Today's labor history

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast, with Joe McCartin, Carl Goldman and Debbie Goldman. PLUS: Lane Windham on Frances Perkins; Congressman David Bonior on the Civilian Conservation Corps, Bill Fletcher on the GM wildcat strike, and Saul Schniderman on the origins of Joe Hill's “There Is Power In A Union.”

March 09
The Westmoreland County (Pa.) Coal Strike—known as the "Slovak strike" because some 70 percent of the 15,000 strikers were Slovakian immigrants—begins on this date and continues for nearly 16 months before ending in defeat. Sixteen miners and family members were killed during the strike - 1912
 
Spurred by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. Congress begins its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation.  Just one of many programs established to help Americans survive the Great Depression: The Civilian Conservation Corps, which put 2.5 million young men on the government payroll to help in national conservation and infrastructure projects - 1933
 
Work begins on the $8 billion, 800-mile-long Alaska Oil pipeline connecting oil fields in northern Alaska to the sea port at Valdez. Tens of thousands of people worked on the pipeline, enduring long hours, cold temperatures and brutal conditions. At least 32 died on the job - 1974
 
March 10
U.S. Supreme Court upholds espionage conviction of labor leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs. Debs was jailed for speaking out against World War I. Campaigning for president from his Atlanta jail cell, he won 3.4 percent of the vote—nearly a million votes – 1919

New York City bus drivers, members of the Transport Workers Union, go on strike. After 12 days of no buses—and a large show of force by Irish-American strikers at the St. Patrick’s Day parade—Mayor Fiorello La Guardia orders arbitration - 1941
 
United Farm Workers leader César Chávez breaks a 24-day fast, by doctor’s order, at a mass in Delano, California’s public park. Several thousand supporters are at his side, including Sen. Robert Kennedy. Chavez called it “a fast for non-violence and a call to sacrifice” - 1968
 
March 11
Luddites smash 63 “labor saving” textile machines near Nottingham, England - 1811
 
Transport Workers Union members at American Airlines win 11-day national strike, gaining what the union says was the first severance pay clause in industry - 1950
Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services

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