Weekend Labor History

The national Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners is founded in Chicago in a gathering of 36 carpenters from 11 cities - 1881
Coal company guards kill seven, wound 40 striking miners who are trying to stop scabs, Virden, Ill. - 1898
 
With the news that their boss, Florenz Ziegfeld, was joining the Producing Managers’ Association, the chorus girls in his Ziegfield Follies create their own union, the Chorus Equity Association. They were helped by a big donation from superstar and former chorus girl Lillian Russell. In 1955 the union merged with the Actor’s Equity Association - 1919
 
Teamsters official William Grami is kidnapped, bound and beaten near Sebastopol, Calif. He was leading a drive to organize apple plant workers in the area - 1955
(From Blackjacks to Briefcases is the first book to document the systematic and extensive use by American corporations of professional union-busters, an ugly profession that surfaced after the Civil War and has grown bolder and more sophisticated with the passage of time.  Since the 1980s, hundreds of firms—including the Detroit News, Caterpillar and Pittston Coal, to name but three—have paid out millions of dollars to hired thugs.  Some have been in uniforms and carried nightsticks and guns, others have worn three-piece suits and carried attaché cases, but all had one simple mission: to break the backs of workers struggling for decency and fair treatment on the job.)
 
The North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA—is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, to take effect in January, 1994, despite protests from labor, environmental and human rights groups – 1992
What was to become a 232-day strike by major league baseball players over owners' demands for team salary caps began on this day; 938 games were cancelled - 1994
 
August 13
Striking miners at Tracy City, Tenn., capture their mines and free 300 state convictstrikebreakers. 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
 
Newspaper Guild members begin 3-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
 
Five construction workers are killed, 16 injured when the uncompleted roof of the Rosemont (Ill.) Horizon arena collapses - 1979
 
August 14
President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, providing, for the first time ever, guaranteed income for retirees and creating a system of unemployment benefits - 1935
 
Members of the upstart Polish union Solidarity seize the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. Sixteen days later the government officially recognizes the union. Many consider the event the beginning of the end for the Iron Curtain - 1980
 
Former AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland dies at age 77 - 1999
- compiled/edited by David Prosten at Union Communication Services.