Today's Labor History

​Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show: Martin Luther King, Jr. on the dignity of labor, labor historian Erik Loomis on “A History of America in Ten Strikes,” plus the 1913 Rochester strike by 10,000 clothing workers, Bill Fletcher remembers the 2000 police attack on picketing longshoremen in Charleston, South Carolina, and a rare speech by Dr. King for “Cool things from the George Meany Labor Archives.”

Some 10,000 clothing workers strike in Rochester, N.Y., for the 8-hour day, a 10-percent wage increase, union recognition, and extra pay for overtime and holidays. Daily parades were held throughout the clothing district and there was at least one instance of mounted police charging the crowd of strikers and arresting 25 picketers. Six people were wounded over the course of the strike and one worker, 18-year-old Ida Breiman, was shot to death by a sweatshop contractor. The strike was called off in April after manufacturers agreed not to discriminate against workers for joining a union – 1913

In Allegany County, MD, workers with the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal era public works program employing unmarried men aged 18-25, are snowbound at Fifteen Mile Creek Camp S-53 when they receive a distress call about a woman in labor who needs to get to a hospital. 20 courageous CCC volunteers dig through miles of snow drifts until the woman is successfully able to be transported - 1936
 
Labor history courtesy Union Communication Services

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