This Week in Union History (Dec. 1st) Posted On: Dec 03, 2014 This Week in Labor History December 01 The Ford Motor Co. introduces the continuous moving assembly line which can produce a complete car every two-and-a-half minutes - 1913   Kellogg cereal adopts 6-hour day - 1930 African-American Rosa Parks refuses to go to the back of a Montgomery, Ala., bus, fueling the growing civil rights movement's campaign to win desegregation and end the deep South's "Jim Crow" laws - 1955 United Garment Workers of America merge with United Food & Commercial Workers Int’l Union - 1994 Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers & Allied Workers Int’l Union & United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum & Plastics Workers of America merge with Int’l Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers - 1996 December 02 A Chicago "slugger," paid $50 by labor unions for every scab he "discouraged," described his job in an interview: "Oh, there ain't nothing to it. I gets my fifty, then I goes out and finds the guy they wanna have slugged, then I gives it to ‘im" - 1911 The U.S. Senate votes 65-22 to condemn Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.) for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”  McCarthy was a rabid anti-Communist who falsely accused thousands of Americans, mostly people who supported labor, civil rights and other progressive causes, of being traitors - 1954 (A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present: McCarthy’s attack on progressive citizens is just one of many eye-openers revealed in Zinn’s book. If your last serious read of American history was in high school—or even in a standard college course—you’ll want to read this amazing account of America as seen through the eyes of its working people, women and minorities.) Court documents filed in Boston say Walmart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $40 million to 87,500 Massachusetts employees who claimed the retailer denied them rest and meal breaks, manipulated time cards and refused to pay overtime - 2009 December 03 Textile strikers win 10-hour day, Fall River, Mass. - 1866 The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes an ordinance setting an 8-hour workday for all city employees - 1867 IWW union Brotherhood of Timber Workers organized - 1910 Canada’s Quebec Bridge, spanning the St. Lawrence River, opens to traffic on this day after the deaths of 89 construction workers in the course of the job.  A flawed design was blamed for a 1907 collapse that killed 75; another 13 died in 1916 when a hoisting device failed as the central span was being lifted - 1919 General strike begins in Oakland, Calif., started by female department store clerks - 1946 The express passenger train "20th Century Limited" ends more than 60 years of service when it takes its last run from New York City to Chicago - 1967 Some 5,000 union construction workers in Oahu, Hawaii, march to City Hall in protest of a proposed construction moratorium by the city council – 1976 At least four thousand people die, and as many as 20,000, in one of the largest industrial disasters on record.  It happened in Bhopal, India, when poisonous methyl isocyante was released into the atmosphere at a Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant.  The results of investigations by Union Carbide and the government were never released to the public; one authoritative independent study laid blame at the feet of Union Carbide for its failures on training, staffing, safety and other issues - 1984 (Real World Labor: Economics, Politics & Social History, 2nd edition: With more than 80 articles by leading writers and scholars of the labor movement, this essential anthology addresses recent changes in the nature of work and wages; discrimination by race, gender, and immigration status; militarism and its effects on the working class; union responses to the global financial meltdown; and new forms of rank-and-file organizing and resistance.) Arrests began today in Middleton, N.J., of teachers striking in violation of a no-strike law. Ultimately 228 educators were jailed for up to seven days before they were released following the Middleton Township Education Association's agreement to take the dispute to mediation - 2001   December 04 President Roosevelt announces the end of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), concluding the four-year run of one of the American government's most ambitious public works programs. It helped create jobs for roughly 8.5 million people during the Great Depression and left a legacy of highways and public buildings, among other public gains - 1943 UAW President Walter Reuther elected president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations - 1952 Cesar Chavez jailed for 20 days for refusing to end United Farm Workers' grape boycott - 1970 December 05 Unionists John T. and James B. McNamara are sentenced to 15 years and life, respectively, after confessing to dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during a drive to unionize the metal trades in the city.  They placed the bomb in an alley next to the building, set to detonate when they thought the building would be empty; it went off early, and an unanticipated gas explosion and fire did the real damage, killing twenty people. The newspaper was strongly conservative and anti-union - 1911 Ending a 20-year split, the two largest labor federations in the U.S. merge to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million - 1955 AFL-CIO President John Sweeney welcomes the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, declaring, "No deal is better than a bad deal." - 1999 The U.S. Department of Labor reports employers slashed 533,000 jobs the month before—the most in 34 years—as the Great Recession surged. The unemployment rolls had risen for seven months before that and were to continue to soar for another 10 months before topping 10 percent and beginning to level off late the following year - 2008 (Some unions and workers continue to struggle as a result of the Great Recession. Union Strategies for Hard Times, Helping Your Members and Building Your Union, 2nd Edition, offers guidance for leaders trying to help laid off members, protect those still working, and prevent the gutting of their hard-fought contracts—and their very unions themselves.) December 06 African-American delegates meet in Washington, D.C., to form the Colored National Labor Union as a branch of the all-white National Labor Union created three years earlier. Unlike the NLU, the CNLU welcomed members of all races. Isaac Myers was the CNLU's founding president; Frederick Douglas became president in 1872 - 1869 The Washington Monument is completed in Washington, D.C. On the interior of the monument are 193 commemorative stones, donated by numerous governments and organizations from all over the world; one of them is from the Int’l Typographical Union, founded in 1852.  In 1986 the ITU merged into the Communications Workers of America - 1884 A total of 361 coal miners die at Monongah, W.Va., in nation's worst mining disaster - 1907 Int’l Glove Workers Union of America merges into Amalgamated Clothing Workers - 1961 United Mine Workers begin what is to become a 110-day national coal strike - 1997 December 07 Heywood Broun born in New York City. Journalist, columnist and co-founder, in 1933, of The Newspaper Guild - 1888 Steam boiler operators from 11 cities across the country meet in Chicago to form the National Union of Steam Engineers of America, the forerunner to the Int’l Union of Operating Engineers. Each of the men represented a local union of 40 members or fewer - 1896 More than 1,600 protesters staged a national hunger march on Washington, D.C., to present demands for unemployment insurance - 1931 United Hatters, Cap & Millinery Workers Int’l Union merges into Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union - 1982 Delegates to the founding convention of the National Nurses United (NNU) in Phoenix, Ariz., unanimously endorse the creation of the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in U.S. history. The 150,000-member union is the product of a merger of three groups - 2009 —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 36 W. Main St., Suite 440 Rochester, NY 14614