Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Blue Wave? Labor and the Democratic coalition in the Southwest
The Democrats may have won the 2020 presidential election with historic victories in southern states ranging from Georgia to Arizona, but have they created the kind of interracial labor coalition required to win the ongoing economic and ideological battles that did not end on election day? Historian Max Krochmal, author of “Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era” sees a lot of unfulfilled potential to bring young social movement organizations into the mainstream of American politics. Plus: Dorothy Day is born. Last week’s show: Organizing through the Divide

Sit-down strike begins at Austin, Minn. Hormel plant with the help of a Wobbly organizer, leading to the creation of the Independent Union of All Workers. Labor historians believe this may have been the first sit-down strike of the 1930s. Workers held the plant for three days, demanding a wage increase. The governor mediated a settlement - 1933

The ship Edmund Fitzgerald – the biggest carrier on the Great Lakes – and crew of 29 are lost in a storm on Lake Superior while carrying ore from Superior, Wisc. to Detroit. The cause of the sinking was never established - 1975

- David Prosten

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