This Week In Labor History (March 23rd) Posted On: Mar 30, 2015 This Week in Labor History March 23  Trial of 101 Wobblies, charged with opposing the draft and hindering the war effort, begins in Chicago - 1918  (Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology: Originally published in 1964 and long out of print, Rebel Voices remains by far the biggest and best source on IWW history, fiction, songs, art, and lore. This edition includes 40 pages of additional material from the 1998 Charles H. Kerr edition by Fred Thompson and Franklin Rosemont, and a preface by Wobbly organizer Daniel Gross.) Norris-La Guardia Act restricts injunctions against unions and bans yellow dog contracts, which require newly-hired workers to declare they are not union members and will not join one - 1932 Five days into the Post Office’s first mass work stoppage in 195 years, President Nixon declares a national emergency and orders 30,000 troops to New York City to break the strike. The troops didn’t have a clue how to sort and deliver mail: a settlement came a few days later - 1970  Coalition of Labor Union Women founded in Chicago by some 3,000 delegates from 58 unions and other organizations - 1974  Fifteen workers die, another 170 are injured when a series of explosions rip through BP’s Texas City refinery. Investigators blamed a poor safety culture at the plant and found BP management gave priority to cost savings over worker safety - 2005 March 24 Groundbreaking on the first section of the New York City subway system, from City Hall to the Bronx. According to the New York Times, this was a worker’s review of the digging style of the well-dressed Subway Commissioners: "I wouldn't give th' Commish'ners foive cents a day fer a digging job. They're too shtiff" - 1900 March 25  Toronto printers strike for the 9-hour day in what is believed to be Canada’s first major strike - 1872  First “Poor People’s March” on Washington, in which jobless workers demanded creation of a public works program.  Led by populist Jacob Coxey, the 500 to 1,000 unemployed protesters became known as “Coxey’s Army” - 1894  A total of 146 workers are killed in a fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a disaster that would launch a national movement for safer working conditions - 1911 An explosion at a coal mine in Centralia, Ill., kills 111 miners. Mineworkers President John L. Lewis calls a 6-day work stoppage by the nation’s 400,000 soft coal miners to demand safer working conditions - 1947 March 26 San Francisco brewery workers begin a 9-month strike as local employers follow the union-busting lead of the National Brewer’s Association and fire their unionized workers, replacing them with scabs. Two unionized brewers refused to go along, kept producing beer, prospered wildly and induced the Association to capitulate. A contract benefit since having unionized two years earlier, certainly worth defending: free beer - 1868  March 27  Mother Jones is ordered to leave Colorado, where state authorities accuse her of “stirring up” striking coal miners - 1904 U.S. Supreme Court rules that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired - 2002  March 28  Members of Gas House Workers’ Union Local 18799 begin what is to become a 4-month recognition strike against the Laclede Gas Light Co. in St. Louis. The union later said the strike was the first ever against a public utility in the U.S. - 1935 Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march of striking sanitation workers, members of AFSCME Local 1733, in Memphis, Tenn. Violence during the march persuades him to return the following week to Memphis, where he was assassinated – 1968 (All Labor Has Dignity: People forget that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. He fought throughout his life to connect the labor and civil rights movements, envisioning them as twin pillars for social reform. As we struggle with unemployment, a staggering racial wealth gap, and the near collapse of a financial system that puts profits before people, this collection of King's speeches on labor rights and economic justice underscore his relevance for today. They help us imagine King anew: as a human rights leader whose commitment to unions and an end to poverty was a crucial part of his civil rights agenda.) March 29  Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 and women to work more than 10 hours a day - 1852 Sam Walton, founder of the huge and bitterly anti-union Walmart empire, born in Kingfisher, Okla. He once said that his priority was to “Buy American,” but Walmart is now the largest U.S. importer of foreign-made goods—often produced under sweatshop conditions - 1918  “Battle of Wall Street,” police charge members of the United Financial Employees’ Union, striking against the New York Stock Exchange and New York Curb Exchange (now known as the American Stock Exchange).  Forty-three workers are arrested in what was to be the first and only strike in the history of either exchange - 1948 National Maritime Union of America merges with National Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association - 1988 —Compiled and edited by David Prosten Copyright © 2015 Union Communication ServicesWorker Institute at Cornell ILR, All rights reserved. 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