Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1934.  That was the day that the first minimum wage law went into effect in the United States. The minimum was twenty-five cents an hour. The wage law was part of the Fair Labor Standards Act passed earlier that year.   

On this day in Labor History the year was 1989.  At 1:05 in the afternoon a massive explosion rocked the town of Pasadena, Texas, near Houston. The explosion was so large it registered as a 3.5 on the Richter scale, used to measure earthquakes. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1981. The United States Federal Labor Relations Authority voted to decertify Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. The PATCO union had gone on strike earlier that year over wages, hours, and working conditions. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1999. That was the day that 270 workers from the Embassy Vacation Resorts in Maui voted to join Local 5 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees. Local 5 got its start in Hawaii in 1938.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1983. That was the day that musician Merle Travis died.  Known for his unique finger-picking guitar style, Travis wrote songs that captured the hard life of the coal miner.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1980. In what the Chicago Sun Times called it the “biggest labor management war of the last two decades.” The battle for union recognition at ten J.P. Stevens’s textile plants ended in victory.  

On this day in Labor History, and we are going all the way back to 1648. More than a hundred years before the American Revolution, an early trade organization was founded in the Colony of Massachusetts. They called themselves the “Company of Shoemakers.”  

On this day in Labor History, the year was 1877. That was the day that John D. Rockefeller, and his company Standard Oil struck a deal with the Pennsylvania Railroad that would cement his monopoly on the nation’s oil refineries. In the early 1870s Rockefeller was building his oil empire out from its center in Cleveland, Ohio.  

On this day in Labor History, the year was 1859. That was the day that abolitionist John Brown led a raid at the armory in Harpers Ferry, in what is now West Virginia. His goal was to strike a blow toward ending slavery.  

On this day in Labor History, the year was 1914. That was the day that President Woodrow Wilson signed the Clayton Antitrust Act.  The act also became known as Labor’s “Magna Carta.”