Today's Labor History

​This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Voices from the Lansing Auto Town Gallery
On today’s show, auto worker Dorothy Stevens on her pioneering career at the Fisher Body plant in Lansing, MI. Also this week, Karen Nussbaum on Dolly Parton’s hit song, Bill Fletcher on the wildcat strike by the Eldon Avenue Axle Plant Revolutionary Union Movement, and the Cool Things from the Meany Archives team digs into the AFL’s cornerstone.
Last week's show: (1/19): MLK: All Labor Has Dignity
 
January 31
Ida M. Fuller is the first retiree to receive an old-age monthly benefit check under the new Social Security law. She paid in $24.75 between 1937 and 1939 on an income of $2,484; her first check was for $22.54 - 1940

After scoring successes with representation elections conducted under the protective oversight of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the United Farm Workers of America officially ends its historic table grape, lettuce and wine boycotts - 1978

Union and student pressure forces Harvard university to adopt new labor policies raising wages for lowest-paid workers - 2002

Five months after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans school board fires every teacher in the district in what the United Teachers of New Orleans sees as an effort to break the union and privatize the school system - 2005

February 1
Led by 23-year-old Kate Mullaney, the Collar Laundry Union forms in Troy, N.Y, raises earnings for female laundry workers from two dollars to 14 dollars a week - 1864

25,000 Paterson, NJ silk workers strike for eight-hour work day and improved working conditions. 1,800 were arrested over the course of the six-month walkout, led by the Wobblies. They returned to work on their employers’ terms - 1913

February 2
Sixteen thousand silk workers in Paterson, NJ and 32,000 in Lawrence, Mass. strike for shorter work week with no cut in pay - 1919

Legal secretary Iris Rivera (photo above) fired for refusing to make coffee; secretaries across Chicago protest - 1977

The 170-day lockout (although management called it a strike) of 22,000 steelworkers by USX Corp. ends with a pay cut but greater job security. It was the longest work stoppage in the history of the U.S. steel industry - 1987 

- David Prosten

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