Today's Labor History

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week's show: Patrick Dixon talks with Clara Mejía Orta about workers in the cannabis industry in California, and Writers Guild of America West  president David Goodman remembers the 2007 strike by 12,000 film and television screenwriters. Plus: Bill Fletcher on the 1892 general strike that brought 20,000 black and white workers together in New Orleans; David Fernandez-Barrial on the four million jobs created by the Civil Works Administration in 1933 for Depression-era unemployed; and Dan Duncan pays tribute to the workers lost when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in 1975.

20,000 workers, Black and White, stage general strike in New Orleans, demanding union recognition and hour and wage gains - 1892

President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces plans for the Civil Works Administration to create four million additional jobs for the Depression-era unemployed. The workers ultimately laid 12 million feet of sewer pipe and built or made substantial improvements to 255,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, 3,700 playgrounds, and nearly 1,000 airports (not to mention 250,000 outhouses still badly needed in rural America) - 1933

​In one of the U.S. auto industry’s more embarrassing missteps over the last half-century, the Ford Motor Co. decides to name its new model the Edsel, after Henry Ford’s only son. Ford executives rejected 18,000 other potential names - 1956
Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services

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