Episodes
Wednesday Jan 11, 2017
January 11 “The Battle of the Running Bulls”
Wednesday Jan 11, 2017
Wednesday Jan 11, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1937.
That was the day “The Battle of the Running Bulls” occurred at GM’s Fisher Plant No.2 in Flint, Michigan.
It marked the turning point in the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike.
Company guards attempted to stop food deliveries to the strikers.
When confronted, the guards cleared out and the food deliveries resumed.
The guards however, reported to the local police that strikers were holding them captive.
The Flint police soon arrived, throwing tear gas into the picket lines and through plant windows.
The sit-downers responded with plant fire hoses and slingshots loaded with door hinges.
The police continued to launch tear gas at the picketers.
Then the crowd pelted police with any debris they could find.
It was at this point that the police began firing into the crowd, seriously wounding 16.
Genora Johnson of the Women’s Auxiliary speaking from the sound truck called her women to action.
She recollected in 1976, “That’s when I appealed to the women of Flint. I said, there are women down here, the mothers of children, and I beg of you to come down here and stand with your husbands, your loved ones, your brothers, your sweethearts… Then I saw the first woman struggling and I noticed when she started to break through and come down, that a cop grabbed her coat, and she just kept on coming. As soon as that happened other women broke through and… the cops didn’t want to fire into the backs of women. When the women did that, the men came naturally and that was the end of the battle.”
The Women’s Auxiliary would continue to play a vital role in the strike.
Tuesday Jan 10, 2017
January 10 The Rise of Settlement Houses
Tuesday Jan 10, 2017
Tuesday Jan 10, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1885.
That was the day the Toynbee Hall, the first university settlement house opened its doors to the poor and working class communities of East London.
The Industrial Revolution had created a new set of social conditions, those of high unemployment and slum housing, crime and infant mortality.
The vicar of St. Jude’s, Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife, Henrietta hoped to combat poverty by having students settle in with the poor and working class to provide services and fight for social reforms.
They named the settlement house in honor of their friend, economist and labor leader, Arnold Toynbee, who helped to organize trade unions and establish public libraries throughout East London.
In its early days, Toynbee Hall championed the rights of minority immigrants, including Jews and the Irish, developed adult education and language courses, evaluated industrial working conditions and provided free legal advice.
More aligned with Liberal rather than Labour politics in Britain, reformers at Toynbee Hall looked to build the health of the nation by fighting for welfare reform legislation.
It became a public forum for political debates and historical societies and blazed the path for the rise of the Settlement House movement in Britain and the United States.
Three years after its’ opening, Jane Addams would open Chicago’s famed Hull House.
Other settlement houses like Henry Street Settlement in New York City, founded by Lillian Wald, soon followed.
Though bombed in the Nazi Blitzkrieg in 1940, Toynbee Hall continues its vision of a future free from poverty and its mission to support people and communities to break down the barriers that trap them in poverty in a bold, engaged, and open environment to this day.
Monday Jan 09, 2017
January 9 The Courts Stand Against Workers
Monday Jan 09, 2017
Monday Jan 09, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1922.
That was the day Chicago Building Trades began to split over the much-hated Landis Award.
The Building Trades had always enjoyed strong solidarity built through years of sympathy strike action.
By 1921, they were involved in a bitter dispute with the city’s employers, who had been on the open-shop offensive since the end of the World War I.
Contractors attempted to impose deep wage cuts and instituted a lockout when the Building Trades refused to go along.
Judge Kenesaw Landis, who sent close to one hundred IWW members to prison during World War I, arbitrated the dispute and issued his award that fall.
Considered a major blow to the building trades, his award outlined eight points on behalf of employers.
It imposed deep wage cuts of anywhere from 15%-40%, practically abolished the right to strike, and undermined years of established work rules.
As the Chicago Federation of Labor and Building Trades Council geared up for the fight, the employers created their own “Citizens Committee” to enforce the award.
The Chicago Federation of Labor noted that of the Committee’s 176 members, only 54 were based in the city and of those, only one had any connection with the industry.
On this day, the CBTC called for a strike.
Some unions refused to abide by the call.
The Building Trades split, with the Carpenters and Painters among those in favor of striking versus the Bricklayers, Electricians and Ironworkers, voting to honor the award.
A reported 60,000 building tradesmen walked off the job anyway, but the strike soon failed.
The Trades continued to erode the award’s strength and by 1926, many local agreements simply superseded its enforcement.
Sunday Jan 08, 2017
January 8 Striking for Better Wages, Hours, & Conditions
Sunday Jan 08, 2017
Sunday Jan 08, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1980.
That was the day Robert Goss, president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, called a nationwide strike against the oil industry.
The union sought to renegotiate for higher wages and better medical and dental plans in the second year of a two-year contract.
24-hour pickets were set up immediately.
For a good portion of the strike, workers at many of the refineries stopped strikebreaking scabs from entering.
But some refineries used management and contract workers to maintain production levels effectively.
Strikers confronted scabs daily and in a few instances, faced violence on the picket lines.
At least one manager crossing picket lines was charged with second-degree assault, after having rammed his car into a picketer at a Texaco refinery in Washington State.
In Texas City, the deaths of two contract workers at an Amoco refinery made news when Amoco refused to allow a union representative to accompany an OSHA inspector through the site.
Amoco sought a restraining order against OSHA and accused the agency of interjecting itself into a labor dispute.
At Houston’s Atlantic–Richfield, women mobilized to form picket lines in defiance of an injunction against union pickets.
In Los Angeles, area unions including UAW, UE, ILWU and the Teamsters formed the Los Angeles Harbor Council in solidarity with the strike.
On March 1, the Council conducted a one-day shutdown of the L.A. ports and strike support rally that demanded “Victory to the OCAW Strike!”
Oil workers would stay out fourteen weeks before the strike was finally settled.
They successfully won pay increases, and increases in employer contributions to the medical plan and a dental plan for the first time.
Saturday Jan 07, 2017
January 7 Tragic Youngstown Massacre
Saturday Jan 07, 2017
Saturday Jan 07, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1916.
That was the day of the Youngstown Massacre.
It was World War I and the demand for steel in war production had skyrocketed.
Steel workers at Republic Steel went on strike in late December of 1915 to demand a wage hike and overtime pay.
They also wanted a decrease in the workweek to 48 hours and improved safety.
Workers at Youngstown Sheet and Tube soon followed.
The number of striking workers grew to well over 13,000.
It was on this day that some 6,000 strikers, their wives and children gathered at the bridge across from the gate at Youngstown Sheet & Tube, intent on stopping scabs from entering the plant.
Guards at the mill left company property to confront strikers at the bridge and began attacking them with tear gas and live ammunition.
The upheaval would soon spread to the business district of East Youngstown.
By the time the dust settled the next morning, several blocks of businesses were destroyed, while at least 3 strikers lay dead, another 30 seriously injured at the hands of company hired guns.
National Guard troops were called in to quell the disturbances.
A grand jury convened to determine the cause of the disorder.
They ruled that over 100 companies were in violation of the state’s Valentine Anti-Trust Act and conspired to keep wages down in the steel industry.
They held the actions of Youngstown Sheet and Tube primarily responsible for the death and destruction that reigned over the city.
The strikers won an immediate 10% wage increase and better company housing.
But the court dismissed the grand jury’s findings.
It would be decades before the industry finally unionized.
Friday Jan 06, 2017
January 6 The Power of an Informed Working Class
Friday Jan 06, 2017
Friday Jan 06, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1944.
That was the day that Progressive-Era journalist Ida Tarbell died.
Often referred to as a leading ‘muckraker,’ she is considered to have pioneered investigative journalism.
She is best known for her expose on “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” which was serialized in McClure’s magazine starting in 1902.
The nineteen-part series detailed John D. Rockefeller’s rise to power, the oil empire he created, his business practices, secret alliances with railroads and refiners, and ruthless dealings.
Tarbell had a personal stake in unveiling Rockefeller and Standard Oil.
Her father was a small oil producer and refiner in Pennsylvania who was virtually ruined, as was much of the region, by Rockefeller’s machinations in 1872.
She noted, “Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks and investment houses, water their stock and rig the market. They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price-cutting, by ruthless, never slothful, efficiency of organization and production.”
Tarbell combed through hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and interviewed company executives and employees, competitors, regulators and academics.
In 1999, New York University ranked her history of Standard Oil fifth out of the top one hundred investigative journalist pieces of the century.
The expose eventually led to the break up of the Standard Oil monopoly by the Supreme Court under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1911.
Though her views on unions were more complicated, her history of Rockefeller and Standard Oil revealed to the public, to labor unions and to workers everywhere the levels tycoons will go to, to secure power and profits.
Thursday Jan 05, 2017
January 5 Ohio First to Enact Black Laws
Thursday Jan 05, 2017
Thursday Jan 05, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1804.
That was the day Ohio became the first non-slaveholding state to enact a series of Black Codes.
Ohio had previously been a part of the Northwest Territory, which barred slavery in 1787.
When Ohio entered the Union in 1803, its constitutional convention had established the previous November that slavery would not exist in the state.
But delegates were split evenly regarding black suffrage and ultimately voted to disenfranchise African-Americans.
Several months later, Ohio caved to pressure from the nearby slaveholding states of Kentucky and Virginia.
The state enacted codes to restrict immigration of free blacks and runaway slaves.
In order to settle and work in Ohio, Blacks had to present a certificate of freedom, register and pay a registration fee.
The Black Codes also enforced compliance with fugitive slave laws and set a precedent for neighboring Northern states to develop their own.
The Codes became more oppressive in 1807, when they were amended to also require $500 “good behavior” surety bonds as a residence requirement.
Despite this and other restrictive measures, the black population of Ohio grew annually, as blacks escaped north to freedom by following the Ohio River and Underground Railroad in the state and neighboring Pennsylvania.
Abolitionism as a movement began in the state as early as the 1820s, when John Rankin moved to Ripley, Ohio to join anti-slavery communities and established his home as a beacon of safety for blacks escaping the South.
The movement gained steam in the 1830s with the founding of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, the newspaper, The Philanthropist and Oberlin College.
Wednesday Jan 04, 2017
January 4 Standing up by Sitting Down
Wednesday Jan 04, 2017
Wednesday Jan 04, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1937.
That was the day workers of UAW Local 14 walked out on strike against the Toledo Chevrolet Transmission Plant.
They joined the strike wave against GM.
The national campaign started in November in Atlanta, followed by auto strikes in Kansas City and Cleveland, then intensified in late December with the Great Flint Sit-Down.
Local 14 members had experienced GM’s tricks first-hand during a 1935 strike.
When GM couldn’t stop unionization efforts at the Toledo plant, they began moving the machinery to non-union facilities in nearby Saginaw, Michigan and Muncie, Indiana.
GM’s maneuver drove local 14 leaders to fight for a national agreement and help with organizing the national strike wave.
Once it began, they were able to effectively shut down their plant.
They routinely traveled to Flint during the sit-down, to help with strike support and soup kitchen efforts.
Many local 14 members would also help beat back the police assault on sit-down strikers in the coming Battle of Running Bulls at Flint.
And as Local 14 members walked out on strike at the Chevy plant that day, the UAW presented its eight demands to GM.
These included national collective bargaining rights,
the end to piecework pay systems,
the 30 hour week, 6 hour day,
time and a half for overtime,
a living wage,
reinstatement of discharged workers,
the establishment of seniority rights,
recognition of the UAW as sole bargaining agent,
and shared determination of production speed in all plants.
GM finally started to budge a month later.
This historic agreement would be signed in late March and set the standard in industries across the country as millions of workers sought to unionize.
Tuesday Jan 03, 2017
January 3 The Power of Folded Arms and Marching Feet
Tuesday Jan 03, 2017
Tuesday Jan 03, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1946.
That was the day local AFL and CIO unions in Stamford, Connecticut joined forces to bring out 20,000 members from 30 trade unions in a massive one-day general strike to support striking Machinists at Yale & Towne Lock.
Machinists had been out since November, demanding a 30% wage increase and a union shop.
The Combined Stamford Labor Organizations had promised action if Governor Raymond Baldwin did not withdraw State Police from interfering with peaceful picketing.
State Police were being used to attack the picket lines, arrest strikers and escort strikebreakers-scabs into the plant.
In a last minute attempt to avert the general strike, Yale & Towne President W. Gibson Carey Jr., offered an 18% raise but refused any talk of a closed shop.
And so the unions went on “an extended lunch hour,” effectively bringing the entire city to a standstill.
Numerous Small businesses closed shop and joined in support.
Marchers converged upon Town Hall from five directions; their placards read, “Stamford is a Union Town! Let’s Keep It!” and “We Will Not Yield Victory!”
Workers represented unions like Mine Mill, AFM, IBEW, Barbers, Bookbinders, Gas & Chemical, and USW, among many others.
World War II veterans carried a banner that read, “We Licked the Axis and We Can Beat Carey!”
Despite public support, pitched battles continued on the picket lines.
The company would not budge until April, when they finally accepted the proposal the Machinists had demanded in January.
The Machinists quickly ratified the contract.
They beat back a union-busing offensive and built local solidarity among unions at a time when the AFL and CIO were very much at odds.
Monday Jan 02, 2017
January 2 A Nation Fed Up Strikes Back
Monday Jan 02, 2017
Monday Jan 02, 2017
On this day in labor history, the year was 1946.
That was the day Americans awoke to national headlines that the strike wave already underway since the previous fall, would most likely continue and intensify well into the New Year.
Close to half a million workers across several industries had been on strike for months.
The immediate post-war labor unrest came as a result of the slashing of wages, hours and jobs, all while productivity rose as industry engaged in peacetime reconversion.
Newspapers anxiously stressed that President Truman and the Department of Labor were working overtime to get hundreds of thousands of UAW members demanding a 30% wage increase, back to work.
The press feared another 1.5 million would be idle before the month was out.
UAW officials, whose members had been on strike for 43 days, stated theirs was a “strike war” against breadlines soon to come if wartime wages and standards of living were not maintained.
Headlines counseled the public on looming strikes from steel, packing, phone, and appliance workers.
The Packinghouse Union announced 200,000 workers across 147 plants would walk out within two weeks, while Steel Workers announced 700,000 were also ready to strike.
The UE prepared 200,000 of its members to strike at GE, Westinghouse and GM’s electric division, while phone workers and related industries planned a walkout of 250,000.
President Truman responded with talk of fact-finding boards that would impose 30-day strike bans while investigating “strike-breeding” industrial disputes.
He also invoked the threat of widespread seizures if necessary and did so in a number of industries including coal, packing and the railroads.
1946 saw the largest wave of striking workers taking to the picket lines in US history fighting for better wages, hours and conditions.