this weekend's labor history

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. Hosts Joe McCartin and Chris Garlock talk with Joe Uehlein about the connections between labor and the environmental movement; Patrick Dixon’s interview with Peter Cole on the IWW’s 1923 West Coast strike, Damon Silvers on the arrest of Montgomery Ward Chairman Sewell Avery in 1944, and Saul Schniderman on Ida Mae Stull, the country’s first woman coal miner. This week's music features Joe Uehlein and the U-Liners singing “You Can't GiddyUp By Sayin' Whoa!” and “Power.”

April 27
First strike for 10-hour day, by Boston carpenters - 1825

James Oppenheim’s poem “Bread and Roses” published in IWW newspaper Industrial Solidarity - 1911
 
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

A cooling tower for a power plant under construction in Willow Island, West Virginia collapses, killing 51 construction workers in what is thought to be the largest construction accident in U.S. history. OSHA cited contractors for 20 violations, including failures to field test concrete. The cases were settled for $85,000—about $1,700 per worker killed - 1978

April 28
Coal mine collapses at Eccles, W.Va., killing 181 workers - 1914
 
A total of 119 die in Benwood, W.Va., coal mine disaster - 1924
 
Congress creates OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The AFL-CIO sets April 28 as “Workers Memorial Day” to honor all workers killed or injured on the job every year - 1971
 
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 of 500 unemployed Civil War veterans reaches Washington, D.C. - 1894
 
An estimated 1,000 silver miners, angry over low wages, the firing of union members and the planting of spies in their ranks by mine owners, seize a train, load it with 3,000 pounds of dynamite, and blow up the mill at the Bunker Hill mine in Wardner, Idaho - 1899
 
The special representative of the National War Labor Board issues a report, “Retroactive Date for Women’s Pay Adjustments,” setting forth provisions for wage rates for women working in war industries who were asking for equal pay. Women a year earlier had demanded equal pay for work comparable to that done by men – 1943
Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services

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