Today's Labor History

​Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show, a conversation with Roger Toussaint, former president of the Transport Workers Union, who led the successful 2005 strike by 35,000 transit workers in New York City. 

January 04
Angered by increasing farm foreclosures, members of Iowa's Farmers Holiday Association threaten to lynch banking representatives and law officials who institute foreclosure proceedings for the duration of the Great Depression - 1933

What many believe to be the longest strike in modern history, by Danish barbers’ assistants, ends after 33 years - 1961

Eight thousand New York City social workers strike, demand better conditions for welfare recipients - 1965

January 05
The nation’s first labor convention of Black workers was held in Washington, D.C., with 214 delegates forming the Colored National Labor Union - 1869

Ford Motor Company raises wages from $2.40 for a 9-hour day to $5 for an 8-hour day in effort to keep the unions out - 1914
 
Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins. Ten of the 11 deaths on the job came when safety netting beneath the site—the first-ever use of such equipment—failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen other workers were saved by the net over the course of construction. They became members of the (informal) Halfway to Hell Club - 1933

January 06
The Toronto Trades and Labour Council endorses the principle of equal pay for equal work between men and women - 1882

Eight thousand workers strike at Youngstown Sheet & Tube. The following day the strikers’ wives and other family members join in the protest. Company guards use tear-gas bombs and fired into the crowd; three strikers are killed, 25 wounded - 1916

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