Today's Labor History

​This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Neutron Jack, Joker and Parasite
Labor historian Joe McCartin on “Neutron Jack” Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, who died last week; Sherry Linkon on class conflict in two recent award-winning movies, Joker and Parasite. Plus music from SongRise, a DC-based women's social justice a cappella group.
Last week’s show: Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote
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March 13
The term “rat,” referring to a worker who betrays fellow workers, first appears in print in the New York Daily Sentinel. The newspaper was quoting a typesetter while reporting on replacement workers who had agreed to work for two-thirds of the going rate - 1830

A four-month UAW strike at General Motors ends with a new contract. The strikers were trying to make up for the lack of wage hikes during World War II - 1946
March 14
Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes. Goodby, craftsmanship. Hello, drudgery - 1914

The Movie "Salt of the Earth" opens. The classic film centers on a long and difficult strike led by Mexican-American and Anglo zinc miners in New Mexico. Real miners perform in the film, in which the miners’ wives – as they did in real life – take to the picket lines after the strikers are enjoined - 1954

March 15
Official formation of the Painters International Union - 1887

Supreme Court approves 8-Hour Act under threat of a national railway strike - 1917

Bituminous coal miners begin nationwide strike, demanding adoption of a pension plan - 1948
 
- David Prosten