Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Monopoly and Class Struggle: The games we play
Last week’s show: Uprising of the 20,000

December 4
President Roosevelt announces the end of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), concluding the four-year run of one of the American government's most ambitious public works programs. It helped create jobs for roughly 8.5 million people during the Great Depression and left a legacy of highways and public buildings, among other public gains - 1943

December 5
Unionists John T. and James B. McNamara were sentenced to 15 years and life, respectively, after confessing to dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during a drive to unionize the metal trades in the city. Twenty people died in the bombing. The newspaper was strongly conservative and anti-union - 1911

Ending a 20-year split, the two largest labor federations in the U.S. merge to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million - 1955

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney welcomes the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, declaring "No deal is better than a bad deal" - 1999

The U.S. Dept. of Labor reports employers slashed 533,000 jobs the month before -- the most in 34 years -- as the Great Recession surged. The unemployment rolls had risen for 7 months before that and were to continue to soar for another 10 months before topping 10 percent and beginning to level off late the following year - 2008

December 6
United Mine Workers begin what is to become a 110-day national coal strike - 1997

African American delegates meet in Washington, D.C., to form the Colored National Labor Union as a branch of the all-white National Labor Union created three years earlier. Unlike the NLU, the CNLU welcomed members of all races. Isaac Myers was the CNLU's founding president; Frederick Douglas became president in 1872 - 1869

361 coal miners die at Monongah, W.V., in nation's worst mining disaster - 1907

International Glove Workers Union of America merges into Amalgamated Clothing Workers - 1961

- David Prosten

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