Today in Labor History—June 25

June 25, 1825 – U.S. troops captured Bob Forbes, leader of the Maroons (blacks resisting slavery) in Virginia. (From the Daily Bleed)

A dramatization (1905) of Sitting Bull stabbing Custer (library of Congress)

 June 25, 1876 – Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes defeated Custer and the U.S. Army at Little Big Horn, Montana. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1878 – Despite mass protests, Ezra Heywood was sentenced to two years hard labor for advocating free love and sexual emancipation as part of women's rights. Heywood was an anarchist, feminist and abolitionist who was hounded and harassed by the moralist vigilante Anthony Comstock. His wife, Angela Tilton, was considered by many to be even more radical than he was. (From the Daily Bleed)

Haymarket Memorial

June 25, 1893 - The Haymarket Martyrs Monument was dedicated at Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago, to honor the 8 anarchists who were framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. More than 8,000 people attended. At the base of the monument are Haymarket martyr August Spies’ last words: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.” (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

Striking Pullman workers confront National Guard troops in Chicago, 1894

June 25, 1894 – Eugene Debs and his American Railway Union called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars during the now-famous Pullman Strike. Within days, 50,000 rail workers were participating, halting all railroad traffic out of Chicago. (From the Daily Bleed)

Robots in rebellion in 1922 performance of R.U.R.

June 25, 1921 -- Czech author Karel Capek's introduces the term robot in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in which robots, fed up with lousy work and pay, organize and rebel. The term comes from the Czech word “robota,” which referred to days in which peasants were forced to leave their own fields to work for free on the lands of the nobility. Even after feudalism had ended, the term was used to describe labor that was coerced, boring or uninteresting. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1938 - The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) act was passed, which banned child labor, set the 40-hour work week and set a national minimum wage. (From Workday Minnesota and Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1941 - A. Philip Randolph (president Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) called off the Negro march on Washington that had been planned for July 1 when President Roosevelt agreed to issue Executive Order 8802 banning racial discrimination in defense industries and government employment (creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee). (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1943—Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act allowing the government to take over critical industries affected by strikes, overriding President Roosevelt's veto. It also prevented unions from contributing to political campaigns. (From Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1968 – The 50,000 strong Poor People's Campaign March from Georgia to Washington D.C., concluded.

June 25, 1975 – Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal.

Today in Labor History—May 16

Voltaire, age 70

May 16, 1717 – Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille for writing subversive satire. (From the Daily Bleed)

Lamartine in front of the Town Hall of Paris rejects the red flag on 25 February 1848

 

May 16, 1848 – An unsuccessful communist coup was attempted, Paris. (From the Daily Bleed)

Napoleon atop the Vendôme column: "So, you low-life bugger, we'll take you down like we did your scoundrel nephew!"

May 16, 1871 – The Paris Commune destroyed the Vendôme Column ("monument de barbarie"). (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1898 - 1,600 woodworkers in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, went on strike at seven sash and door manufacturers for better pay and union recognition. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 16, 1912 – Studs Terkel was born, New York City. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1918 – Congress passed the Sedition Act against radicals, leading to the arrest, imprisonment, execution and deportation of dozens of unionists, anarchists and communists. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1934 – Teamsters initiated a General Strike for union recognition in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1938 - The U.S. Supreme Court issued the Mackay decision permitting employers to permanently replace striking workers. In a classic case of double speak, the court said that management could not fire strikers, but could "permanently replace" them. One of the most recent and well-known examples of this occurred when Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers’ strike. The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that allows bosses to fire (er, replace) striking workers. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 16, 1943 –The Warsaw ghetto resistance was finally crushed by the Nazis. 56,000 died in the process. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1979 –A. Philip Randolph died. Randolph was an African American labor leader, peace activist, and president and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 2007 – Baristas at the Starbucks in East Grand Rapids announced their membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union. Starbucks, notorious for poor treatment of workers, followed with numerous anti-labor violations and was forced by the NLRB to settle Grand Rapids union worker complaints in October. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 8

Ricardo Flores Magon (by Alberto Beltran)

May 8, 1911 – Tijuana was captured by the anarchist Magonistas, with support by IWW members, giving them control of most of Baja California is now almost entirely in their hands. They encouraged the people to take collective possession of the lands, to create co-operatives and refuse the establishment of any new government. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1916 – The American Federation of Teachers was founded. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1925 - A. Philip Randolph and Milton P. Webster founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The Brotherhood was the very first African-American labor union to sign a collective bargaining agreement with a major U.S. corporation. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 8, 1936 –19 Japanese anarchists were imprisoned for "illegal activities.” The anarchist Tôkyô Print Workers' Union was crippled when nearly 100 of its members were arrested. Over the course of May, a further 300 anarchists were swept up in mass arrests. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1945 – Germany surrendered. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1962 – An estimated 9,000,000 Belgians participated in a ten-minute work stoppage to protest nuclear weapons. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1967 – A federal grand jury indicted Mohammed Ali for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces. He was convicted by an all-white jury on June 20th. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1979 – Police killed 23 people and wounded 70 outside the municipal cathedral of San Salvador, El Salvador. The victims were members of the Popular Revolutionary Bloc, a coalition of anti-government students, teachers, peasants & workers. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History--April 15

April 15, 1834 –"Bloody Week" ended in Lyon, France, with a blood bath against insurgent silk workers. Several hundred were killed. (From The Daily Bleed)

A.Phillip Randolph

April 15, 1889 – Birth of A. Philip Randolph, organizer and president of the African-American Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. According to Randolph "The labor movement traditionally has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, and the poor." Randolph believed in permanent social change, but not without the direct participation of those affected, including mass demonstrations.  Initially, no African-American newspapers supported his fight to unionize the Pullman porters. (From Workday Minnesota and The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1902--A peasant uprising in Russia led to the ceasing of wealthy estates and the assassination of the head of the secret police (from the Daily Bleed).

April 15, 1908—L’Ecole Renovee, the Journal of the International League for the Rational Education of Children, debuted in Paris. Its founding members included Spanish anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer, creator of the first Modern Schools, as wells as Anatole France, Peter Kropotkin, and biologist Ernst Haekel.

April 15, 1915 – The IWW union Agricultural Workers Organization formed in Kansas City, Mo. (From the Unionist)

April 15, 1916  – The American Federation of Teachers was created in Chicago. (From the Unionist)

April 15, 1919 –  The first women-led union, the Telephone Operators Department of IBEW began what would ultimately become a successful six-day strike across New England. (From the Unionist)

Sacco & Vanzetti

 April 15, 1920 – Two men rob and kill Frederick Parmenter & Alessandro Berardelli, employees of the Slater & Morrill Shoe Company, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, making off with the $15,776.51 payroll they were carrying. The anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti ultimately were blamed for the robbery, convicted by a kangaroo court and executed. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1934 – Transport Workers Union was founded. (From the Unionist) 

April 15, 1947--Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the Major Leagues in the modern era. African Americans had played in the 19th century, before the league had become segregated. (From Workday Minnesota)

April 15, 1951 – The first strike wave against fascist Spain began in the Basque country and spread to Catalonia. Over 100,000 workers from a number of different industries & cities defied the government's order to return to work and risked prison or death. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1961--CIA arrived at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, in order to bring unions and workers' rights to the so-called Workers' Paradise.

April 15, 1969--Thousands of welfare recipients marched in New York City to protest cuts to their benefits (from the Daily Bleed).

April 15, 1981--Guatemalan soldiers murdered 69 people in Quiche province (from the Daily Bleed).

April 15, 1982--Guatemalan soldiers murdered 100 children and 73 women in Baja Verapaz (from the Daily Bleed).

Today in Labor History—January 14

January 14, 1868 - Eighty-five delegates from 41 locals held the third convention of the National Bricklayers Union in New York City to organize for the eight-hour workday. (From Workday Minnesota)

Brooklyn Trolley Strike (Cover of Harpers) 1895

January 14, 1895 – A Brooklyn trolley strike began on this date (lasting until Feb. 28). The militia was called out and martial law declared in order to suppress it. Members of the Knights of Labor battled militiamen in the streets. (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)

January 14, 1914 – The trial of Suhr and Ford began on this date in Marysville, California. Suhr and Ford were IWW (Wobbly) organizers who were ultimately convicted for their alleged role in the gun battle at Durst Ranch in Wheatland. (From the Daily Bleed and the IWW).

January 14, 1941 – A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters called for a March on Washington to demand racial integration of the military and equal access to defense-industry jobs. (From theDaily Bleed)

January 14, 1976 – A wave of wildcat strikes spread across Spain to Barcelona, with the formation of workers' assemblies and the defiance of the mainstream unions and government. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—June 25

June 25, 1825 – U.S. troops captured Bob Forbes, leader of the Maroons (blacks resisting slavery) in Virginia. (From the Daily Bleed)

A dramatization (1905) of Sitting Bull stabbing Custer (library of Congress)

 June 25, 1876 – Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes defeated Custer and the U.S. Army at Little Big Horn, Montana. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1878 – Despite mass protests, Ezra Heywood was sentenced to two years hard labor for advocating free love and sexual emancipation as part of women's rights. Heywood was an anarchist, feminist and abolitionist who was hounded and harassed by the moralist vigilante Anthony Comstock. His wife, Angela Tilton, was considered by many to be even more radical than he was. (From the Daily Bleed)

Haymarket Memorial

June 25, 1893 - The Haymarket Martyrs Monument was dedicated at Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago, to honor the 8 anarchists who were framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. More than 8,000 people attended. At the base of the monument are Haymarket martyr August Spies’ last words: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.” (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

Striking Pullman workers confront National Guard troops in Chicago, 1894

June 25, 1894 – Eugene Debs and his American Railway Union called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars during the now-famous Pullman Strike. Within days, 50,000 rail workers were participating, halting all railroad traffic out of Chicago. (From the Daily Bleed)

Robots in rebellion in 1922 performance of R.U.R.

June 25, 1921 -- Czech author Karel Capek's introduces the term robot in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in which robots, fed up with lousy work and pay, organize and rebel. The term comes from the Czech word “robota,” which referred to days in which peasants were forced to leave their own fields to work for free on the lands of the nobility. Even after feudalism had ended, the term was used to describe labor that was coerced, boring or uninteresting. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1938 - The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) act was passed, which banned child labor, set the 40-hour work week and set a national minimum wage. (From Workday Minnesota and Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1941 - A. Philip Randolph (president Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) called off the Negro march on Washington that had been planned for July 1 when President Roosevelt agreed to issue Executive Order 8802 banning racial discrimination in defense industries and government employment (creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee). (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1943—Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act allowing the government to take over critical industries affected by strikes, overriding President Roosevelt's veto. It also prevented unions from contributing to political campaigns. (From Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1968 – The 50,000 strong Poor People's Campaign March from Georgia to Washington D.C., concluded.

June 25, 1975 – Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal.

Today in Labor History—May 16

Voltaire, age 70

May 16, 1717 – Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille for writing subversive satire. (From the Daily Bleed)

Lamartine in front of the Town Hall of Paris rejects the red flag on 25 February 1848

 

May 16, 1848 – An unsuccessful communist coup was attempted, Paris. (From the Daily Bleed)

Napoleon atop the Vendôme column: "So, you low-life bugger, we'll take you down like we did your scoundrel nephew!"

May 16, 1871 – The Paris Commune destroyed the Vendôme Column ("monument de barbarie"). (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1898 - 1,600 woodworkers in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, went on strike at seven sash and door manufacturers for better pay and union recognition. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 16, 1912 – Studs Terkel was born, New York City. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1918 – Congress passed the Sedition Act against radicals, leading to the arrest, imprisonment, execution and deportation of dozens of unionists, anarchists and communists. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1934 – Teamsters initiated a General Strike for union recognition in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1938 - The U.S. Supreme Court issued the Mackay decision permitting employers to permanently replace striking workers. In a classic case of double speak, the court said that management could not fire strikers, but could "permanently replace" them. One of the most recent and well-known examples of this occurred when Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers’ strike. The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that allows bosses to fire (er, replace) striking workers. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 16, 1943 –The Warsaw ghetto resistance was finally crushed by the Nazis. 56,000 died in the process. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 1979 –A. Philip Randolph died. Randolph was an African American labor leader, peace activist, and president and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 16, 2007 – Baristas at the Starbucks in East Grand Rapids announced their membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union. Starbucks, notorious for poor treatment of workers, followed with numerous anti-labor violations and was forced by the NLRB to settle Grand Rapids union worker complaints in October. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 8

Ricardo Flores Magon (by Alberto Beltran)

May 8, 1911 – Tijuana was captured by the anarchist Magonistas, with support by IWW members, giving them control of most of Baja California is now almost entirely in their hands. They encouraged the people to take collective possession of the lands, to create co-operatives and refuse the establishment of any new government. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1916 – The American Federation of Teachers was founded. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1925 - A. Philip Randolph and Milton P. Webster founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The Brotherhood was the very first African-American labor union to sign a collective bargaining agreement with a major U.S. corporation. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 8, 1936 –19 Japanese anarchists were imprisoned for "illegal activities.” The anarchist Tôkyô Print Workers' Union was crippled when nearly 100 of its members were arrested. Over the course of May, a further 300 anarchists were swept up in mass arrests. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1945 – Germany surrendered. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1962 – An estimated 9,000,000 Belgians participated in a ten-minute work stoppage to protest nuclear weapons. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1967 – A federal grand jury indicted Mohammed Ali for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces. He was convicted by an all-white jury on June 20th. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 8, 1979 – Police killed 23 people and wounded 70 outside the municipal cathedral of San Salvador, El Salvador. The victims were members of the Popular Revolutionary Bloc, a coalition of anti-government students, teachers, peasants & workers. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History--April 15

April 15, 1834 –"Bloody Week" ended in Lyon, France, with a blood bath against insurgent silk workers. Several hundred were killed. (From The Daily Bleed)

A.Phillip Randolph

April 15, 1889 – Birth of A. Philip Randolph, organizer and president of the African-American Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. According to Randolph "The labor movement traditionally has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, and the poor." Randolph believed in permanent social change, but not without the direct participation of those affected, including mass demonstrations.  Initially, no African-American newspapers supported his fight to unionize the Pullman porters. (From Workday Minnesota and The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1908—L’Ecole Renovee, the Journal of the International League for the Rational Education of Children, debuted in Paris. Its founding members included Spanish anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer, creator of the first Modern Schools, as wells as Anatole France, Peter Kropotkin, and biologist Ernst Haekel.

April 15, 1915 – The IWW union Agricultural Workers Organization formed in Kansas City, Mo. (From the Unionist)

April 15, 1916  – The American Federation of Teachers was created in Chicago. (From the Unionist)

April 15, 1919 –  The first women-led union, the Telephone Operators Department of IBEW began what would ultimately become a successful six-day strike across New England. (From the Unionist)

Sacco & Vanzetti

 April 15, 1920 – Two men rob and kill Frederick Parmenter & Alessandro Berardelli, employees of the Slater & Morrill Shoe Company, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, making off with the $15,776.51 payroll they were carrying. The anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti ultimately were blamed for the robbery, convicted by a kangaroo court and executed. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1934 – Transport Workers Union was founded. (From the Unionist)

April 15, 1951 – The first strike wave against fascist Spain began in the Basque country and spread to Catalonia. Over 100,000 workers from a number of different industries & cities defied the government's order to return to work and risked prison or death. (From The Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—January 14

January 14, 1868 - Eighty-five delegates from 41 locals held the third convention of the National Bricklayers Union in New York City to organize for the eight-hour workday. (From Workday Minnesota)

Brooklyn Trolley Strike (Cover of Harpers) 1895

January 14, 1895 – A Brooklyn trolley strike began on this date (lasting until Feb. 28). The militia was called out and martial law declared in order to suppress it. Members of the Knights of Labor battled militiamen in the streets. (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)

January 14, 1914 – The trial of Suhr and Ford began on this date in Marysville, California. Suhr and Ford were IWW (Wobbly) organizers who were ultimately convicted for their alleged role in the gun battle at Durst Ranch in Wheatland. (From the Daily Bleed and the IWW).

January 14, 1941 – A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters called for a March on Washington to demand racial integration of the military and equal access to defense-industry jobs. (From the Daily Bleed)

January 14, 1976 – A wave of wildcat strikes spread across Spain to Barcelona, with the formation of workers' assemblies and the defiance of the mainstream unions and government. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—June 25

June 25, 1825 – U.S. troops captured Bob Forbes, leader of the Maroons (blacks resisting slavery) in Virginia. (From the Daily Bleed)

A dramatization (1905) of Sitting Bull stabbing Custer (library of Congress)

 June 25, 1876 – Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes defeated Custer and the U.S. Army at Little Big Horn, Montana. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1878 – Despite mass protests, Ezra Heywood was sentenced to two years hard labor for advocating free love and sexual emancipation as part of women's rights. Heywood was an anarchist, feminist and abolitionist who was hounded and harassed by the moralist vigilante Anthony Comstock. His wife, Angela Tilton, was considered by many to be even more radical than he was. (From the Daily Bleed)

Haymarket Memorial

June 25, 1893 - The Haymarket Martyrs Monument was dedicated at Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago, to honor the 8 anarchists who were framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. More than 8,000 people attended. At the base of the monument are Haymarket martyr August Spies’ last words: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.” (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

Striking Pullman workers confront National Guard troops in Chicago, 1894

June 25, 1894 – Eugene Debs and his American Railway Union called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars during the now-famous Pullman Strike. Within days, 50,000 rail workers were participating, halting all railroad traffic out of Chicago. (From the Daily Bleed)

Robots in rebellion in 1922 performance of R.U.R.

June 25, 1921 -- Czech author Karel Capek's introduces the term robot in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in which robots, fed up with lousy work and pay, organize and rebel. The term comes from the Czech word “robota,” which referred to days in which peasants were forced to leave their own fields to work for free on the lands of the nobility. Even after feudalism had ended, the term was used to describe labor that was coerced, boring or uninteresting. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1938 - The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) act was passed, which banned child labor, set the 40-hour work week and set a national minimum wage. (From Workday Minnesota and Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1941 - A. Philip Randolph (president Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) called off the Negro march on Washington that had been planned for July 1 when President Roosevelt agreed to issue Executive Order 8802 banning racial discrimination in defense industries and government employment (creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee). (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1943—Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act allowing the government to take over critical industries affected by strikes, overriding President Roosevelt's veto. It also prevented unions from contributing to political campaigns. (From Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1968 – The 50,000 strong Poor People's Campaign March from Georgia to Washington D.C., concluded.

June 25, 1975 – Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal.