Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Collective actions
Working-class heroes organize Pecket Well College in England; Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farms Cooperative (photo) in the Mississippi Delta. Plus this week’s labor history highlights!
Last week's show: (12/1): Making the Woman Worker

December 13
Death in San Antonio, Tex. of Samuel Gompers, president and founder of the American Federation of Labor - 1924

December 14
Daniel DeLeon, socialist scholar and labor organizer, born - 1852
Some 33,000 striking members of the Machinists end a 69-day walkout at Boeing after winning pay and benefit increases and protections against subcontracting some of their work overseas - 1995

December 15
AFL convention passes a one-cent per capita assessment to aid the organization of women workers. (Exact date uncertain) - 1913

The Kansas national guard is called out to subdue from 2,000 to 6,000 protesting women who were going from mine to mine attacking non-striking miners in the Pittsburgh coal fields. The women made headlines across the state and the nation: they were christened the "Amazon Army" by the New York Times - 1921

Eight days after the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, the AFL pledges that there will be no strikes in defense-related plants for the duration of World War II - 1941

The U.S. Age Discrimination Employment Act becomes law. It bars employment discrimination against anyone age 40 or older - 1967

Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers union organizer Clinton Jencks, who led New Mexico zinc miners in the strike depicted in the classic 1954 movie “Salt of the Earth,” dies of natural causes in San Diego at age 87 - 2005

- David Prosten; Amazon Army Mural, located at the Pittsburg Public Library

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