Today's Labor History

​This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Neutron Jack, Joker and Parasite
Labor historian Joe McCartin on “Neutron Jack” Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, who died last week; Sherry Linkon on class conflict in two recent award-winning movies, Joker and Parasite. Plus music from SongRise, a DC-based women's social justice a cappella group.
Last week’s show: Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote

March 11
Luddites smash 63 “labor saving” textile machines near Nottingham, England - 1811

Fabled railroad engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones born in southeast Missouri. A member of the Railroad Engineers, he was the sole fatality in a wreck near Vaughan, Miss. on April 29, 1900. His skill and heroics prevented many more deaths - 1863 Click on the video for Johnny Cash singing "Casey Jones"

Transport Workers Union members at American Airlines win 11-day national strike, gaining what the union says was the first severance pay clause in industry - 1950

March 12
Greedy industrialist turned benevolent philanthropist Andrew Carnegie pledges $5.2 million for the construction of 65 branch libraries in New York City -- barely 1 percent of his net worth at the time. He established more than 2,500 libraries between 1900 and 1919 following years of treating workers in his steel plants brutally, demanding long hours in horrible conditions and fighting their efforts to unionize. Carnegie made $500 million when he sold out to J.P. Morgan, becoming the world’s richest man - 1901

Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO from 1979 to 1995, born in Camden, South Carolina - 1922

Steelworkers approve a settlement with Oregon Steel Mills, Inc. and its CF&I Steel subsidiary, ending the longest labor dispute in the USWA’s history and resulting in more than $100 million in back pay for workers - 2004

- David Prosten