This Week in Labor History (September 8th) Posted On: Sep 08, 2014 This Week in Labor History September 08 Employers give in to the demands of striking miners in McKees Rocks, Pa., agree to improved working conditions, 15-percent hike in wages and elimination of a "pool system" that gave foremen control over each worker’s pay - 1909   Workers give up their Labor Day weekend holidays to keep the munitions factories working to aid in the war effort. Most Labor Day parades are canceled in respect for members of the Armed Services - 1942   United Farm Workers union begins historic national grape boycott and strike, Delano, Calif. - 1965   Some 2,600 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) workers begin what is to be a successful 6-day strike for higher pay and against a two-tier wage system - 1997 (In this second edition, (2009), of Why Unions Matter, Michael D. Yates shows why unions still matter. Unions mean better pay, benefits, and working conditions for their members; they force employers to treat employees with dignity and respect; and at their best, they provide a way for workers to make society both more democratic and more egalitarian. Yates uses simple language, clear data, and engaging examples to show why workers need unions, how unions are formed, how they operate, how collective bargaining works, the role of unions in politics, and what unions have done to bring workers together across the divides of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.)   September 09 In convention at Topeka, Kan., delegates create the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America. The men who repaired the nation's rail cars were paid 10 or 15¢ an hour, working 12 hours a day, often seven days a week - 1890   More than a thousand Boston police officers strike after 19 union leaders are fired for organizing activities. Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge announced that none of the strikers would be rehired, mobilized the state police, and recruited an entirely new police force from among unemployed veterans of the Great War (World War I) - 1919   Sixteen striking Filipino sugar workers on the Hawaiian island of Kauai are killed by police; four police died as well. Many of the surviving strikers were jailed, then deported – 1924 United Auto Workers President Leonard Woodcock is named in Pres. Richard Nixon’s “Enemy’s List,” a White House compilation of Americans Nixon regarded as major political opponents.  Another dozen union presidents were added later.  The existence of the list was revealed during Senate Watergate Committee hearings - 1973   September 10 In Pennsylvania, Polish, Lithuanian and Slovak miners are gunned down by the Latimer Mine’s sheriff deputies—19 dead, more than 50 wounded—during a peaceful march from Hazelton to Latimer.   Some 3,000 were marching for collective bargaining and civil liberty.  The shooters were tried for murder but the jury failed to convict – 1897   September 11 Some 75,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia end a 10-week strike after winning an 8-hour day, semi-monthly pay, and the abolition of overpriced company-owned stores, where they had been forced to shop. (Remember the song, "Sixteen Tons," by coal miner’s son Merle Travis, in which there’s this line: "I owe my soul to the company store.") - 1897   More than 3,000 people died when suicide highjackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.  Among the dead in New York were 634 union members, the majority of them New York City firefighters and police on the scene when the towers fell - 2001   Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life Norma Rae of the movies, dies at age 68. She worked at a J.P. Stevens textile plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., when low pay and poor working conditions led her to become a union activist - 2009 September 12 Eugene V. Debs, labor leader and socialist, sentenced to 10 years for opposing World War I. While in jail Debs received one million votes for president - 1918   Jobless workers march on grocery stores and seize food in Toledo, Ohio – 1932 National Guardsmen fire on “sullen and rebellious” strikers at the Woonsocket (Rhode Island) Rayon plant, killing one and injuring three others.  A correspondent said the crowd of about 2,000 “went completely wild with rage.”  Word spread, 6,000 more workers arrived at the scene and the city was put under military rule.  The governor declared that “there is a Communist uprising and not a textile strike” in the state - 1934   United Rubber Workers formed in Akron, Ohio - 1935   A total of 49 people are killed, 200 injured, in explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, N.J. - 1940   New York City’s Union Square, the site of the first Labor Day in 1882, is officially named a national historic landmark. The square has long been a focal point for working class protest and political expression - 1998 (Inventory of American Labor Landmarks: Planning a fall vacation?  This attractive booklet offers a nice selection from the Labor Heritage Foundation’s comprehensive, ongoing inventory of labor landmarks across the country.)   September 13 The Post Office Department orders 25,000 railway mail clerks to shoot to kill any bandits attempting to rob the mail - 1926   Eleven AFSCME-represented prison employees, 33 inmates die in four days of rioting at New York State’s Attica Prison and the retaking of the prison. The riot caused the nation to take a closer look at prison conditions, for inmates and their guards alike - 1971   September 14 The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers union calls off an unsuccessful 3-month strike against U. S. Steel Corporation subsidiaries - 1901   Gastonia, N.C., textile mill striker and songwriter Ella May Wiggins, 29, a mother of five, is killed when local vigilantes and thugs force the pickup truck in which she is riding off the road and begin shooting – 1929   A striker is shot by a bog owner (and town-elected official) during a walkout by some 1,500 cranberry pickers, members of the newly-formed Cape Cod Cranberry Pickers Union Local 1. State police were called, more strikers were shot and 64 were arrested. The strike was lost - 1933   Congress passes the Landrum-Griffin Act. The law expands many of the anti-labor provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, increasing union reporting requirements and restricting secondary boycotting and picketing - 1959 (The Essential Guide To Federal Employment Laws, 4th edition: This is a well-indexed book, updated in 2013, offering the full text of 20 federal laws affecting workers’ lives, along with plain-English explanations of each. An entire chapter is devoted to each law, explaining what is allowed and prohibited and what businesses must comply with.) —Compiled and edited by David Prosten Copyright © 2014 Union Communication Services—Worker Institute at Cornell ILR, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted-in, or are a current customer. Our mailing address is: Union Communication Services—Worker Institute at Cornell ILR 249 Highland Ave. Rochester, NY 14620