Today's Labor History

​This week’s Labor History Today podcast: “Strike for Your Life!”; labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis 
Peter Rachleff, co-director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, on how “Lessons from labor history can inform our labor movement during the COVID-19 crisis.” “As a labor historian, the closest thing I can think of to the spread of coronavirus strikes is the epidemic of sitdown strikes to spread across the country in the mid-1930s.” Historian and writer Jeremy Brecher, from “Strike for Your Life!” Also this week, we preview Debs In Canton, a new audio/radio drama from the filmmakers of American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs.
Last week’s show: Jack Kelly’s "The Edge of Anarchy”; “Union Maids” director Julia Reichert (Part 2) 

Western Federation of Miners formed in Butte, Mont. - 1893

The Canadian government establishes the Department of Labour. It took the U.S. another four years - 1909

10,000 IWW dock workers strike in Philadelphia - 1913

Thousands of yellow cab drivers in New York City go on a one day strike in protest of proposed new regulations. “City officials were stunned by the (strike’s) success,” the New York Times reported - 1998

- David Prosten; photo: Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of Taxi Workers Alliance, at 1998 rally. (Photo by AP.)

---