Today in Labor History—January 15

Rosa Luxemburg

Karl Liebknecht

January 15, 1919 – Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht, were murdered by German police.  (From the Daily Bleed)

January 15, 1929 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on this date. King once said, "We look around every day and we see thousands and millions of people making inadequate wages. Not only do they work in our hospitals, they work in our hotels, they work in our laundries, they work in domestic service, they find themselves unemployed. You see, no labor is really menial unless you're not getting adequate wages." (From Workday Minnesota)

January 15, 1946 – 260,000 U.S. electrical workers struck against General Electric, Westinghouse and General Motors. (From the Daily Bleed)

January 15, 1978 -- The C.N.T., the Spanish anarchist trade union, held a demonstration drawing 10,000 protesters in Barcelona to oppose the Moncloa pact (which allowed only the communist C.C.O.O and the socialist U.G.T the right to represent workers. (From the Daily Bleed)

January 15, 1997 –A general strike was called by a coalition of South Korean labor unions. The unions claimed that 600,000 workers participated in the strike; the government claimed it was only 100,000. (From the Daily Bleed)