Labor History in 2:00

September 15 - The Invergordon Mutiny

On this day in Labor History the year was 1931. 

That was the day that came to be known as the Invergordon Mutiny in Scotland. 

The global Great Depression had begun its sweep across Europe. 

In response to the economic crisis, the British government began cutting the pay of public sector workers. 

This included those in the armed forces. 

This came at a time when more workers were joining the armed forces because of the rising unemployment that ravaged the private sector. 

For those in the Navy the proposed pay cuts were ten percent for officers and as high as twenty-five percent for those under the rank of petty officer. 

As news of the pay cuts spread, sailors at Invergordon held meetings to discuss their response. 

Invergordon, Scotland had become an important harbor for the British fleet during World War One. 

The sailors decided to strike. 

On the day of the strike, several ships were scheduled to participate in exercises.

But the sailors on four vessels refused to take their ships out of the harbor. 

Many men did not report for duty.

Naval leaders gave in quickly, reducing the severity of the pay cut. 

But many of the leaders of the strike faced reprisals. 

Some were jailed and others were drummed out of the Navy.  

Spies for the Admiralty went below decks to monitor the sailors and report those who might cause future trouble.

Government leaders tried to keep news of the strike out of the news. 

But workers’ rallies against public sector cuts spread to cities like Glasgow and London. 

The strike also caused a panic at the London Stock Exchange

September 14 - The Murder of Ella Mae Wiggins

On this day in Labor History the year was 1929. 

That was the day that Ella Mae Wiggins was gunned down on her way to a rally of striking textile workers in North Carolina. 

Ella Mae was born in the mountains of Tennessee. 

Her father was a lumber jack who was killed on the job. 

She and her brother then entered the textile mills to help support their family. 

She married another mill employee and they had seven children. 

When her husband left her, Ella Mae struggled to keep her family afloat. 

When the Great Depression came textile mill workers were subjected to the “stretch out.” 

Owners demanded that fewer workers quicken their pace to produce the same results. 

In response textile workers began to organize and strike in Gaston County, the heart of the Southern textile industry.

Ella Mae became a local leader of the National Textile Workers’ Union.  

She advocated organizing both white and black workers.

She became known for leading the other workers in song. 

One of her most poignant songs was The Mill Mothers Lament. 

The lyrics told her personal struggle of a mother trying to support her children.

On the day she was killed, Ella Mae was in a truck heading to a workers rally. 

They were met by an armed mob, deployed by the mill owners. 

The unarmed workers turned their truck around, but the mob chased them and gunned down Ella Mae. 

Five people were charged but they were acquitted of her murder.  

September 13 - Attica!

On this day in Labor History the year was 1971. 

That was the day that the state police stormed Attica Correctional Facility in New York.

Four days earlier the inmates had taken over the prison.

One guard was killed.

The guards were members of AFSCME Council 82.

The prisoners demanded improvements to their brutal living conditions in the overcrowded prison.  

Police retook most of the prison.

But the inmates held guards hostage in Cell Block D.  

One of the prisoners, Elliot James Barkley explained the takeover. 

“We are men.  We are not beasts and we do not depend to be beaten or driven as such.  The entire prison populace, that means each and every one of us here, have set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States.”

When the state police stormed the prison they dropped tear gas from helicopters.

They fired 3,000 rounds, firing on the prisoners and hostages indiscriminately. 

They killed 29 inmates and 10 hostages. 

The police claimed the prisoners had killed the hostages.

They also accused the inmates of committing atrocities against the guards.   

Public outrage swelled against the inmates, including racially-charged hate directed at the black prisoners.

But autopsies proved that all those killed had been felled by police bullets. 

Attica became rallying cry for those concerned about prison conditions.

It has been referenced by many in movies andsongs, including John Lennon’s Attica State

September 12 - The Making of a National Treasure

On this day in Labor History the year was 1997. 

That was the day that Union Square in New York City was named a National Historic Landmark. 

Republican Governor George Pataki explained the importance of the park in a press release. 

“It is only fitting that the National Parks Service should recognize Union Square Park’s long history as a focal point for political expression.  New York is proud that the first Labor Day Parade took place here in Union Square Park more than a hundred years ago, establishing a tradition that spread across the nation.” 

Although the park was very important to the labor movement—that is not why it is known as “Union Square.” 

The park got its name because it was the place of intersection, or union, of two busy New York roads—what are today Broadway and Fourth Avenue. 

In 1831 the open space at the intersection was declared a public space.  

The space became an important location for labor rallies and political demonstrations.

In 1882, the first Labor Day parade in U.S. history marched through the square. 

10,000 workers waiving their banners high.  In 1911, Union workers again gathered in Union Square to protest after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed 146 mostly young women and girls, some garment worker as young as 11 and 14 years old. 

In the later 1920s the park was demolished for the construction of the New York Subway. 

But the space continued be important to the city’s union movement. 

In 2002, a series of twenty-two bronze plaques were dedicated at the park to tell the history of Union Square. 

One of those plaques tells of the first Labor Day parade. 

Another is a collage of images of labor demonstrations and sheet music of labor songs.

September 11 - The Christiana Riot

On this day in Labor History the year was 1851.  

 

That was the day that a Maryland planter named Edward Gorsuch was killed in Christiana, Pennsylvania.  

 

Gorsuch had come to Pennsylvania to try and recapture three black men that had escaped from slavery on his farm outside of Baltimore two years earlier.  

 

A year after the men escaped, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act.  

 

This penalized helping those who had escaped slavery, with a $1,000 fine and up to six months’ jail time.  

 

Emboldened by the law, slave catchers chased those who had made the journey to freedom in the north. 

 

Gorsuch received news that the men he was looking for were in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  

 

Two of the escaped slaves were at the farm of William Parker, a black man who had also escaped slavery in Maryland.  

 

Located just north of the Mason-Dixon line, Lancaster had a well-established underground railroad network.  

 

An armed black self-defense group had developed to stand against the slave catchers.  

 

Gorsuch and his son gathered a group of men and headed north.  

 

At the Parker farm they were confronted by a group of at least fifty black men armed with guns and pitchforks.  

 

Gorsuch refused to leave, and a gun battle erupted.  

 

Gorsuch was shot and killed in the exchange of fire.  

 

Parker, his family, and the three formerly enslaved men fled to Canada.  

 

Thirty-eight others who were there that day were charged with treason for taking part in the confrontation. 

 

This included Castner Hanway a white man who had tried to defuse the standoff. 

 

None of the charged were ever convicted.  

 

In the south, slave owners were outraged that no one was punished.  

 

Tensions between the North and South sharpened.  

 

As a result, the country moved closer to Civil War, the bloody conflict that finally ended slave labor.

September 10 - Minneapolis Printers Organize

On this day in Labor History the year was 1859.  

 

That was the day that the St. Anthony and Minneapolis Typographical Union Number 42 was founded in Minnesota.  

 

It was one of the oldest unions on record in the state.  

 

Three years’ earlier, printers in St. Paul had formed a union, Local 30, with a dinner to honor Benjamin Franklin’s birthday.  

 

At the time just over 6,000 white people lived in Minnesota. 

 

Typographical workers were very important to the early labor movement in the United States.  

 

These printers were vital to spreading the word about the cause of labor to other workers in the era before radio, television or computers. 

 

In Minnesota, eight journeymen printers joined together to form Local 42. 

 

According the “History of Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis” published in 1881, “The Union was prosperous, having at one time on its list every journeyman printer within its jurisdiction. 

The war of the rebellion practically dissolved the organization, five of its members entering the Union Army.”  

 

Like it did for many fledgling unions, the Civil War took its toll on the typographical union local Number 42.  

 

One member H.M. Metcalfe was killed in battle.  

 

The union was disbanded during the Civil War, reforming a decade later.  

 

Although the Civil War had disrupted labor organizing across the north, the years following the conflict saw a surge in labor activity.  

 

Wages stagnated during the war, while prices for goods soared.  

 

Workers banded together to demand fair pay and against the exploitation that grew along with increasing industrialization.  

 

These early labor unions were predominantly made up of skilled workers like the printers.

September 9 - The Hanapepe Massacre

On this day in Labor History the year was 1924.  Sixteen striking Filipino sugar workers on the Hawaiian island of Kauaiwere killed by police.  This incident is known as the Hanapepe Massacre.  Filipinos began immigrating to Hawaii to work on sugar plantations in 1906. 

September 8 - Defying Nazi Occupation

On this day in Labor History the year was 1941.  

The ravages of World War II had swept across Europe.  

German troops had invaded Norway in April of 1940.  

The conditions of the Nazi occupation grew increasingly harsher.  

The Nazis began rationing milk, and important part of the diet of Norwegian children and workers.  

The rationing however did not apply to the German occupiers.  

Angered shipyard workers in Oslo walked off the docks in protest.  

Workers from other industries joined them.  

20,000 workers from 50 factories and work sites participated in the strike.  

The Nazi response to the uprising was predictably swift and brutal.  

200 labor leaders were arrested and new Nazi chosen leaders put in their places.  

Twenty-seven of the arrested labor leaders and strikers were brought before a court-martial trial.  

Rolf Wickstrom, a welder and union steward and Harald Viggo Hansteeen a labor lawyer were sentenced to death for their involvement in the strike and executed. 

The remaining twenty-five were convicted and sentenced to long prison sentences. 

Ludvik Buland, a union railway worker died while serving his sentence in prison. 

So did Harry Vestli, a factory worker.  

Journalists were fired or arrested.  

Even groups like the Boy Scouts were banned.  

Listening to foreign broadcasts on the radio was expressly forbidden.  

Then radios were confiscated. 

In Sweden, Trade Unionists issued a statement in support of their fellow Scandinavian workers.  

“Norwegian trade unionists have fallen in the battle for Norway’s Freedoms and for the right of the Norwegian working class to decide for itself its own action with the limits of Norwegian law.  We honor their memory.” 

In 1948 a memorial was placed to honor the deaths of Wickstrom and Hansteen and the workers who stood up for their country.

September 7 - The Federal Employees Compensation Act

On this day in Labor History the year was 1916. 

That was the day that the Federal Employees Compensation Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. 

The act was sponsored by Senator John Kern, a Democrat from Indiana, and Daniel McGillicuddy, a Democratic Congressman from Maine. 

The act provided compensation for federal civil service employees that lost wages because they were hurt or killed on the job.  

There was great debate at the time over whether employees injured at work deserved to be compensated.  

Before the turn of the twentieth century, those who sustained workplace injuries had little recourse. 

Employers blamed workers for accidents and typically refused compensation leaving families destitute.  

Edward Gainor, the President of the National Association of Letter Carriers explained the debate around the 1916 proposal saying, “The only question, the fundamental question, involved in this discussion is whether or not society should bear the burden of the injured worker in any industry.” 

Increasingly, some lawmakers were beginning to make the case that society should indeed bear that burden. 

Workers and labor leaders organized around issues of work place safety and demanded a compensation if they were injured on the job. 

The law providing such a safety net for federal employees passed through the House of Representatives by an overwhelming margin of 288 to 6. 

Although the Act only applied to federal employees, it was an important step forward in recognizing that all workers deserved to be compensated for workplace injuries.    

The federal Office of Workers Compensation Programs that operates today traces its history directly back to the 1916 act. 

And because of this 1916 act some Three million federal employees and their families are covered under the acts protections. 

September 6 - Jane Addams is Born

On this day in Labor History the year was 1860. 

That was the day that Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois. 

Her family was wealthy and her father served as a state senator. 

In 1881, Jane Adams visited London with her friend Ellen Gates Starr. 

There the two women were inspired by Toynbee Hall, a settlement house which worked with the poor and working class in the city. 

They decided to establish a similar effort in Chicago. 

They founded Hull House in an immigrant neighborhood of Italian, Greek and Jewish workers. 

Hull House grew to become a complex of facilities that offered kindergarten, day care, lectures and cultural programs, and an important space for women trade unionists to hold meetings.

The women of Hull house became oneof the leading proponents for workplace safety in the nation, pushing for laws and reforms to help workers.  

During the 1894 Pullman workers strike, Jane Addams visited the community and had meals with the women workers.  

She was able to convince the workers’ strike committee to agree to sit down to arbitration, but the Pullman company officials staunchly refused to negotiate.

The refusal of the company to bargain, and the rising anger of the workers was an eye-opener for Jane.  

Later she reflected, “During all those dark days of the Pullman strike, the growth of class bitterness was most obvious.”

Before the strike, she wrote, “there had been nothing in my experience [that had]reveal[ed] that distinct cleavage of society which a general strike at least momentarily affords.” 

In 1931 Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for her life-long advocacy for working class women and children and her strong stand for peace during World War I.