Today's Labor History

​This week’s Labor History Today podcast: UAW’s Punch Press strike daily
On today’s show, the Cool Things from the Meany Archives crew features The Punch Press, an auto worker strike publication. Also this week, Saul Schniderman remembers contributions to labor history by both Johnny Paycheck and Bruce Springsteen.
Last week's show: (1/5): A very unusual strike

January 17
Radical labor organizer and anarchist Lucy Parsons leads hunger march in Chicago; IWW songwriter Ralph Chaplin writes "Solidarity Forever" for the march - 1915

President John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 10988, guaranteeing federal workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively - 1962

January 19
Twenty strikers at the American Agricultural Chemical Co. in Roosevelt, N.J. were shot, two fatally, by factory guards. They and other strikers had stopped an incoming train in search of scabs when the guards opened fire - 1915

3,000 members of the Filipino Federation of Labor strike the plantations of Oahu, Hawaii. Their ranks swell to 8,300 as they are joined by members of the Japanese Federation of Labor - 1920

Yuba City, Calif. labor contractor Juan V. Corona found guilty of murdering 25 itinerant farm workers he employed during 1970 and 1971 - 1973

Bruce Springsteen makes an unannounced appearance at a benefit for laid-off 3M workers, Asbury Park, NJ - 1986

January 20
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) founded - 1920

Hard working Mickey Mantle signs a new contract with the New York Yankees making him the highest paid player in baseball: $75,000 for the entire 1961 season - 1961

Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown," a eulogy for dying industrial cities, is the country’s most listened-to song. The lyrics, in part: "Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores / Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more / They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks / Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown / Your hometown / Your hometown / Your hometown . . ." - 1986

- David Prosten