A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
Episodes
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Monday Jan 08, 2024
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.
Sunday Jan 07, 2024
Sunday Jan 07, 2024
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.
Saturday Jan 06, 2024
Saturday Jan 06, 2024
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 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’smagazine 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.
Friday Jan 05, 2024
Friday Jan 05, 2024
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 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.
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
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.
Wednesday Jan 03, 2024
Wednesday Jan 03, 2024
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 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.
Wednesday Jan 03, 2024
Wednesday Jan 03, 2024
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.
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Monday Jan 01, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1966.
That was the day 33,000 transit workers of TWU Local 100 waged a 13-day strike in New York City.
They shut down 135 miles of subway, 2200 buses and affected over 6 million daily riders.
Wages and working conditions had been sliding for years at the MTA.
By 1965, transit workers made far less than other municipal workers.
Speed up and expanded job duties increased as the Authority eliminated thousands of positions. Rank and file members held the union partially responsible.
They demanded a contract that met their needs and a walkout if necessary.
TWU President Mike Quill broke off negotiations on New Year’s Eve.
Moments later, he was televised ripping up a temporary injunction barring the strike.
The union demanded contract changes, including a 32-hour, 4-day workweek, a 30% wage increase, and better pension and vacation terms. Quill and eight other TWU leaders were jailed for defiance of the injunction.
Having been found guilty of contempt, Quill responded, “The judge can drop dead in his black robes.”
Politicians and even the President lambasted the intolerable conditions the strike had created. Editorials in the New York Times lamented that “not since the Draft Riots of the Civil War has the normal course of life in this city been more profoundly altered for so many days.”
Transit workers stood tough and won big.
Their victory include a 15% wage increase, improved pension benefits and $2 million towards improved working conditions.
The strike also resulted in the overhaul of laws governing public sector workers, granting them the right to organize and bargain collectively, thus leveling the playing field for all public employees.
Sunday Dec 31, 2023
Sunday Dec 31, 2023
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 1987.
That was the day OSHA issued its final rule on Grain Handling Facilities.
This standard was established almost ten years after discussions and Congressional hearings began on the subject.
There had been a series of catastrophic explosions in the late 1970s, which dominated national attention.
A special task force was created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate grain elevator safety and explosions after 13 USDA inspectors were killed in 1977.
Five separate incidents involving grain elevator explosions killed 59 and injured another 49, just in December of that year alone.
The USDA task force issued a report with guidelines soon after the National Grain and Feed Association conducted its own research and guideline issuance.
By 1981, the Food and Allied Service Trades Department, AFL-CIO petitioned OSHA to promulgate a rule regulating the build-up of explosive dust in grain elevators.
When the final rule was issued, it focused on requirements for the control of fires, grain dust explosions, and hazards associated with entry into bins, silos, and tanks, as well as hazards associated with the release of hazardous energy from equipment.
The standard held employers responsible for developing emergency action and escape plans as well as worker safety training.
The standard also set rules for safe entry procedures.
When the standard came up for review in 1998, OSHA noted that for the previous forty years, there had been 600 explosions, 250 deaths and over 1000 injuries related to grain elevator explosions.
They also determined there had been a 70% decrease in fatalities from explosions and a 44% decrease in suffocations in the years after the final rule had been issued.
Saturday Dec 30, 2023
Saturday Dec 30, 2023
On this day in labor history, the year was 1969.
That was the day President Richard Nixon signed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act into law.
At least three key events served as the impetus for the legislation.
Beginning in the mid 60s, miners began staging numerous health and safety walkouts across the Appalachian coalfields.
Their working conditions were despicable.
Then, in November 1968, 78 miners were killed in a methane and coal dust explosion at Consol Mine no. 9 in Farmington, West Virginia.
Miners were outraged when UMW leader Tony Boyle provided cover for the company’s murderous negligence.
Then, in January, thousands of miners rallied in West Virginia’s state capitol, along with the Black Lung Association and the Disabled Miners and Widows.
They demanded legislation controlling coal dust and compensating black lung victims.
When the hearings dragged on, 30,000 miners walked out in a wildcat the next month, in what is referred to as the 1969 Black Lung Strike.
By March, the number would increase to 40,000.
The state law passed March 12. Fears of a nationwide health and safety wildcat strike prompted Congress to craft and pass the federal Act.
According to historian Paul Nyden, “the West Virginia Black Lung strike was the longest political strike in modern U.S. labor history.”
The Act created the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
It mandated annual inspections and increased federal powers of enforcement.
The Coal Act also required monetary penalties for all violations, and established criminal penalties for knowing and willful violations.
The Act developed improved mandatory health and safety standards and provided compensation for miners disabled by Black Lung disease. Miners continue to fight for better conditions, enforcement and compensation today.