Today's Labor History

​Labor History Today (9/8): Longest – and most divisive – teacher strike in NYC history
Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. Teacher-community solidarity was the key to victory in the 2018 Los Angeles teacher's strike, but this wasn't the case in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville in 1968 when the longest teacher strike in New York City history also turned out to be its most divisive. Nick Juravich explains why.

Sept 13
The Post Office Department orders 25,000 railway mail clerks to shoot to kill any bandits attempting to rob the mail - 1926

Eleven AFSCME-represented prison employees, 33 inmates die in four days of rioting at New York State’s Attica Prison and the retaking of the prison. The riot caused the nation to take a closer look at prison conditions, for inmates and their guards alike - 1971

Sept 14
The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers union calls off an unsuccessful three-month strike against U. S. Steel Corporation subsidiaries - 1901

Gastonia, N.C. textile mill striker and songwriter Ella Mae Wiggins, 29, the mother of nine, is killed when local vigilantes, thugs and a sheriff's deputy force the pickup truck in which she is riding off the road and begin shooting - 1929
​
A striker is shot by a bog owner (and town elected official) during a walkout by some 1,500 cranberry pickers, members of the newly-formed Cape Cod Cranberry Pickers Union Local 1. State police were called, more strikers were shot and 64 were arrested. The strike was lost - 1933

Congress passes the Landrum-Griffin Act. The law expands many of the anti-labor provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, increasing union reporting requirements and restricting secondary boycotting and picketing - 1959

Sept 15
Some 5,000 female cotton workers in and around Pittsburgh, Pa. strike for a 10-hour day. The next day, male trade unionists become the first male auxiliary when they gather to protect the women from police attacks. The strike ultimately failed - 1845

President Kennedy signs off on a $900 million public-works bill for projects in economically depressed areas - 1962

More than 350,000 members of the United Auto Workers begin what is to become a 69-day strike against General Motors - 1970 (photo above)

International Association of Siderographers merges with International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers - 1992

Labor history courtesy David Prosten

---