
Al Neal’s “Silent streets: Life halts, but not for all workers,” and Joe McCartin on “Class and the Challenge of COVID-19.” Plus Saul Schniderman and John O’Connor remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Last week’s show: The Great Postal Strike, Watergate and “Casey Jones, the Union Scab”
March 27
U.S. Supreme Court rules that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired - 2002
March 28
Members of Gas House Workers’ Union Local 18799 begin what is to become a four-month recognition strike against the Laclede Gas Light Co. in St. Louis. The union later said the strike was the first ever against a public utility in the U.S. - 1935
Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. Violence during the march persuades him to return the following week to Memphis, where he was assassinated - 1968
March 29
Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 and women to work more than 10 hours a day - 1852
Sam Walton, founder of the huge and bitterly anti-union Wal-Mart empire, born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He once said that his priority was to “Buy American,” but Wal-Mart is now the largest U.S. importer of foreign-made goods—often produced under sweatshop conditions - 1918
“Battle of Wall Street,” police charge strikers lying down in front of stock exchange doors, 43 arrested - 1948
National Maritime Union of America merges with National Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association - 1988
- David Prosten