Today's Labor History

​Lessons from the Burgerville Workers Union: Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show: Patrick Dixon talks with Luis Brennan, one of the Burgerville Workers Union organizers in Portland, Oregon. And, inspired by the recent legal victory by nurses at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Alan, Ben and Chloe scoured the University of Maryland’s Meany Labor Archives for some cool things illustrating the history of organizing by health care workers. Plus: the conclusion of our discussion with Clint Burelson and Len Shindel about two historic 1970 strikes: the wildcat by 200,000 postal workers and a strike by 150 Garrett County roads workers in western MD.

June 21
Ten miners accused of being militant "Molly Maguires" are hanged in Pennsylvania. A private corporation initiated the investigation of the 10 through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested them, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. "The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows," a judge said many years later - 1877

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right of unions to publish statements urging members to vote for a specific congressional candidate, ruling that such advocacy is not a violation of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act - 1948

An estimated 100,000 unionists and other supporters march in solidarity with striking Detroit News and Detroit Free Press newspaper workers - 1997

June 22
A total of 86 passengers on a train carrying members of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus are killed, another 127 injured in a wreck near Hammond, Indiana. Five days later the dead are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, Ill., in an area set aside as Showmen’s Rest, purchased only a few months earlier by the Showmen’s League of America - 1918

Violence erupted during a coal mine strike at Herrin, Ill. A total of 36 were killed, 21 of them non-union miners - 1922

June 23
Congress overrides President Harry Truman's veto of the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. The law weakened unions and let states exempt themselves from union requirements. Twenty states immediately enacted open shop laws and more followed - 1947

OSHA issues standard on cotton dust to protect 600,000 workers from byssinosis, also known as "brown lung" - 1978

A majority of the 5,000 textile workers at six Fieldcrest Cannon textile plants in Kannapolis, N.C., vote for union representation after an historic 25-year fight - 1999

Labor history courtesy Union Communication Services