On This Day in Working Class History

On this day, 29 July 2019, the Blackjewel coal blockade began in eastern Kentucky. Mine operator Blackjewel went bankrupt, leaving hundreds of coalminers out of work and with weeks of unpaid wages. So five workers decided to block a train full of coal worth $1 million from leaving a mine, demanding what they were owed. The number of occupiers grew to dozens over the coming weeks, and lasted 59 day...

On this day, 28 July 1869, the first national women's labour union in US history, the Daughters of St Crispin, was founded in Lynn, Massachusetts. It was set up predominantly by shoemakers, a few years after a major strike of shoemakers in Lynn, in which women played a key part. The name was chosen to mimic the name of a men's shoemakers' union, the Knights of St Crispin. By the end of 1869 it had...

On this day, 27 July 2017, bus drivers in Brisbane, Australia launched a fare strike where they refused to charge passengers for journeys in a protest demanding better pay and safety. Further fare strikes, as well as all-out strikes, continued intermittently over the coming weeks as workers pursued a 3.5% pay increase, rather than the 2.5% which had been offered over the following 3 years. The wor...

On this day, 26 July 1956, over 21,000 workers on strike at 13 BMC factories in the UK against job cuts were joined by 12,000 Briggs Motors workers in Dagenham who walked out. Some of Oswald Mosley's fascists showed up to "support" the workers and urge an end to the strike at the Longbridge plant. They were given short shrift by the strikers who trashed their van. Video footage of the event is inc...

On this day, 25 July 2011, 34 women workers, who promoted Angkor beer for Cambrew (a corporation partly owned by Carlsberg), went on strike demanding the payment of unpaid overtime and demonstrated in front of the company headquarters.  Other Cambodian unions threatened to boycott Angkor beer, and some bars in the city stopped serving it during the dispute. One bar owner explained they wished to s...

On 24 July 2019 ferry workers in Ketchikan, Alaska, walked out on strike as part of a contract dispute during the busiest time of year. Around 400 members of the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific rejected a new one-year contract which included a wage freeze. After nine days of strike action, employers agreed to a three-year contract including 3% pay increases and health coverage during the wint...

On this day, 23 July 1918, the Japanese rice riots began against high prices, a revolt up to then unparalleled in the country’s history in terms of scope, size and violence, which eventually led to the fall of Prime Minister Terauchi’s government. As well as multiple riots across the country, the revolt also involved strikes by miners, shipyard and factory workers. This movement is commemorated by...

On this day, 22 July 2005, civil servants in the Kingdom of Tonga went on strike for 60-90% pay rise. The strike shut down the government and grew to include many other public sector employees and ending up being the most significant challenge to the island's monarchy in its history. The striking workers won their pay rise and forced the government to begin reforming itself.  More information, sou...

On this day, 21 July 1945, members of the Irish Women Worker’s Union staged a laundry strike demanding a second week of paid holiday, affecting many of Dublin’s hotels. Hospital laundry workers were exempt from the strike action. The strike lasted 14 weeks and ended in victory for the women, and the following year the government conceded to giving two weeks paid holiday to all workers.  More infor...

On this day, 20 July 1979, Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier escaped from Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution, in California, with two other detainees, one of whom, Bobby Gene Garcia, was shot to death by a guard. Peltier, a leading member of the American Indian Movement, had been sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the deaths of two Federal Bureau of Investigation...

On this day, 19 July 1984, the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strike began in Dublin, Ireland. Shop worker Mary Manning refused to check out a customer's South African fruit, as members of her union, Idatu, had voted to not handle South African goods. Manning was then suspended, and she and 11 of her colleagues went on strike in protest. The stoppage went on for three years, ending when the Irish go...

On this day, 18 July 1887, the Argentinian anarchist bakers' union Sociedad Cosmopolita de Resistencia y Colocación de Obreros Panaderos (Cosmopolitan Society of Resistance and Placement of Bakery Workers) was founded in Buenos Aires. It was established with the assistance of Italian anarchists Errico Malatesta and Ettore Mattei. It would hold its first public event on August 4, which later became...

At midnight on 16 July 2015, 140 workers at the state-owned Qulliq Energy company in Nunavut, Canada, walked out on strike demanding pay increases to keep up with rising prices. The strike, by members of the Nunavut Employees Union who maintained power lines and plants in the region, continued for three weeks until the local government offered them a new three-year pay deal which included pay rise...

On this day, 15 July 1966, national rail operator British Rail scrapped a "colour bar" preventing Black workers from higher paid employment at Euston station in London. At the time the bar was supported by unions but a Black train guard, Asquith Xavier, campaigned to overturn the bar, eventually finding some support in Parliament.  Xavier was a member of the Windrush Generation who moved to Britai...

On this day, 14 July 1966 a group of US GIs were given the order to deploy to Vietnam. James Johnson Jr., David A. Samas, and Dennis Mora refused and became the Fort Hood Three: the most high profile US refuseniks to date. They were court-martialled and each jailed for five years. But they helped spark a militant anti-war GI movement which brought an early end to the conflict. Learn more about the...

On this day, 13 July 1917, thousands of workers joined a spontaneous strike in São Paulo following the police killing of a 21-year-old shoemaker, José (or Antonio) Martínez, at a demonstration against the high cost of living two days previously. The stoppage soon became a general strike, and workers could only be persuaded to return to work three days later after being given a 10% pay increase.  M...

On this day, 12 July 1994, around 4,000 workers at Bridgestone-Firestone tyres in Decatur, Illinois, Akron, Ohio, Noblesville, Indiana, Des Moines, Iowa and Oklahoma City walked out on strike. Workers were protesting against the introduction of 12-hour shifts, pay and healthcare cuts, cuts to unemployment and injury benefits and a two-tier workforce. The workers, members of the United Rubber Worke...

On this day, 11 July 1989, a huge strike began of miners in the Soviet Union demanding better food supplies, cleaner working conditions, adequate housing, better care of the environment in mining areas, and rights to share management of the mines. In March, two brief strikes occurred at the Lidiieka and Kirov mines in Donbass, Ukraine. In July a much bigger strike began in both the Donbass and the...

On this day, 10 July 1949, Black Industrial Workers of the World dockworker activist Ben Fletcher died at his home in Brooklyn, aged 59. Fletcher was the leading organiser in Local 8 of the union, which organised the multiracial workforce on the Philadelphia docks in the early part of the 20th-century, and he was one of dozens of IWW members imprisoned during World War I. His funeral was attended...

On this day, 9 July 1919, bartenders in Allentown, Pennsylvania, went on strike to impress on citizens the "horrors" of prohibition which was due to be introduced. There was a working class movement of hundreds of thousands called "No beer, no work" which aimed to stop prohibition with strike action. However this is the only actual strike we are aware of. We have produced items commemorating the N...

On this day, 8 July, 1908, Black and white coal miners in Birmingham, Alabama, walked out on strike together against an attempt from bosses to eliminate the union. The strike grew quickly to a majority of workers in the area, including those who had previously been scabs. Bosses used evictions, armed thugs, scabs from the North, and forced convict labour to try to break the strike, and the press a...

On this day, 7 July 1864, Filipino labour leader Isabelo de los Reyes was born in Vigan. He became a journalist and opponent of Spanish colonial rule, for which he was jailed and tortured. He was then deported to Spain and held in the infamous Montjuic Castle in Barcelona, alongside many anarchist political prisoners. In 1901 he was allowed to return to the Philippines, and he brought with him a l...

On this day, 6 July 1934, 800 workers from two plantations in Couva, Trinidad, demonstrated in front of the warden's office complaining at the lack of work. Violence erupted when police attempted to keep protesters away from businesses, to which workers responded by looting. Unrest spread to other plantations, two bosses were attacked and one company headquarters was stoned and set on fire. Britis...

On this day, 5 July 1777, the word ‘scab’, meaning ‘strikebreaker’, was used in print for the first time. One of the most important words in the working class vocabulary!  By the late 16th century the word "scab" had come to be used as an English insult, somewhat akin to "lowlife" or "scoundrel". But at some point it began to be used by workers in industrial disputes as a label for workers who cro...

On this day, 4 July 1998, best friends Lin "Spit" Newborn, 24, a Black skinhead and singer, and Daniel Shersty, 20, a white US air force serviceman - both members of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) - were murdered in the desert outside Las Vegas by a gang of white supremacists.  Newborn's friend, PJ Perez, described him as "a madman. A poet. A motherfucker whose good side you'd want to stay on. He was a...