Today in Labor History—December 28

Terence Powderly, Grand Master of Knights of Labor, 1890

December 28, 1869 - The Knights of Labor (KOL) was founded on this date. Though the leadership often denounced socialists and anarchists, the KOL attracted and spawned many, including Daniel DeLeon, who would go on to later cofound the IWW and the Socialist Labor Party, as well as two of the Haymarket martyrs. The KOL also denounced strikes, yet, like its more radical cousin, the IWW, it called for the abolition of the wage system and fought to organize all workers into one big union, including women and immigrants. And, like the IWW, one of the KOL’s slogans was, “An Injury to One is the Concern of All.” The KOL was one of the main organizations behind the Great Upheaval and one of the first labor organization not only to take on the Robber Barons, but to defeat them (if only temporarily). (From Workday Minnesota, the Daily Bleed, and the Lucy Parsons Project).

Flint Sit-Down Strike

 December 28, 1936 - The great sit-down strike against General Motors in Flint, Michigan, was preceded by two days when workers at the Fisher Body plant in Cleveland engaged in a sit-down strike. (From Workday Minnesota)

December 28, 1944 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Army to seize the executive offices of Montgomery Ward and Company after the patriotic corporation failed to comply with a National War Labor Board directive regarding union shops.  (From the Daily Bleed)

Recession? What Recession?

Hallelujah I'm A Bum, Joe Glazer singing the IWW classic.

Too Much Evolution For KY Superintendent

Caricature of Darwin, 1871 (Public Domain)

Evolution, is fine, just like junk food, so long as we aren’t giving our kids too much of it, suggests Ricky Line, superintendent of Hart County Schools in Kentucky. Line wrote to the Kentucky Board of Education to complain about the overemphasis on evolution in the schools.

The Panda’s Thumb blog paraphrased his letter to the school board:

“I have a deep concern about the increased emphasis on the evolution content required in the new End-of-Course Blueprint. After carefully reviewing the Blueprint, I find the increase is substantial and alarming .…

I have a very difficult time believing that we have come to a point in education that we are teaching evolution, not the theory of evolution, [sic] as a factual occurrence, while totally omitting the creation story by a God who is bigger than all of us. I do not believe in macroevolution, and I do believe in creation by our God. …

I take no issue with the teaching of microevolution, the documented proof that a species changes over time, just as humans are taller on the average than they were 50 years ago. I also take no issue with macroevolution being taught as a theory.

Fortunately for the integrity of science education in Kentucky, the Commissioner of the Kentucky Board of Education, Terry Holliday, wrote back to Line explaining that he was misusing the word “theory” to mean “guess” or “hypothesis,” and that both macro- and micro-evolution are well-established scientific principles, supported by ample evidence, and necessary concepts for their students to master if they hope to be college-ready.

Unfortunately for the children of Hart County, Ricky Line continues to assert that macroevolution wasn’t supported by evidence and that creationism was true (though he failed to provide any evidence for this truth).

Today in Labor History—December 27

December 27, 1913 -- A rebellion by IWW workers in Edmonton, Alberta forced the city to house 400 unemployed during winter. (From the Daily Bleed)

December 27, 1916 – A steelworkers strike occurred in Ohio in which workers were demanding the 8-hour day and an increase in wages. The strike ended quickly in their favor because the government needed steel for armaments. (From the Daily Bleed)

December 27, 1943 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt seized the railroads in attempt to block a nationwide rail strike. The railroads would be temporarily placed under the "supervision" of the War Department, which prompted the five railroad brotherhoods to accept his offer to arbitrate the dispute. (From Workday Minnesota)

One More Reason to Hate Wal-Mart (and Football)

What do Wal-Mart and football have in common, aside from being huge and tedious? Apparently they are both confusing to Grebes when the skies are cloudy and the terrain is snowy.

Thousands of Small-Eared Grebes, duck-like water fowl, mistook a Utah Wal-Mart parking lot for a body of water as they migrated south toward Mexico last week, according to Discovery Blogs. However, the birds also mistook football fields and other snow-covered areas of southern Utah for lakes and ponds. In all, about 1,500 of the birds were killed in the incident.

Today in Labor History—December 26

Siege of New Ulm, MN, Sioux Uprising

December 26, 1862 – America’s largest public mass execution occurred in Mankato, Minnesota, not surprisingly, when the U.S. military hanged 38 Native Americans for participating in the "Sioux Outbreak." (From Workday Minnesota)

December 26, 1996 – The largest series of strikes and walkouts in South Korean history were occurring on this date, with hundreds of thousands of workers, to protest new legislation that made it easier for companies to layoff and fire workers and avoid paying overtime. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—December 25

The Los Angeles Times Building After the 1910 Bombing

December 25, 1910 - A dynamite bomb destroyed a portion of the Llewellyn Ironworks in Los Angeles on this date. On October 1^st, a bomb had destroyed much of the Los Angeles Times building, killing 21 employees and injuring over 100. The Iron Workers had been engaged in a brutal and protracted battle with U.S. Steel and the American Bridge Company, which had been successfully busting their union through the use of spies, informants, scabs and agents provocateur, as well as propaganda by their friend Harrison Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. By 1910, they had nearly succeeded in driving all the unions from their plants, except for the Iron Workers union, which had instigated a bombing campaign starting in 1906. James McNamara and his brother, John McNamara, secretary-treasurer of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, were arrested for the two crimes in April, 1911. However, James had been kidnapped and held hostage for a week by Private Detective William Burns and Chicago police sergeant William Reed prior to his extradition to Los Angeles, while his brother John, who was later arrested by Burns, was denied access to an attorney and illegally extradited to Los Angeles. Both McNamaras had been arrested based on the confession of a third man who had likely been tortured and many in the labor movement felt they were being framed. James McNamara spent the rest of his life in San Quentin, dying there in 1941. John served 15 years and then went on to serve as an organizer for the Iron Workers. (From Workday Minnesota and Wikipedia)