Today in Labor History—March 23

March 23, 1871 – Communes were proclaimed in Lyon and Marseilles. The Paris Commune began the day before. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 23, 1918 – 101 Wobblies (members of the Industrial Workers of the World, IWW) went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I. They were tried for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft, and encourage desertion. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial virtually destroyed the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 23, 1932—The Norris-La Guardia Act  proclaimed that yellow-dog contracts requiring workers to promise not to join a union were unenforceable. The law also limited the courts' ability to issue injunctions against strikes. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 23, 1970 - President Richard Nixon declared a national emergency and ordered 30,000 troops to New York City to break the first nationwide postal strike. (From Workday Minnesota)

Today in Labor History—March 21

March 21, 1927 –Shanghai workers launched an uprising, leading to the Shanghai Commune. The Commune lasted until April 12, when it was crushed by Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist troops with the help of Soviet arms, advisers and money. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 21, 1965 – 3,200 people began the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racial violence. Earlier efforts to hold the march had failed when police attacked demonstrators and a while minister was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites. The five-day walk ended March 26, when 20,000 people joined the marchers in front of the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery. Soon after, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (From Workday Minnesota)

March 21, 1970 – Day 2 of the national wildcat postal strike. In New York, an effigy of Gus Johnson, president of the letter carriers' union local, was hung at a meeting and the national union leaders were called "rats" & "creeps." Despite the anti-strike clause in the postal workers contract and federal injunctions against striking, postal workers walked out in over 200 cities. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—March 1

March 1, 1798 – U.S. printers went on strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

(Image from IWW.org)

March 1, 1907 – Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) struck sawmills in Portland, Oregon. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 1, 1912 – British miners went on strike for a national minimum wage. It was the largest strike Britain had ever experienced, with over one million workers participating. (From the Daily Bleed)

From lib.com

March 1, 1919 – 15,000 Soviet sailors mutinied at Kronstadt from March 1-17, against Bolshevik tyranny. The rebels adopted a 15-point program of political and economic demands in open defiance of the Bolshevik Party. On March 17, Kronstadt was subdued in a bloody assault by Red Army units. From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—February 23

Traven's Supposed Birth Place, Rathaus Schwiebus about 1900

February 23, 1882 – B. Traven (1882?-1969) was born on this date in Poznañ, Poland. Traven (also known as Ret Marut, Hal Croves, Bruno Traven, Traven Torsvan, Otto Feige) wrote the Death Ship, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and numerous novels depicting working conditions among Mexican peasants and indigenous people in his Jungle series. He was also active in the Bavarian Soviet of 1918-1919. (From the Daily Bleed)

February 23, 1887 - The Journeyman Bakers National Union was chartered by the American Federation of Labor on this date. Its founder, George Block, was also nominated to head the newly-formed AFL. When he declined, Samuel Gompers was unanimously chosen. Today, the bakers union has become the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. (From Workday Minnesota)

Jean-Baptiste_Clément_recadré.jpg‎

 February 23, 1903 – Jean-Baptiste Clément (b.1836) died on this date. Clement was a Paris Communard, poet, singer and author of the famous song "The Time of Cherries." He was one of the last on the barricades during the commune, ultimately being forced into hiding and taking refuge in England. He was condemned to death in absentia, later returning to France after the Amnesty of 1879. Paris now has schools and a street named for him. (From the Daily Bleed)

February 23, 1917 – A strike began among women textile workers in Petrograd. Demonstrations turned into bread riots and spread throughout the city. The troops who crushed similar demonstrations in 1905 refused to put down the uprising, with many joining in by the end of the month. (From the Daily Bleed)

February 23, 1995 – Two hundred high school students rioted outside Patterson City Hall, New Jersey, in response to the shooting of a classmate by police. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—November 25

America, Love It or Leave It (By Force)

November 25, 1919 – A strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers continued throughout November. The strike began on September 22 and collapsed on January 8, 1920. The strike was used by the feds as an excuse to deport approximately 250 anarchists, communists and labor agitators to Russia on November 24, marking the beginning of the so-called "Red Scare." (from the Daily Bleed)

November 25, 1946 - St. Paul teachers, led mostly by women, walked out of their classrooms in American’s first organized teachers’ strike. 1,165 teachers and principals (all represented by the same union) remained out until Dec. 27 in what they called the “strike for better schools.” (From Workday Minnesota)

Today in Labor History—September 4

September 4, 1894 – 12,000 un-unionized tailors launched a successful spontaneous strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

Cripple Creek 1900

 September 4, 1903 – Police and deputy sheriffs were relieved of their duties in Cripple Creek, Colorado, and all citizens were required to register their firearms, as mine owners attempted to bust the labor union. Governor Peabody sent in the militia. In 1904 they took over the local newspaper and rounded up strikers into "bullpens." Dozens were arrested without warrants.(From the Daily Bleed)

Captured British tank, Archangel

September 4, 1918 – American troops invaded the U.S.S.R., landing at Archangel, one year after the Russian Revolution. They were soundly defeated. (From the Daily Bleed)

September 4, 1920 – Hundreds of miners assembled at Lens Creek, West Virginia in response to rumors that women and children were being killed in Logan County by the anti-union mine owners and deputy sheriffs who were on their payroll. 5,000 miners had arrived by nightfall. Many of them were armed. (From Jeremy Brecher’s, Strike!, pp135-36 and the Daily Bleed)

Fables of Faubus, Charles Mingus

September 4, 1957 – Nine Negro students tried to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to block them. (From the Daily Bleed)

William Kunstler, 1989, by Joel Seidenstain

 September 4, 1995 – Radical lawyer William Kunstler (1919-1995) died. During his long career, Kunstler defended the Chicago Seven, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Lenny Bruce, H. Rap Brown, American Indian Movement activists after the siege at Pine Ridge, and Attica prisoners after the siege there. (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)

Today in Labor History—August 20

August 20, 1619 – The first group of 20 Africans slaves landed at Jamestown, Virginia. (From the Daily Bleed)

(Ship Ahoy, the Ojays, 1973)

William Sylvis, 1828-1869

August 20, 1830 – The first Negro convention was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

August 20, 1866 – The short-lived National Labor Union (U.S.) was formed on this date and called for the 8-hour workday. The union, led by William H. Sylvis, was the first American labor union to unite skilled and unskilled workers (preceding the Industrial Workers of the World by nearly 40 years). At its height, the union had 640,000 members.

Haymarket Martyrs' Memorial

August 20, 1886 – Sentences were handed down on this date against The Haymarket defendants. All were found guilty despite the obvious innocence of most of them. None were even present at the scene of the bombing at Haymarket Square, Chicago, where activists had been organizing for the 8-hour day. Seven of the eight defendants (George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Albert Parsons, Michael Schwab and August Spies) were condemned to death. Oscar Neebe was sent to prison for 15 years. The hangings occurred on November 11, 1887.

August 20, 1898 – Fourteen weeks after beginning a walkout, the Amalgamated Woodworkers Union of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, ended its strike.

August 20, 1904 – Miners seized the town of Cripple Creek, Colorado, and deported officials.

August 20, 1909 – The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was engaged in a free-speech fight in Fresno, California.

August 20, 1914 – An office for the Parrot Mine in Butte, Montana was dynamited on this date. In March 1912, Amalgamated Copper fired 500 miners, accusing them of being Socialists. In December they imposed a blacklist to exclude workers with affiliations to leftist and labor organizations. Pinkerton and Thiel detective agencies infiltrated the union to mark agitators and provoke violence in order to weaken the union.

Image from the Daily Bleed

 August 20, 1968 – The Soviet Army invaded Prague with tanks and more than 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops ultimately crushing the "Prague Spring."

(All above entries based on citations from the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—August 15

August 15, 1906 – W.E.B. DuBois demanded equal citizenship rights for African-Americans during the second meeting of the Niagara Movement, saying, "We will not be satisfied to take one jot or little less than our full manhood." (From the Daily Bleed)

August 15, 1913 – A General Strike began in Dublin. (From the Daily Bleed)

U.S. troops parading in Vladivostock

August 15, 1918 --The American 27th Infantry landed in Vladivostok to join a Japanese-initiated attack against Bolshevist forces. (From the Daily Bleed)

Bolsheviks killed at Vladivostock by Czechoslovak legions

 August 15, 1963 – 170 women staged a sit-in to protest employment discrimination by bank, E. St. Louis, Illinois. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—August 9

Jacques Bertaux - Prise du palais des Tuileries - 1793

August 9, 1792 – The revolutionary Commune is established in Paris leading to the French Revolution and the end of the Bourbon monarchy. (From the Daily Bleed)

August 9, 1920 – British labor organizations appointed a Council of Action to set up a General Strike if Britain declared war on the USSR. (From the Daily Bleed)

Bockscar and crew, which dropped the "Big Man" bomb on Nagasaki

 August 9, 1945 – Americans bombed Nagasaki killing approximately 70,000 civilians instantly. (From the Daily Bleed)

Compound 19, Long Kesh Prison (Image by Patrick McAleer)

 August 9, 1971 – Britain reintroduced internment without trial to Northern Ireland. They began arresting suspected leaders of the IRA. By December, over 1,500 people were imprisoned. During a demonstration in Derry against the arrests, British troops shot 13 civilians. (From the Daily Bleed)

Bogside, Derry (Image by Ardfern)

August 9, 1998 – 73,000 telephone workers at NYC-based Bell Atlantic began a strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—March 23

March 23, 1871 – Communes were proclaimed in Lyon and Marseilles. The Paris Commune began the day before. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 23, 1918 – 101 Wobblies (members of the Industrial Workers of the World, IWW) went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I. They were tried for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft, and encourage desertion. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial virtually destroyed the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 23, 1932—The Norris-La Guardia Act  proclaimed that yellow-dog contracts requiring workers to promise not to join a union were unenforceable. The law also limited the courts' ability to issue injunctions against strikes. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 23, 1970 - President Richard Nixon declared a national emergency and ordered 30,000 troops to New York City to break the first nationwide postal strike. (From Workday Minnesota)

Today in Labor History—March 21

March 21, 1927 –Shanghai workers launched an uprising, leading to the Shanghai Commune. The Commune lasted until April 12, when it was crushed by Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist troops with the help of Soviet arms, advisers and money. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 21, 1965 – 3,200 people began the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racial violence. Earlier efforts to hold the march had failed when police attacked demonstrators and a while minister was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites. The five-day walk ended March 26, when 20,000 people joined the marchers in front of the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery. Soon after, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (From Workday Minnesota)

March 21, 1970 – Day 2 of the national wildcat postal strike. In New York, an effigy of Gus Johnson, president of the letter carriers' union local, was hung at a meeting and the national union leaders were called "rats" & "creeps." Despite the anti-strike clause in the postal workers contract and federal injunctions against striking, postal workers walked out in over 200 cities. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—March 1

March 1, 1798 – U.S. printers went on strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

(Image from IWW.org)

March 1, 1907 – Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) struck sawmills in Portland, Oregon. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 1, 1912 – British miners went on strike for a national minimum wage. It was the largest strike Britain had ever experienced, with over one million workers participating. (From the Daily Bleed)

From lib.com

March 1, 1919 – 15,000 Soviet sailors mutinied at Kronstadt from March 1-17, against Bolshevik tyranny. The rebels adopted a 15-point program of political and economic demands in open defiance of the Bolshevik Party. On March 17, Kronstadt was subdued in a bloody assault by Red Army units. From the Daily Bleed)