Today's Labor History

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. This week's Labor History Object of the Week is a dues cap from the archives of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, founded on this date in 1933. 

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 Int’l Association of Machinists, in 1988 - 1933
 
Pacific Greyhound Lines bus drivers in seven western states begin what is to become a 3-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 Commercial Workers (UFCW), which now represents approximately 1.3 million workers in the U.S. and Canada in a wide range of industries from retail to meatpacking, hospitality, cannabis and health care  - 1943
photo: United Packinghouse Workers of America Local Lodge 309 members on strike; photo courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
 
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
 
Baseball umpires strike for recognition of their newly-formed Major League Umpires Association, win after one day - 1970
Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services

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