Today's Labor History

​This week's Labor History Today podcast: Jack Kelly’s "The Edge of Anarchy”; “Union Maids” director Julia Reichert (Part 2) 
Last week’s show: Julia Reichert: ‘We Don’t Just Interview People Once’; Montgomery Ward busted; May Day and Mother Jones 

May 8
The constitution of the Brotherhood of the Footboard was ratified by engineers in Detroit, Mich. Later became the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers - 1863

12,000 Steelworker-represented workers at Goodyear Tire & Rubber win an 18-day strike for improved wages and job security - 1997

May 9
Legendary Western Federation of Miners leader William “Big Bill” Haywood goes on trial for murder in the bombing death of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, who had brutally suppressed the state’s miners. Haywood ultimately was declared innocent - 1907

Hollywood studio mogul Louis B. Mayer recognizes the Screen Actors Guild. SAG leaders reportedly were bluffing when they told Mayer that 99 percent of all actors would walk out the next morning unless he dealt with the union. Some 5,000 actors attended a victory gathering the following day at Hollywood Legion Stadium; a day later, SAG membership increased 400 percent - 1937

4,000 garment workers, mostly Hispanic, strike for union recognition at the Farah Mfg. Co. in El Paso, Tex. - 1972

May 10
Thanks to an army of thousands of Chinese and Irish immigrants, who laid 2,000 miles of track, the nation’s first transcontinental railway line was finished by the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines at Promontory Point, Utah – 1869

U.S. & Canadian workers form Western Labor Union. It favors industrial organization and independent labor party politics - 1898

A federal bankruptcy judge frees United Airlines from responsibility for pensions covering 120,000 employees - 2005

- David Prosten; photo: The first board meeting of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933

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