Today's Labor History

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week's show: Long-time activist for working women Ellen Bravo talks about the history – and future -- of paid family leave, and we visit with Hardball Press publisher Tim Sheard about why working class culture matters. Plus the late great Aretha Franklin!
Striking textile workers in Fall River, Mass., demand bread for their starving children - 1875
 
The Int’l Typographical Union renews a strike against the Los Angeles Times; a boycott runs intermittently from 1896 to 1908. A local anti-Times committee in 1903 persuades William Randolph Hearst to start a rival paper, the Los Angeles Examiner. Although the ITU kept up the fight into the 1920s, the Times remained totally nonunion until 2009, when the GCIU—now the Graphic Communications Conference of the Teamsters—organized the pressroom – 1893

Int’l Ladies' Garment Workers Union begins strike against Triangle Shirtwaist Co (right).  This would become the "Uprising of the 20,000," resulting in 339 of 352 struck firms—but not Triangle—signing agreements with the union.  The Triangle fire that killed 146 would occur less than two years later - 1909
 
Twenty-nine west coast ports lock out 10,500 workers in response to what management says is a worker slowdown in the midst of negotiations on a new contract.  The ports are closed for 10 days, reopen when President George W. Bush invokes the Taft-Hartley Act - 2002
Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services

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