connect the past to the present.
June 23 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 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 - David Prosten. This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Detroit Remains: Using historical archeology to connect the past to the present; Last week's show: The Memorial Day Massacre.
June 10 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 June 12 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 - David Prosten This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Detroit Remains: Using historical archeology to connect the past to the present; Last week's show: The Memorial Day Massacre.
June 8 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 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 June 9 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 Former United Auto Workers President Gary Jones is sentenced to 28 months in jail for corruption. He pleaded guilty a year earlier to embezzling more than $1 million over a nine-year period. “I failed the UAW. I let my union down,” he told the federal sentencing judge in Detroit. 2021 |