Today in Labor History

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
 
Founding of the Maritime Trades Dept., AFL, 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., areconfronted by tanks, helicopters, 426 state troopers and 325 National Guardsmen brought in to walk strikebreakers through picket lines in what was to become a failed 3-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 work rule changes. The 14-month strike was to fail, with most union jobs lost to replacements and outside contractors - 2005
 
August 20
The Great Fire of 1910, a wildfire that consumed about 3 million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana—an area about the size of Connecticut—claimed the lives of 78 firefighters over two days.  It is believed to be the largest, although not deadliest, fire in U.S. history - 1910
 
Deranged relief postal service carrier Patrick “Crazy Pat” Henry Sherrill shoots and kills 14 coworkers, and wounds another six, before killing himself at an Edmond, Okla., postal facility.  Supervisors had ignored warning signs of Sherrill’s instability, investigators later found; the shootings came a day after he had been reprimanded for poor work.  The incident inspired the objectionable term “going postal” - 1986
 
August 21
Slave revolt led by Nat Turner begins in Southampton County, Va. - 1831
- compiled/edited by David Prosten at Union Communication Services. Turner graphic from the graphic novel "Nat Turner" by Kyle Baker