Today's Labor History

​Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show: With the looming possibility of yet another government shutdown on Friday, labor archivist Ben Blake talks about efforts to “document the now” during the recent shutdown, and political science professor Marissa Martino Golden reveals that even with a president attempting to turn agency policy 180 degrees, most career civil servants are focused on doing their jobs. Interviews by Alan Wierdak and Patrick Dixon.

February 15
Susan B. Anthony, suffragist, abolitionist, labor activist, born in Adams, Mass.
- 1820

U.S. legislators pass the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, providing funds for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which funneled money to states plagued by Depression-era poverty and unemployment, and oversaw the subsequent distribution and relief efforts - 1934

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expels the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers; the Food, Tobacco & Agricultural Workers; and the United Office & Professional Workers for “Communist tendencies.” Other unions expelled for the same reason (dates uncertain): Fur and Leather Workers, the Farm Equipment Union, the Int’l Longshoremen’s Union, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers – 1950

 CLICK BELOW for February 16 & 17 history.

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February 16
Leonora O’Reilly was born in New York. The daughter of Irish immigrants, she began working in a factory at 11, joined the Knights of Labor at 16, and was a volunteer investigator of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. She was a founding member of the Women’s Trade Union League - 1870
 
Diamond Mine disaster in Braidwood, Ill. The coal mine was on a marshy tract of land with no natural drainage. Snow melted and forced a collapse on the east side of the mine, killing 74 - 1883

Beginning of a 17-week general strike of 12,000 New York furriers, in which Jewish workers formed a coalition with Greek and African American workers and became the first union to win a 5-day, 40-hour week - 1926

Rubber Workers begin sit-down strike at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. - 1936

All public schools in Milwaukee and Madison, Wisc., are closed as teachers call in sick to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s plans to gut their collective bargaining rights - 2011

February 17
Sixty-three sit-down strikers, demanding recognition of their union, are tear-gassed and driven from two Fansteel Metallurgical Corp. plants in Chicago. Two years later the U.S. Supreme Court declared sit-down strikes illegal. The tactic had been a major industrial union organizing tool - 1937

Two locals of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Int'l Union (now UNITE HERE) at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., strike in sympathy with 1,300 graduate student teaching assistants who are demanding the right to negotiate with the university - 1992

​Labor history courtesy Union Communication Services.