Today's Labor History

​Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show: labor historians Dana Frank and David Jepsen discuss the 1919 Seattle General Strike. Plus, Tom Zaniello on Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” and Kurt Stand on Joe McCarthy’s red-baiting attacks on federal workers and unions. 
 
February 08
Vigilantes beat IWW organizers for exercising free-speech rights, San Diego - 1912


February 09
Wobbly activist Tom Mooney convicted in bombing frame-up orchestrated by Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was pardoned and released 22 years later - 1917

Congress approves legislation allowing for a total of $940 million to be used for Depression-era relief projects. $790 million of this money was intended to be used to fund work relief and flood recovery programs - 1937
 
U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy falsely charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists. It seems that just about everyone else the Wisconsin senator didn’t like was a Communist as well, including scores of unionists. This was the beginning of "McCarthyism." He ultimately was officially condemned by the Senate and died of alcoholism - 1950


President Kennedy asks Congress to approve creation of the Medicare program, financed by an increase in Social Security taxes, to aid 14.2 million Americans aged 65 or older - 1961

Some 19,000 Boeing engineers and technical workers in Washington state and Oregon begin what is to become a 40-day strike over economic issues - 2000

February 10
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) founds the Building and Construction Trades Department as a way to overcome the jurisdictional conflicts occurring in the building and construction unions - 1908

Eleven members of the Carpenters’ union in Reesor Siding, Northern Ontario are shot, three fatally, by independent local farmer-settlers who were supplying wood to a Spruce Falls Power and Paper Co. plant. Some 400 union members were attempting to block an outbound shipment from the plant. The action came as the company was insisting on a pay freeze and two months of seven-day-a-week work - 1963

Forty workers are killed on Staten Island, N.Y., when a huge storage tank filled with liquefied gas explodes - 1973
 
Labor history courtesy Union Communication Services

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