Today's Labor History

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week's show: Yale Strom remembers WEVD, the Chicago radio station named for labor leader Eugene Victor Debs; Dan Duncan celebrates the founding of the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department; Saul Schniderman marks the anniversary of the publication of the IWW’s "Little Red Song Book," which is where all our music this week comes from; and Ben Blake’s labor history Object of the Week is a collection of posters, including one from the height of the Cold War showing an AFL-CIO map of forced labor gulags in the Soviet Union (right). photo by Chris Garlock
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Striking miners at Tracy City, Tenn., capture their mines and free 300 state convict strikebreakers. The convicts had been "leased" to mineowners by officials in an effort to make prisons self-supporting and make a few bucks for the state. The practice started in 1866 and lasted for 30 years - 1892

Bay Area mill employers locked out 8,000 workers because they demanded the 8 hour day and a daily wage of $3. The San Francisco Building Trades Council established a large union-operated mill to continue to make union-milled lumber available.
Eventually, mill owners agreed to the 8 hour day. - 1900

Newspaper Guild members begin three-month strike of Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, shutting the publication down in their successful fight for union recognition - 1936

Civil rights leader and union president A. Philip Randolph strongly protests the AFL-CIO Executive Council's failure to endorse the August 28 "March on Washington" - 1963

Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services

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