Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Labor supports DC Black Lives Matter protests; “Debs In Canton” preview; Revisiting The Battle of Homestead; Voices of exiled Iranian workers.
Last week’s show: Minneapolis general strike; “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property”

June 12
Fifty thousand members of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen employed in meatpacking plants walk off their jobs; demands include equalization of wages and conditions throughout U.S. plants - 1904

260 die in Butte mine disaster; 14,000 strike against unsafe conditions – 1917

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidates two sections of a Florida law: one required state licensing of paid union business agents, the other required registration with the state of all unions and their officers - 1945

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

June 13
Congress creates a Bureau of Labor, under the Interior Dept. It later became independent as a Dept. of Labor without executive status in the Dept. of Commerce and Labor; in 1913 it became the Dept. of Labor we know today - 1884

American Railway Union, headed by Eugene V. Debs, founded – 1893

Tony Mazzocchi (photo) born in Brooklyn, N.Y. An activist and officer in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, he was a mentor to Karen Silkwood, a founder of the Labor Party, a prime mover behind the 1970 passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and co-founder of the annual DC Labor FimFest - 1926

June 14
The first commercial computer, UNIVAC I, is installed at the U.S. Census Bureau - 1951

- David Prosten

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