Today's Labor History

​Labor History Today (10/6): Sex Workers Outreach Project makes history in Minneapolis
Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. Jody Allen, Assistant Professor of History at the College of William and Mary and Director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation. Jody discusses William and Mary's slaveholding past and the genesis, research, and ongoing community outreach of The Lemon Project with Working History podcast host Beth English. Plus: SEIU 32BJ’s Maria Naranjo on the origins of "chingchinas" -- soda can noisemakers --during the Justice for Janitors campaigns of the mid-Eighties.
Last week's show: (10/6/19): Sex Workers Outreach Project makes history in Minneapolis 

October 18
The "Shoemakers of Boston" - the first labor organization in what would later become the United States - was authorized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony - 1648

New York City agrees to pay women school teachers a rate equal to that of men - 1911

IWW Colorado Mine strike; first time all coal fields are out - 1927

58,000 Chrysler Corp. workers strike for wage increases - 1939
GM agrees to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - 1983

October 19
The J.P. Stevens textile company is forced to sign its first union contract after a 17-year struggle in North Carolina and other southern states - 1980

October 20
Eugene V. Debs, U.S. labor leader and socialist, dies in Elmhurst, Ill. Among his radical ideas: an eight-hour workday, pensions, workman's compensation, sick leave and social security. He ran for president from a jail cell in 1920 and got a million votes - 1926

Hollywood came under scrutiny as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened hearings into alleged Communist influence within the motion picture industry.

Dozens of union members were among those blacklisted following as a result of HUAC’s activities - 1947

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan writes to PATCO President Robert Poli with this promise: if the union endorses Reagan "I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety." He got the endorsement. Nine months after the election, he fires the air traffic controllers for engaging in an illegal walkout over staffing levels and working conditions - 1980

Death of Merle Travis, songwriter and performer who wrote "Sixteen Tons" & "Dark as a Dungeon" - 1983

Labor history courtesy David Prosten

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