This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Marvel Cooke, a Journalist for Working People. Last week’s show: Why America’s most radical union shut down ports on Juneteenth. July 2 President Johnson signs Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forbidding employers and unions from discriminating on the basis of race, color, gender, nationality, or religion - 1964 July 3 Children, employed in the silk mills in Paterson, N.J., went on strike for 11-hour day and 6-day week. A compromise settlement resulted in a 69-hour work work week - 1835 Feminist and labor activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman born in Hartford, Conn. Her landmark study, "Women and Economics", was radical: it called for the financial independence of women and urged a network of child care centers - 1860 July 4 Albert Parsons joins the Knights of Labor. He later became an anarchist and was one of the Haymarket martyrs - 1876 AFL dedicates its new Washington, D.C. headquarters building at 9th St. and Massachusetts Ave. NW. The building, still standing, later became headquarters for Plumbers and Pipefitters - 1916 Five newspaper boys from the Baltimore Evening Sun died when the steamer they were on, the Three Rivers, caught fire near Baltimore, Md. They are remembered every year at a West Baltimore cemetery, toasted by former staffers of the now-closed newspaper - 1924 With the Great Depression underway, some 1,320 delegates attended the founding convention of the Unemployed Councils of the U.S.A., organized by the U.S. Communist Party. They demanded passage of unemployment insurance and maternity benefit laws and opposed discrimination by race or sex - 1930 Two primary conventions of the United Nations' International Labor Organization come into force: Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize - 1950 July 5 During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, which had drastically reduced wages, buildings constructed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jackson park were set ablaze, reducing seven to ashes - 1894 Battle of Rincon Hill, San Francisco, in longshore strike. 5,000 strikers fought 1,000 police, scabs and national guardsmen. Two strikers were killed, 109 people injured. The incident led to a General Strike - 1934 National Labor Relations Act, providing workers rights to organize and bargain collectively, passes Congress - 1935 photo: FDR signs NLRA. - David Prosten Comments are closed.
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