Today's Labor History

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August 10
The Air Line Pilots Association is founded at a meeting in Chicago attended by 24 activists from across the country - 1931
 
Hundreds of Transport Workers Union members descend on a New York City courthouse, offering their own money to bail out their president, Mike Quill, and four other union leaders arrested while making their way through Grand Central Station to union headquarters after picketing the Interborough Rapid Transit offices in lower Manhattan - 1935
 
President Roosevelt signs amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act, broadening the program to include dependents and survivors' benefits - 1939
 
Construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway begins. Ultimately 22,000 workers spent five years building the 2,342-mile route from the Atlantic to the northernmost part of the Great Lakes - 1954
 
I.W. Abel, president of the United Steel Workers of America from 1965 to 1977, dies at age 79 - 1987
 
President Barack Obama signs a $26 billion bill designed to protect 300,000 teachers, police and others from layoffs spurred by budgetary crises in states hard-hit by the Great Recession - 2010 (Historian Jon Shelton discusses this on this week's Labor History Today podcast.) 

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August 11
Federal troops drive some 1,200 jobless workers from Washington D.C. Led by unemployed activist Charles "Hobo" Kelley, the group's "soldiers" include young journalist Jack London and William Haywood, a young miner-cowboy called "Big Bill" - 1894 (Hear labor historian Joe McCartin talk about this on the Labor History Todaypodcast)
 
One hundred "platform men" employed by the privately owned United Railroads streetcar service in San Francisco abandon their streetcars, tying up many of the main lines in and out of the city center - 1917
 
Int’l Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union receives CIO charter – 1937
Maine lobster fishers form a local of the Machinists union as they face a 40-year low price for their catches, and other issues.  By October, the New York Times reported, it had 600 members, 240 of them dues-payers - 2013
 
August 12
The national Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners is founded in Chicago in a gathering of 36 carpenters from 11 cities - 1881
 
Coal company guards kill seven, wound 40 striking miners who are trying to stop scabs, Virden, Ill. - 1898
 
With the news that their boss, Florenz Ziegfeld, was joining the Producing Managers’ Association, the chorus girls in his Ziegfield Follies create their own union, the Chorus Equity Association. They were helped by a big donation from superstar and former chorus girl Lillian Russell. In 1955 the union merged with the Actor’s Equity Association - 1919
 
Teamsters official William Grami is kidnapped, bound and beaten near Sebastopol, Calif. He was leading a drive to organize apple plant workers in the area - 1955
 
The North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA—is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, to take effect in January, 1994, despite protests from labor, environmental and human rights groups – 1992
What was to become a 232-day strike by major league baseball players over owners' demands for team salary caps began on this day; 938 games were cancelled - 1994

Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services

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