This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Blood, guts, and organizing; Last week's show: The Haymarket Martyrs Monument: Past, Present, Future. May 20 The Railway Labor Act took effect today. It was the first federal legislation protecting workers’ rights to form unions - 1926 9,000 rubber workers strike in Akron, Ohio - 1933 May 21 Italian activists and anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, widely believed to have been framed for murder, go on trial today. They eventually are executed as part of a government campaign against dissidents – 1921 The “Little Wagner Act” is signed in Hawaii, guaranteeing pineapple and sugar workers the right to bargain collectively. After negotiations failed a successful 79-day strike shut down 33 of the territory’s 34 plantations and brought higher wages and a 40-hour week - 1945 Nearly 100,000 unionized SBC Communications Inc. workers begin a four-day strike to protest the local phone giant’s latest contract offer - 2004 Photo copyright © 2004 Debra Reid, The Daily Sparks Tribune via U-News. May 22 Eugene V. Debs imprisoned in Woodstock, Ill. for role in Pullman strike - 1895 While white locomotive firemen on the Georgia Railroad strike, blacks who are hired as replacements are whipped and stoned -- not by the union men, but by white citizens outraged that blacks are being hired over whites. The Engineers union threatens to stop work because their members are being affected by the violence - 1909 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the goals of his Great Society social reforms: to bring “an end to poverty and racial injustice” in America - 1964 - David Prosten Comments are closed.
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