Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: The Package King 
Former Teamster activist Joe Allen on “A Rank-And-File History of UPS.” Folklorist Bucky Halker interviews iron workers Sharon Sisson and her husband Richard for the America Works podcast. And, on this week’s Labor History in 2: Born into Privilege, But…
Last week’s show: Roediger on "The Sinking Middle Class"; Feurer on Mother Jones' legacy

October 16
Queen Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is beheaded during the French Revolution. When alerted that the peasants were suffering due to widespread bread shortages, lore has it that she replied, “Let them eat cake.” In fact she never said that, but workers were, justifiably, ready to believe anything bad about their cold-hearted royalty - 1793

Abolitionist John Brown leads 18 men, including five free Blacks, in an attack on the Harper's Ferry ammunition depot, the beginning of guerilla warfare against slavery - 1859

October 17
Labor activist Warren Billings is released from California's Folsom Prison. Along with Thomas J. Mooney, Billings had been pardoned for a 1916 conviction stemming from a bomb explosion during a San Francisco Preparedness Day parade. He had always maintained his innocence - 1939

Salt of the Earth strike begins by the mostly Mexican-American members of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union Local 890 in Bayard, N.M. Strikers' wives walked picket lines for seven months when their men were enjoined during the 14-month strike against the New Jersey Zinc Co. A great movie, see it! - 1950

Twelve New York City firefighters die fighting a blaze in midtown Manhattan - 1966

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

- David Prosten

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