Today's Labor History

​This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote
Professor Robyn Muncy, co-curator of “Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote,” on the role organized labor played in the lengthy and difficult struggle for women’s rights.
Plus Saul Schniderman on the origins of Women’s History Month and “Rise Up: Songs of the Women's Movement," the PBS show celebrating that history.
Last week’s show: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South
 
March 4
Pres. William Howard Taft signs legislation creating the Department of Labor. Former United Mine Workers Secretary Treasurer William B. Wilson is named to lead the new department - 1913

President Franklin D. Roosevelt names a woman, Frances Perkins, to be Secretary of Labor. Perkins became the first female cabinet member in U.S. history - 1933

UAW workers win sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, forcing General Motors to recognize the union. In the 40-day action, the strikers were protected by 5,000 armed workers circling the Fisher Body plant - 1937

Machinists strike Eastern Airlines, are soon joined by flight attendants and pilots in the nationwide walkout. Owner Frank Lorenzo refuses to consider the unions’ demands; Eastern ultimately went out of business - 1989

March 5
British soldiers, quartered in the homes of colonists, took the jobs of working people when jobs were scarce. On this date, grievances of ropemakers against the soldiers led to a fight. Soldiers shot down Crispus Attucks, a black colonist, then others, in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Attucks is considered the first casualty in the American Revolution - 1770
 
- David Prosten

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