This week in Labor History (Jan 12th) Posted On: Jan 13, 2015 This Week in Labor History January 12 Novelist Jack London is born. His classic definition of a scab—someone who would cross a picket line and take a striker's job: "After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles" - 1876 (Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams: Jack London had a gift for language. Here you’ll find the words of gifted rock stars, poets, filmmakers, activists, novelists, and historians about the daily grind. From the folk anthems of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie to the poems of Walt Whitman and Amiri Baraka; from the stories of Willa Cather and Bret Lott to the rabble-rousing work of Michael Moore, and from the White Stripes’ “The Big Three Killed My Baby” to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” this great collection touches upon all aspects of working-class life.) Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson orders police to raid an open-air mass meeting of shipyard workers in an attempt to prevent a general strike. Workers were brutally beaten. The strike began the following month, with 60,000 workers walking out in solidarity with some 25,000 metal tradesmen - 1919 President Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board to mediate labor disputes during World War II. Despite the fact that 12 million of the nation’s workers were women—to rise to 18 million by war’s end—the panel consisted entirely of men - 1942 January 13 The original Tompkins Square Riot. As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children with billy clubs. Declared Abram Duryee, the Commissioner of Police: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw..." - 1874 Chicano citrus workers strike in Covina, Calif. - 1919 (Exact date uncertain) As the nation debates a constitutional amendment to rein in the widespread practice of brutally overworking children in factories and fields, U.S. District Judge G.W. McClintic expresses concern, instead, about child idleness - 1924  January 14 Clinton-era OSHA issues confined spaces standard to prevent more than 50 deaths and 5,000 serious injuries annually for workers who enter confined spaces - 1993 Pennsylvania Superior Court rules bosses can fire workers for being gay - 1995 Some 14,000 General Electric employees strike for two days to protest the company's mid-contract decision to shift an average of $400 in additional health care co-payments onto each worker – 2003 A 15-month lockout by the Minnesota Orchestra against members of the Twin Cities Musicians' Union, Local 30-73 ends when the musicians agree to a 15 percent pay cut (management wanted up to 40 percent) and increased health care cost sharing. They did win a revenue-sharing deal based on performance of the Orchestra's endowments. It was the nation's longest-running contract dispute for a concert orchestra - 2014 January 15 Wobbly Ralph Chaplin, in Chicago for a demonstration against hunger, completes the writing of the labor anthem “Solidarity Forever” on this date in 1915. He’d begun writing it in 1914 during a miners’ strike in Huntington, W. Va.  The first verse: When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, But the union makes us strong – 1915 Seventeen workers in the area die when a large molasses storage tank in Boston’s North End neighborhood bursts, sending a 40-foot wave of molasses surging through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour.  In all, 21 people died and 150 were injured. The incident is variously known as the Boston Molasses Disaster, the Great Molasses Flood and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy. Some residents claim that on hot summer days, the area still smells of molasses - 1919 Martin Luther King Jr. born - 1929 The CIO miners' union in the Grass Valley area of California strikes for higher wages, union recognition, and the 8-hour day. The strike was defeated when vigilantes and law enforcement officials expelled 400 miners and their families from the area - 1938  (From Blackjacks to Briefcases: This book documents the systematic and extensive use by American corporations of professional union busters, an ugly profession that surfaced after the Civil War and has grown bolder and more sophisticated with the passage of time.) The Pentagon, to this day the largest office building in the world, is dedicated just 16 months after groundbreaking. At times of peak employment 13,000 workers labored on the project – 1943 Margaret Mary Vojtko dies at age 83 in Homestead, Pennsylvania. She was an adjunct professor of French and medieval literature at Duquensne Unversity for 25 years—a pay-by-the-courses-taught part-timer with no benefits—before being told her contract wouldn't be renewed, but was offered a tutoring job at two-thirds her old salary. She was making so little that she slept in her office, being unable to afford to heat her home because of medical bills. She had been active in trying to form an adjunct's union. She died five months after being fired - 2013 January 16 The United States Civil Service Commission was established as the Pendleton Act went into effect - 1883   Thousands of Palmer Raids detainees win right to meet with lawyers and attorney representation at deportation hearings. "Palmer" was Alexander Mitchell Palmer, U.S. attorney general under Woodrow Wilson. Palmer believed Communism was "eating its way into the homes of the American workman," and Socialists were causing most of the country's social problems - 1920 Former UAW President Leonard Woodcock dies in Ann Arbor, Mich., at age 89. He had succeeded Walter Reuther and led the union from 1970 to 1977 - 2001 January 17 Radical labor organizer and anarchist Lucy Parsons leads hunger march in Chicago; IWW songwriter Ralph Chaplin wrote "Solidarity Forever" for the march - 1915 President John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 10988, guaranteeing federal workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively - 1962 January 18 U.S. Supreme Court rules in Moyer v. Peabody that a governor and officers of a state National Guard may imprison anyone—in the case at hand, striking miners in Colorado—without probable cause “in a time of insurrection” and deny the person the right of appeal - 1909 "Take This Job and Shove It," by Johnny Paycheck, is listed by Billboard magazine as the most popular song in the U.S. - 1978 (Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class:  Stayin’ Alive is a remarkable account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s.) —Compiled and edited by David Prosten Copyright © 2015 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