If you’re hitting the stores today for Black Friday sales, just a reminder to patronize union stores – check out the Union Shop listings at dclabor.org – and wherever you shop today, please, be extra nice to the hard-working folks at the stores; I promise you, they’re all doing their best!
In today’s labor history, roughly on this date in 1170BC, history’s first recorded strike took place, by Egyptians working on public works projects for King Ramses the Third in the Valley of the Kings. They were protesting having gone 20 days without pay – which in those days was portions of grain -- and put their tools down. Scholar John Rome tells us that the strike so terrified the authorities they gave in and raised wages. And in 1935, Mine Workers President John L. Lewis walked away from the American Federation of Labor to lead the newly-formed Committee for Industrial Organization. The CIO and the unions created under its banner organized six million industrial workers over the following decade. Today’s labor quote is by William Haywood, secretary-treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners. Troops were dispatched to Cripple Creek, Colorado on this date in 1903 to control rioting by striking coal miners, and Haywood later explained why the state and the mine owners tried to wipe out the union. Big Bill Haywood, who said that “We desire to obtain control of the government that we may improve the condition of the working people generally." Union City Radio is supported by our friends at Union Plus. Visit unionplus.org to find out how union members might take advantage of a limited-time wireless offer from AT&T.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Union City Radio is proud to be supported by UnionPlus, which has been working hard for union families since 1986.
Union City Radio is part of The Labor Radio/Podcast Network
Listen now...UC Radio airs weekdays at 7:15a on WPFW 89.3 FM; subscribe to the podcast here. |