Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: A very unusual strike
On today’s show, originally released January 6, 2019, we talk with historian Erik Loomis about frustrated workers in a very unusual place who decided to strike in a very unusual way.
Last week's show: (12/29): 100 years of the ILO

January 6
The Toronto Trades and Labour Council endorses the principle of equal pay for equal work between men and women - 1882

8,000 workers strike at Youngstown Sheet & Tube. The following day the strikers’ wives and other family members join in the protest. Company guards use tear gas bombs and fire into the crowd; three strikers are killed, 25 wounded - 1916

January 7
An explosion at Osage Coal and Mining Company’s Mine Number 11 near Krebs, Okla. kills 100, injures 150 when an untrained worker accidentally sets off a stash of explosives - 1892

Wobblie Tom Mooney, accused of a murder by bombing in San Francisco, pardoned and freed after 22 years in San Quentin - 1939

The presidents of 12 of the nation’s largest unions meet and call for reuniting the American labor movement, which split into two factions in 2005 when when seven unions left the AFL-CIO and formed a rival federation. The meeting followed signals from President-elect Barack Obama that he would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices. Unions from both sides of the split participated in the meeting. The reunification effort failed - 2009

- David Prosten; graphic: "Demonstration," by Ben Shahn, 1933; Shahn was moved in the early 1930s to paint a series of works based on the infamous Tom Mooney case.