Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1770. That was the day of the Boston Massacre, when the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. But did you know that the massacre happened in part because of a dispute over jobs?  In 1767 the British had passed the Townshend Revenue Act. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1914. That was the day that President Woodrow Wilson signed the Seaman’s Act into law. The act was in part a response to the tragic sinking of the Titanic.The International Seamen’s Union was demanding changes to the work conditions at sea.  

 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1893. That was the day that William Green, long-time president of the American Federation was born in Coshocton, Ohio. Green’s family were English and Welsh immigrant coal miners.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1807. That was the day that President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation outlawing the trans-Atlantic slave trade from bringing enslaved Africans to the United States. At the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, the authors had decided to revisit the question of slavery after two decades.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1900. That was the day that the members of the Granite Cutters National Union walked out on strike.

Their demands were improved wages and the eight hour day.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1942. That was the day that Sue Cowan Williams filed a lawsuit for equal pay for black school teachers in Little Rock, Arkansas. Eighty-six black teachers worked in the city’s segregated school system. They were all members of the Little Rock Class Room Teachers Association.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1942. That was the day that 27 Japanese women, working in the Seattle public school system handed in their forced resignations. In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese hysteria swept the United States, especially the west coast.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 2011. That was the day that labor movement took an historic stand in Madison, Wisconsin. That cold Saturday a crowd of union members and supporters swelled to more than 100,000 people at the state capitol building.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1941. That was the day a general strike by workers against the Nazis took place in Amsterdam. The Nazis had begun the occupation of the Netherlands in the spring of 1940. The German occupiers implemented a series of increasingly repressive anti-Semitic laws.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1965. That was the day that the Drug and Hospital Employees Union Local 1199 sent a telegram to President Lyndon Johnson. The message declared the union’s stand against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.