A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
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2 hours ago
2 hours ago
On this day in labor history, the year was 1935.
That was the day the United Rubber Workers was founded in Akron, Ohio.
Akron was the rubber capital of the world.
All the major companies were there—Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich and General Tire.
In Akron alone, there were more than 40,000 rubber workers and thousands more throughout the country.
After 30 years of struggling to build the union, hopes of organizing the industry were finally made real.
The founding of the international came after a successful strike the year before.
But the union was born amid growing tensions within the AFL.
These were years of industrial organizing that rivaled the exclusive skilled craft unions.
Growing demands to organize the mass industries would explode the next month at the historic AFL convention in Atlantic City.
The tensions between AFL leaders and rubber workers delegates gave a taste of things to come.
At the founding convention, rubber workers delegates opposed a number of AFL leaders’ demands.
The AFL insisted on appointing officers.
They threatened to withdraw financial assistance when the delegates demanded democratic elections.
But AFL leaders backed off when unionists from across the city protested.
Then, delegates voted down an AFL constitutional clause proposal to bar “communists” from the union.
They also refused AFL orders to organize on anything less than a total industrial basis.
Organizing skilled workers into the URW became a contentious issue at the October AFL convention.
It led to the fight between Carpenters leader Bill Hutcheson and UMW president John Lewis, which precipitated the AFL split.
By the following spring, the new URW would lead another successful strike that put it firmly among the industrial unions of the CIO.
2 days ago
2 days ago
On this day in labor history, the year was 2001.
We pause to remember those who died in the 9/11 attacks.
Of those killed, nearly a quarter were union people.
Hundreds of firefighters were lost.
Dozens of building trades people, including carpenters and electricians were also killed.
And many other unions lost members as well, including the AFT, SEIU, UNITE-HERE, CWA, and AFSCME.
Those lost that day will remains firmly forever in our memories.
What is less well known is the number of those first responders who are suffering from chronic and fatal diseases related to 9/11 or those who have already died.
It is estimated that over 400,000 people were exposed to World Trade Center contaminants.
These include more than 70 carcinogens and other hazardous substances.
Of those exposed, over 91,000 were first responders.
As of June 2017, over 67,000 first responders and over 12,000 survivors had registered in the World Trade Center Health Program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The program provides medical monitoring, health evaluations and treatment for those who qualify.
Of those registered responders still alive, more than 45,000 suffer from certified conditions as defined by the Zadroga Act of 2010.
And for registered survivors, nearly 10,000 suffer from certified conditions.
Close to 700 registered first responders have already died from certified conditions.
However, this number is considered a low estimate, given there were many who died before the program was established.
There are also a number of illnesses believed related to the attacks but not yet certified.
If you are a survivor or were a 9/11 First Responder and would like to enroll in the World Trade Center Health Program, please visit www.cdc.gov/wtc or call toll free 1-888-982-4748.
3 days ago
3 days ago
A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
On this day in labor history, the year was 2012.
That was the day the Chicago Teachers Union walked off the job for the first time in 25 years.
The historic weeklong strike resonated nationwide among trade unionists and served to reinvigorate the labor movement.
Certainly higher wages and better benefits were among the teachers’ demands.
The city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel had canceled the union’s wage increase, laid off close to 1000 teachers and went on the attack against seniority rights and working conditions.
The strike enjoyed wide public support among parents and the public.
Teachers emphasized broader educational problems they faced, namely the attacks fueled by corporate privatization.
They wanted a return to more traditional forms of education rather than simply preparing students for endless rounds of testing.
They wanted more art, music and gym classes.
And they demanded stable funding for social support services for the most vulnerable, at risk youth.
Union teachers understood that the Board of Education was using standardized testing to get rid of teachers and schools in order to privatize education, all in the name of turning around failing schools and “helping the kids.”
Though the contract was far from perfect, it showed the power working people have to hold the line against continued assaults on their standards of living, especially in the public sector.
The CTU was able to beat back attempts at merit pay and increased use of student test scores in teacher evaluations.
They won first time recall rights, supply reimbursements and liberal arts classes.
There were concessions made on seniority rights, pay for laid off teachers and longer work days.
But the CTU demonstrated that strikes can win in a period of extended anti-union onslaughts.
4 days ago
4 days ago
On this day in labor history, the year was 1929.
That was the day a mistrial was declared in the case of sixteen textile mill unionists in North Carolina.
The mistrial sparked five days of anti-union vigilante violence.
Textile workers at Gastonia’s Loray Mill had been on strike since April 1.
They demanded higher wages and shorter work hours, union recognition and an end to the hated stretch out system.
Soon, textile workers at Bessemer City’s American Mill walked off the job in solidarity and joined the National Textile Workers Union.
Ella Mae Wiggins was one of the strike leaders at American Mill.
She was known for her militancy but also for organizing black workers into the union.
As the strike wore on, mill owners evicted dozens of families from company housing.
Wiggins helped set up a tent city.
On June 7, sheriff’s deputies attacked strikers who marched to Loray Mill to call out remaining workers.
The police arrived at the tent colony later that evening to disarm them and Gastonia’s police chief wound up dead.
Immediately more than seventy textile union members and leaders were rounded up and arrested.
Sixteen stood trial for the murder of Chief Aderholt.
The anti-union Committee of One Hundred smashed up NTWU headquarters in Gastonia and Bessemer City.
They kidnapped, beat and threatened to kill several union members.
The rampage continued as scab forces moved onto Charlotte to raid the offices of the International Labor Defense, who had handled the strikers’ case.
Five days into the terror, Wiggins was killed on her way to a union solidarity rally.
Outrage over her murder forced mill owners to improve conditions and wages.
But the fight to organize would continue for years.
4 days ago
4 days ago
On this day in labor history, the year was 1965.
That was the day the Delano Grape Strike began in California.
The strike came a year after activists had forced Congress to end the Bracero contract labor program.
The Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, led by Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz and others called the strike against the Delano Growers and the Coachella Valley Grape Growers.
It had been a record harvest.
Farmworkers demanded higher wages, humane working conditions and union recognition.
When the growers refused, thousands walked out of the fields.
A week later, the Mexican-American National Farmworkers Association, led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, joined the strike.
It was a historic moment.
Within a year the two unions would merge to form the United Farm Workers.
The union sent strikers to the Oakland docks to persuade Longshoremen not to load non-union grapes.
Many of the Filipino workers in the San Joaquin Valley worked in the Alaska fish canneries organized by the ILWU in the off season.
And so the ILWU honored their union brothers request.
Thousands of cases of grapes were left to rot on the docks.
This initial victory led Chavez to organize a grape boycott against heavy weights, DiGiorgio and Schenley Industries.
Six months into the strike, union leaders marched 300 miles from Delano to Sacramento to bring attention to their struggle.
They hoped to pressure growers to the negotiating table and legislators to act on their behalf.
For five years, the strike and boycott continued, with marches, organizing and picket line arrests.
Gradually, the UFW began winning higher wages, union recognition and hiring halls.
Finally in 1970, a collective bargaining agreement covering 10,000 workers was reached.
6 days ago
6 days ago
On this day in labor history, the year was 2011.
That was the day hundreds of ILWU strikers blocked railroad tracks near Longview, Washington.
They hoped to stop grain shipments from moving in and out of the EGT Grain Terminal.
Longshoremen had been sitting down on the tracks throughout the summer resulting in over a hundred arrests.
No trains had moved in or out of the terminal since July.
But then a federal judge issued an injunction against ILWU pickets.
BNSF railroad tried to move grain once again.
ILWU picketers in Vancouver were able to hold off the train until police forcibly dispersed the crowd.
Then hundreds gathered at Longview to block the train from coming in.
That’s when police went on the offensive.
They used clubs and pepper spray against the longshoremen, arresting 19.
They threw ILWU president Bob McEllrath to the ground.
Rumors spread that police had broken his arm.
Hundreds of regional longshoremen rushed to Longview.
The Seattle and Tacoma ports shut down in protest.
The next morning, 10,000 tons of grain were opened onto the railroad tracks.
The grain export terminal was the first to be built in the Pacific Northwest in almost 30 years.
EGT hoped to undercut the powerful ILWU, who controlled operations at the port since its founding in the 1930s.
The union refused to agree to work 12-hour shifts at straight time.
The EGT hoped to break the hiring hall by refusing to recognize maintenance and inside workers at the terminal.
Then they attempted to fill jobs with workers from the Operating Engineers.
But the ILWU persevered.
By the end of January, EGT backed off many of its demands, negotiations resumed and days later the contract was signed.
7 days ago
7 days ago
On this day in labor history, the year was 1934. That was the day that became known as “Bloody Thursday.” Seven striking workers were shot dead and another 30 wounded at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path, South Carolina.
The Great Textile Strike of 1934 had started September 1. The twenty-two day strike spanned the eastern United States, from New England to Georgia and involved close to half a million workers. The main issue was the dreaded “stretch out,” increased workloads at the same or even reduced pay rates.
Striking textile workers implemented the flying picket squad tactic employed by Minneapolis Teamsters earlier that summer. Hundreds drove from mill to mill to prevent scabbing. Mill executives across the Piedmont were stunned and terrified at the strike’s effectiveness and the workers’ militancy.
Strikers at the Chiquola Mill had formed solid picket lines at the gate when scabs and special deputies armed by the mill’s owner, opened fire. All seven were shot in the back as they tried to escape the hail of bullets.
According to a New York Times article the following day, the killings marked “the beginning of the second bloody phase of the strike as one town after another reported completion of preparations to resist the flying squads and the picketing activity of the strikers.”
Frank Beacham, the grandson of Chiquola Mill owner and mayor of Honea Path, Dan Beacham, has worked to unearth the history of the massacre and apologize for his grandfather’s cruelty. He notes that, as in many southern mill towns, after the strike went down to defeat, those who struck were fired and blacklisted. Those who retained their jobs essentially took a vow of silence never to discuss the strike or massacre again.
7 days ago
7 days ago
On this day in labor history, the year was 1934. That was the day that became known as “Bloody Thursday.” Seven striking workers were shot dead and another 30 wounded at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path, South Carolina.
The Great Textile Strike of 1934 had started September 1. The twenty-two day strike spanned the eastern United States, from New England to Georgia and involved close to half a million workers. The main issue was the dreaded “stretch out,” increased workloads at the same or even reduced pay rates.
Striking textile workers implemented the flying picket squad tactic employed by Minneapolis Teamsters earlier that summer. Hundreds drove from mill to mill to prevent scabbing. Mill executives across the Piedmont were stunned and terrified at the strike’s effectiveness and the workers’ militancy.
Strikers at the Chiquola Mill had formed solid picket lines at the gate when scabs and special deputies armed by the mill’s owner, opened fire. All seven were shot in the back as they tried to escape the hail of bullets.
According to a New York Times article the following day, the killings marked “the beginning of the second bloody phase of the strike as one town after another reported completion of preparations to resist the flying squads and the picketing activity of the strikers.”
Frank Beacham, the grandson of Chiquola Mill owner and mayor of Honea Path, Dan Beacham, has worked to unearth the history of the massacre and apologize for his grandfather’s cruelty. He notes that, as in many southern mill towns, after the strike went down to defeat, those who struck were fired and blacklisted. Those who retained their jobs essentially took a vow of silence never to discuss the strike or massacre again.
Thursday Sep 05, 2024
Thursday Sep 05, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1882. That was the day the first Labor Day Parade took place in New York City.
But whose idea was it? According to the late Jonathan Grossman, former historian at the Department of Labor, the first Labor Day occurred during a general uptick in working class organizing, strike activity and militancy that year.
Peter McGuire, Carpenters Union General Secretary is often credited as the father of Labor Day. But others assert that Knights of Labor machinist and New York City’s Central Labor Union leader Matthew Maguire was the force behind the holiday. The machinist Maguire had been active in the eight-hour movement and later as a Socialist Labor Party politician.
By the end of the decade, 400 cities nationwide celebrated the first Monday of September as “a general holiday for the workingman.” It was already an official holiday in most states when the labor movement started campaigning for a day of recognition at the federal level. Labor militants contend that by 1894, the holiday was promoted for its respectability against the more radical May Day.
Another unanswered question remains regarding President Cleveland’s motives for signing the federal legislation. The widely accepted view is that Cleveland hoped to win back Labor’s vote after federal troops crushed the 1894 Pullman Strike in early August.
But the President signed legislation much earlier, on June 28th. The nationwide boycott against Pullman cars, called by Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union, had just begun two days earlier. Did he hope to deflate the boycott? What do you think?
For many in the Chicago labor movement, the fact that both Labor Day and May Day are linked to the city’s history is a source of pride.
Wednesday Sep 04, 2024
Wednesday Sep 04, 2024
On this day in labor history the year was 1875. That was the day anti-black violence erupted into a two-day massacre in Clinton, Mississippi.
As many as 2500 Black Republicans and their families met at Moss Hill, a former plantation destroyed during the Civil War. The day was one of festivities and political speeches ahead of the fall elections. The County Republican Party invited local Democrats to debate. The Democratic State Senatorial candidate did address the crowd. The editor of a local Republican newspaper and Union officer, Captain H.T. Fisher, followed him.
Soon a group of white Democrats began to heckle Fisher as he spoke. Republican politicians attempted to quell the growing tensions. Almost immediately the heckling whites opened fire on the crowd. Women and children fled in all directions as black Republican forces rushed to defend themselves and their families.
By the end of the day three whites and five blacks were killed. Clinton’s mayor fed off rumors of black retaliation. He called upon white paramilitary forces, the White Liners, from surrounding areas for assistance. Several hundred answered the call and filled the town’s streets. Historian Melissa Janczewski Jones notes that though heavily armed, the White Liners accompanied white locals as they rampaged door to door, looking for black Republicans to murder.
After two days, as many as fifty black Clintonians were killed by white Democrats looking to end Reconstruction and regain political control of Mississippi. A Senate Committee would later conclude, “The riots at Clinton were the result of a special purpose on the part of the Democrats to break up the meetings of Republicans and to inaugurate an era of terror, not only in those communities but throughout the state.”