Labor History in 2:00

February 24 - Muller v. Oregon Decided

On this day in labor history, the year was 1908.

That was the day the United States Supreme Court decided the case, Muller v. Oregon.

It was a landmark decision in the realm of protective labor legislation.

It restricted the workday to 10 hours for women.

Laundry owner, Curt Muller, required his female employees to work more than 10 hours a day, against Oregon labor laws.

The Supreme Court upheld his conviction and fine.

Protective labor legislation was a product of the reform social movements of the Progressive Era.

Reformers like Jane Addams worked to protect women from industrial dangers that bred physical and moral harm to women.

The decision drove a class-based wedge within the women’s movement that lasted for much of the 20^th century.

Working class women generally supported protective labor legislation like Muller.

But Equal Rights Advocates like Alice Paul opposed it.

They argued that protective legislation like Muller rested on stereotypes regarding differences between men and women.

These differences often fueled anti-woman discrimination, state control and financial dependency.

As well, critics remarked the ruling set a precedent for women’s biology as child-bearers, as a basis for separate legislation.

Only later would working class critics note that the ruling did not cover domestics, agricultural workers, or white-collar workers.

The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act would supplant some parts of Muller with its guarantees for workers of both sexes.

Many working class women later welcomed the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited employment discrimination.

Some would concede the many flaws of protective labor legislation that held women back.

But women’s rights advocates would continue to debate protective legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment well into the 1970s.

February 23 - Black Food Workers Lead Historic Strike at UNC

On this day in labor history, the year was 1969.

That was the day black food workers went on strike at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Their strike intersected many points central to the social upheaval of the period, including rights of public sector workers.

Besides extremely low wages, workers complained of racial abuse and discrimination on the job.

When the administration ignored their demands, the cafeteria workers sat down at the tables and refused to return to the kitchens.

Black women workers like Mary Smith and Elizabeth Brooks organized protests and rallies to build public support on and off campus.

As the strike wore on, many students rallied to their defense.

The Black Student Movement was the first campus group to support the cafeteria workers.

Noting the lag of desegregation on Southern campuses and in the South generally, black students added their own demands to those of the workers.

They included the expansion of black student aid programs and black studies programs.

Clashes escalated between students at Lenoir Hall a few weeks later when opposing white students attacked integrated groups of students sympathetic to the strike, forcing the closure of the cafeteria hall.

Governor Robert Scott ordered the National Guard on standby.

Finally, workers formed a union and won many of their demands.

This benefitted 5000 other state employees as well.

But a month later, the UNC administration betrayed them by contracting out food service.

Many were laid off or fired for union activity.

By the end of the year, the now AFSCME organized workforce struck again over many of the same issues.

When renewed student strike support was threatened, management quickly caved and the strike ended in victory.

February 22 - Labelling Teachers as Terrorists

On this day in labor history, the year was 2004.

That was the day Secretary of Education, Rod Paige stated he considered the National Education Association to be a terrorist organization.

He made the remarks during a meeting with governors who were visiting the White House.

His apology a few hours later was just as inflammatory.

There he expressed his frustration at the "obstructionist scare tactics the NEA’s Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind’s historic reforms.”

Representing almost three million educators, the NEA had been fighting many aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act, passed by Congress in 2001.

The teachers’ unions had initially supported the measure.

But they came to realize that the act was designed to undermine public education in favor of charter, private and religious schools.

‘No Child Left Behind’ mandated regular, standardized testing of students.

It also threatened financial penalties and school closures.

Governors on board with the goals of the Act soon grew frustrated.

The Bush administration reneged on federal funding necessary for its implementation.

The union movement was outraged at Paige’s smear.

John Sweeney, then president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, ''The Bush administration would like to label all those who disagree with it as terrorists in order to cover up its policies, which are harmful to working families, and to divert attention from its inability to create good jobs.''

By 2015, the ‘No Child Left Behind Act’ had received so much criticism from every corner, that the ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’ replaced it.

This Act retains Common Core standards but transfers school accountability to the states.

It is now pending review under President Trump’s regulatory freeze directive.

February 21 - The First Female Telegraph Operator

On this day in labor history, the year was 1846.

That was the day Sarah Bagley became the first female telegraph operator.

She was hired at the office in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Sarah spent weeks studying the electrical theory behind the new technology and began her job in earnest.

She soon quit in protest after learning her pay was far less than her male counterparts.

Bagley was no stranger to labor struggles.

She was among the many Lowell textile workers who struck in 1842.

Bagley was one of the founders of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association.

She fought for the 10-hour day and better working conditions in the mills.

Sarah also helped to found the labor paper, The Voice of Industry.

When the Reform Association demanded state investigations into working conditions at area mills, she stated, “Is anyone such a fool as to suppose that out of six thousand girls in Lowell, sixty would be there if they could help it? Whenever I raise the point that it is immoral to shut us up in a room twelve hours a day… I am told that we have come to the mills voluntarily and we can leave when we will. Voluntarily! … the whip which brings us to Lowell is necessity. We must have money; a father’s debts are to be paid, an aged mother to be supported, a brother’s ambition to be aided and so the factories are supplied. Is this to act from free will? Is this freedom? To my mind it is slavery.”

Bagley returned to Lowell’s Hamilton mills after she quit the telegraph office.

She briefly continued her activism until she married and moved to Brooklyn.

February 20 - Angelina Grimke is Born

On this day in labor history, the year was 1805.

That was the day abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Angelina Grimke was born.

Her parents were slaveholders and among the wealthiest in Charleston, South Carolina.

As a young woman, she denounced slavery and together with her sister, Sarah, moved north to Philadelphia to join the Quakers.

There she became a teacher but grew frustrated with how the Quakers approached abolitionism.

She quickly gravitated towards radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and became active in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

She became prominent in abolitionist circles in 1835 after Garrison published her letter condemning pro-slavery riots in Boston.

The next year, she published an open letter to Southern women demanding they condemn the institution of slavery.

Angelina and Sarah embarked on abolitionist speaking tours and the organizing of women’s anti-slavery societies.

Having grown up in the South, the Grimke sisters held an especial authority among Northern abolitionists.

They could testify to the severity and inhumanity of the slave system.

They did so in the book, American Slavery As It Is, written together with Angelina’s husband abolitionist Theodore Weld.

Controversy intensified against Angelina and her sister as their popularity grew.

Religious leaders and abolitionists alike bristled at the idea of women engaged in public speaking and political work.

Undeterred, the sisters defended their right to be on equal footing with men in the abolitionist movement.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sister, Catherine, a leading educator, was among those who decried women’s public activism.

Angelina responded that all humans are moral beings worthy of human rights, regardless of gender.

Her response served as an early contribution to the women’s rights movement in the 19^th century.

February 19 - Philly Streetcar Workers Spark General Strike

On this day in labor history, the year was 1910.

That was the day streetcar workers in Philadelphia walked off the job just as garment workers were ending their victorious strike.

The walkout soon turned into a general strike.

The Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees Local 477 had been trying to negotiate fewer hours, higher wages and union recognition for almost a year.

Philadelphia Rapid Transit broke off negotiations in mid-February, fired 173 union members and imported scab replacements from New York City.

The Amalgamated called workers out. Strikers pulled apart buildings under construction and used the materials to block tracks and build strike shelters.

Many trolley cars were badly damaged when PRT attempted to resume service.

Scab drivers fared as badly as the trains they attempted to run.

The mayor called for citizens to serve police duty after strikers loaded dynamite onto tracks in Germantown.

The union offered up its members to preserve order but the Mayor refused.

Then the PRT brought in an additional 600 scabs and National Guardsmen to protect them.

Area workers were infuriated at this latest move, as were small businesses and religious groups. 

On March 5, the Central Federated Union called a general strike. 

More than 75,000 workers stayed off the job, to protest PRT’s anti-worker assaults.

Though the general strike was called off at the end of March, transit workers stayed out until April 19.

They won wage increases, rehiring of strikers and mediation for the initial 173 fired workers.

They could not secure exclusive union recognition.

But the strike solidified solidarity among area workers and demonstrated the capacity of labor to organize work actions across industrial lines.

 

February 18 - Anti-Slavery Begins in America

On this day in labor history, the year was 1688.

That was the day Germantown Quakers gathered to petition against slavery, in the first documented anti-slavery protest in America.

Quaker colonists in Barbados began to question slavery in the 1670s.

By 1688, founder of Germantown, Francis Daniel Pastorius and three other Quakers met at Thones Kunder’s house to craft a petition.

They urged their fellow congregants to abolish slavery.

The petition detailed its opposition to the importation, sale, and ownership of slaves.

Rooted in the Golden Rule, ”Do Unto Others as They Would Do Unto You,” the men questioned why Christians would own slaves when they would not own each other.

They argued that slaves had broad universal rights, including the right to engage in slave revolts in order to assure their freedom. 

The petition traveled its way through the Quaker network but many felt it was “too weighty” a matter on which to take a position.

Those Germantown settlers who felt strongly about ending slavery left the Quaker community for the Mennonites.

Over the course of the next century, Quakers in Germantown would craft stronger anti-slavery petitions that influenced the broader Quaker community in Philadelphia to take a formal stand.

By the time of the American Revolution, Philadelphia Quakers published numerous attacks on the institution in Benjamin Franklin’s newspaper.

They formally banned the ownership of slaves at their Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1776.

Throughout the region, Quakers routinely raised funds for those who had escaped bondage, to start new lives and helped them integrate into Quaker communities.

Quakers would continue to play a prominent and active role in the Abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad.

February 17 - Standing Up By Sitting Down

On this day in labor history, the year was 1936.

That was the day more rubber workers sat down in Akron, Ohio.

Tire builders in Goodyear’s Plant 2, Department 251-A sat down when 700 coworkers were laid off. Goodyear had been running four, six-hour shifts.

They hoped to reduce the workforce by implementing three, eight-hour shifts with no increase in pay. Management moved quickly to fire all of the strikers.

By the 17^th, all 4000 workers at Goodyear voted to strike over the layoffs and firings, speed-up and the new shift hours and pay.

The enormous, 11-mile facility was immediately shut down.

In his book, Strike! historian Jeremy Brecher indicates that few if any were union members.

The United Rubber Workers was hesitant to associate itself with the sit-down.

Rubber workers organized themselves.

They set up 24-hour pickets at dozens of gates, built striker shanties and set their demands.

After six days, the URW sanctioned the strike.

Brecher describes the scene: “The company…secured an injunction against mass picketing. 10,000 trades people from across the city gathered with lead pipe and baseball bats to stop 150 sheriffs’ deputies from opening the plants.

The Summit County Central Labor Council guaranteed a general strike if Law and Order League vigilantes carried out a threatened March 18 attack on picket lines.

The vigilante movement was paralyzed. Federal mediators demanded a return to work and arbitration.

Workers responded, "No, no, a thousand times no, I'd rather die than say yes."

Finally, Goodyear capitulated on most of the demands, except formal recognition of the union.

Rubber workers returned to work largely victorious.”

After renewed struggles, workers finally won union recognition a year later.

February 16 - The Wisconsin Uprising Begins

On this day in labor history, the year was 2011.

That was the day Madison Public School teachers held a sickout, in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s anti-labor assaults.

Walker had introduced Assembly Bill 11.

Later known as Act 10, this union-busting bill proposed the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers regarding health and pension benefits, limited wage increases, eliminated dues collection and mandated annual union recertification.

Immediately, tens of thousands of protesters descended on the state capitol, chanting, “Kill the Bill,” and took part in hearings to voice their opposition.

Area schools remained closed for days as protests continued to grow throughout the spring.

While parts of Act 10 have been ruled unconstitutional in the years since, the legislation has nonetheless wreaked havoc.

A recent series in Milwaukee’s Journal-Sentinel, titled “Act 10 at Five,” examined how public school teachers have fared since the Madison Uprising.

They found that 75% of school districts are losing teachers, retirements have surged, less are entering the profession and most job-hop to the highest salary offers.

Teachers’ unions like MTEA and WEAC report major losses.

MTEA notes that membership is down by 30%. WEAC reports that membership and dues collections were cut in half and there are difficulties in organizing new teachers.

Seniority rights have evaporated and layoffs are increasingly tied to performance. 

Annual salary growth has slowed, stopped or reversed.

Teacher morale is low in many districts.

Teachers often complain of additional unpaid duties, larger class sizes and more performance reviews.

There are new restrictions on attire, speech and political activities.

If there is any good news, it is that unions survive annual recertification and remaining members are more active and engaged in union work.

February 15 -The Uprising of the 20,000 Comes to a Close

On this day in labor history, the year was 1910.

That was the day the ‘Uprising of the 20,000’ officially ended in New York City.

As many as 30,000 young, predominantly immigrant Jewish women went back to work after a bitter 11-week strike.

They faced down their bosses, police and the courts. Arrests and fines drained much of the union’s funds.

Young union leaders like Clara Lemlich had been arrested 17 times and suffered 6 broken ribs.

Women garment workers spent most of the winter running to union meetings, handing out leaflets, walking picket lines, raising funds and distributing strike benefits.

Many smaller shops settled in workers’ favor early on in the strike.

By mid-February, closed shop demands kept many workers on the picket lines.

The strike ended with partial, but real victories. Garment workers won the 52-hour workweek, 4 paid holidays, employer-paid tools and materials, collectively bargained wages and more.

The ILGWU started the strike with 100 members and had 20,000 by the end.

All but 14 of the city’s 353 shops signed contracts.

But many garment workers continued to face unsafe working conditions like locked doors and flimsy or non-functioning fire escapes.

Safety-related demands would not be addressed until after the 60,000 strong cloak makers strike the following summer.  

One of the largest factories and worst offenders was Triangle ShirtWaist.

Workers there went back with no agreement.

147 would die a year later in a tragic fire.

In the aftermath, basic fire safety principles were finally established and implemented in New York State workplaces.

These formed the foundations for many modern day fire safety practices, like exit signs and doors, better ventilation and sprinkler systems, fire alarms and drills.