Today's Labor History

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show: Robert Cherney on Victor Arnautoff, the Russian-born artist who reigned as San Francisco's leading mural painter during the New Deal era. And on this week’s “Cool things from the George Meany Labor Archives,” Alan, Chloe and Ben explore the AFL-CIO’s long push for national health insurance, with some fascinating documents from the Archives’ pamphlet collection. Interviews by Patrick Dixon and Allan Wierdak. graphic: Arnautoff's "City Life" mural at Coit Tower in San Francisco.
 
Toronto printers strike for the 9-hour day in what is believed to be Canada’s first major strike - 1872

First “Poor People’s March” on Washington, in which jobless workers demanded creation of a public works program. Led by populist Jacob Coxey, the 500 to 1,000 unemployed protesters became known as “Coxey’s Army” - 1894
photo courtesy Smithsonian.com

146 workers are killed in a fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a disaster that would launch a national movement for safer working conditions - 1911

An explosion at a coal mine in Centralia, Ill. kills 111 miners. Mineworkers President John L. Lewis calls a six day work stoppage by the nation’s 400,000 soft coal miners to demand safer working conditions - 1947
  
Labor history courtesy Union Communication Services.