 Father Thomas Hagerty and the IWW: Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show: The largely unknown story of Father Thomas Hagerty, the “May Day Saint” who helped found the IWW. Plus: the recent Uber and Lyft strikes inspire a search for photos of the 1965 taxi strike in New York City.
May 31 The Johnstown Flood. More than 2,200 die when a dam holding back a private resort lake burst upstream of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The resort was owned by wealthy industrialists including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. Neither they nor any other members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club were found guilty of fault, despite the fact the group had created the lake out of an abandoned reservoir – 1889 Some 25,000 White autoworkers walk off the job at a Detroit Packard Motor Car Co. plant, heavily involved in wartime production, when three Black workers are promoted to work on a previously all-White assembly line. The Black workers were relocated and the Whites returned - 1943 June 01 The Ladies Federal Labor Union Number 2703, based in Illinois, was granted a charter from the American Federation of Labor. Women from a wide range of occupations were among the members, who ultimately were successful in coalescing women’s groups interested in suffrage, temperance, health, housing and child labor reform to win state legislation in these areas - 1888 Extinguishing the light of hope in the hearts and aspirations of workers around the world, the Mexican government abolishes siestas—a mid-afternoon nap and work break which lengthened the work day but got people through brutally hot summer days - 1944 Farm workers under the banner of the new United Farm Workers Organizing Committee strike at Texas’s La Casita Farms (photo), demand $1.25 as a minimum hourly wage - 1966 June 02 Twenty-six journeymen printers in Philadelphia stage the trade’s first strike in America over wages: a cut in their $6 weekly pay - 1786. A constitutional amendment declaring that "Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age" was approved by the Senate today, following the lead of the House five weeks earlier. But only 28 state legislatures ever ratified the amendment—the last three in 1937—so it has never taken effect - 1924 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President Harry Truman acted illegally when he ordered the Army to seize the nation’s steel mills to avert a strike - 1952 Labor history courtesy Union Communication Services Comments are closed.
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