For today’s local labor news and updates, go to dclabor.org; for up-to-date listings for labor activities, click on calendar.
Here’s today’s labor history: Striking New York longshoremen met on this date in 1882 to discuss ways to keep new immigrants from scabbing. They were successful, at least for a time. On July 14, 500 newly arrived Jews marched straight from their ship to the union hall. On July 15, 250 Italian immigrants stopped scabbing on the railroad and joined the union. In 1903, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones began "The March of the Mill Children", when, accompanied part of the way by children, she walked from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt's home on Long Island to protest the plight of child laborers. One of her demands: reduce the childrens' work week to 55 hours, In 1910, cloakmakers began what was to be a two-month strike against New York City sweatshops. And on this date in 1998, some 500,000 people participated when a two-day general strike was called in Puerto Rico by more than 60 trade unions and many other organizations. They were protesting privatization of the island's telephone company. Today’s labor quote is by Mother Jones: “In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?”
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For today’s local labor news and updates, go to dclabor.org; for up-to-date listings for labor activities, click on calendar.
Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1889, two strikers and a bystander were killed and 30 seriously wounded by police in Duluth, Minnesota. The workers, mostly immigrants building the city’s streets and sewers, struck after contractors went back on a promise to pay $1.75 a day. In 1892, two barges, loaded with Pinkerton thugs hired by the Carnegie Steel Company, landed on the south bank of the Monongahela River in Homestead, Pennsylvania, seeking to occupy Carnegie Steel Works and put down a strike by members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers. Rail union leader Eugene Debs was arrested during the Pullman strike on this date in 1894, described by the New York Times as "a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital" that involved some 250,000 workers in 27 states at its peak. In 1926, transit workers in New York began what was to be an unsuccessful 3-week strike against the then-privately owned IRT subway. Most transit workers labored seven days a week, up to 11.5 hours a day. Today’s labor quote is by Eugene Debs: “The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be suppressed.” For today’s local labor news and updates, go to dclabor.org; for up-to-date listings for labor activities, click on calendar.
Here’s today’s labor history: In 1835, children employed in the silk mills in Paterson, New Jersey, went on strike for the 11-hour day and 6-day week. A compromise settlement resulted in a 69-hour work week. On this date in 1860, the feminist and labor activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Her landmark study, "Women and Economics", was radical for the time, calling for the financial independence of women and urging a network of child care centers. Today’s labor quote is by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who also said: Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized. For today’s local labor news and updates, go to dclabor.org; for up-to-date listings for labor activities, click on calendar.
Here’s today’s labor history: In 1964, President Johnson signed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forbidding employers and unions from discriminating on the basis of race, color, gender, nationality, or religion. And on this date in 2009, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers cut 467,000 jobs over the prior month, driving the nation’s unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. Today’s labor quote is by Stokely Carmichael: “The spirit we seek to build among black people is not a capitalistic one. It is a society in which the spirit of community and humanistic love prevail. The love we seek to encourage is within the black community, where men call each other ‘brother’ when they meet.” A Trinidadian-American revolutionary active in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and later the global Pan-African movement, Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and finally as a leader of the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party. |
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