Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History ghosts and goblins are going door to door to gather up candy.  But did you know that some of that candy is made by union workers?  In Hershey, Pennsylvania, tagged the Sweetest place on earth you’ll find the nation’s chocolate center. It wasn’t always so sweet for workers who in 1937 tried to win union recognition.  Then the company laid off some of the union organizer...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1929. On that Wednesday morning, people across the United States woke up to newspaper headlines informing them that something had gone horribly wrong on Wall Street the day before.  Black Tuesday, as the day came to be known had capped off a devastating drop in the market that had begun with the Great Crash the prior Thursday.  Twenty-five billion dollars...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1975.  That was the day that the National Organization for Women, or NOW, called for a strike by women across the nation.  They called the action, “Alice Doesn’t Day.”  This referred to a critically acclaimed movie by director Martin Scorsese that came out the year before, entitled “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”  The main character in the film is Alice...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1861.  That was the day that the Pony Express made its last run and passed into legend.  The mail delivery service had lasted only a year-and-a-half, until it folded under competition from the newly completed transcontinental telegraph.  The idea for a faster western mail delivery service came from the owners of the wagon freight company Russel, Majors and...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1948.  That was the day that a thick yellow fog rolled over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania just south of Pittsburgh. Donora was a mill town, nestled in a valley on the bank of the Monongahela River.   By 1948, the town had grown to 14,000 people, who came to work in the town’s steel mills and the Donora Zinc Works. For years the local residents had compl...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1837.  That was the day that Louisa Lee Schuyler was born in New York City.  She was dedicated to the causes of public health and welfare, especially for the poor. This led her to help found the Bellevue Training School for Nurses in 1873.  It was the first nurse’s school in the United States based on the principals of Florence Nightingale, the English soc...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1990.  That was the day that eight of the ten unions at the New York Daily News went out on strike.  The paper had had one of the highest daily circulations in the United States. The New York Daily News was owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Company.  The strike began when management demanded major concessions from the delivery drivers, essentially forcing...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1940.  That was the day that the federally mandated 40-hour work week went into effect for U.S. workers.  The 40-hour week had been passed as part of Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.  Making five days of eight hour work the national standard had long been a top goal for labor.  For decades’ union members organized, demonstrated, when on strike, and even d...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1995.  That was the day that the AFL-CIO Convention convened in New York City.  At the convention John Sweeney was elected president of the federation.  It was the first contested election for president in AFL-CIO history.  He ran with a slate of labor leaders, including Richard Trumka, who called themselves the “New Voice” slate.  Sweeney was the Presiden...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1934.  That as the day that the bank robber known as Pretty Boy Floyd was gunned down by federal agents in Ohio.  He was born Charles Arthur Floyd in 1904 in Georgia.  His family moved to Oklahoma when he was a boy.  Like many Oklahomans during this era, he fell on hard economic times.  Floyd turned to crime.  He did a four year stretch in a Missouri priso...

On this day in Labor History the year was 2001.  That was the day that Thomas Morris Jr. died from breathing in anthrax.  A week earlier he had been exposed to the deadly poison when an envelope containing the powdery substance was opened at the mail distribution center where he worked.  Thomas Morris was a member of American Postal Workers Union.  His union brother Joseph Curseen died two days la...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1926.  That was the day that one of the great labor leaders in U.S. history, Eugene V. Debs, died in Elmhurst, Illinois.  In 1894, Debs gained national attention when his American Railway Union launched a boycott in support of the striking workers of Pullman Palace Car Company.  The strike and the boycott were crushed by federal troops and a federal court....

On this day in Labor History the year was 2013.  That was the day that two workers on California’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART as it is more commonly called, were struck and killed by a train.  Christopher Sheppard was a BART track engineer. Laurence Daniels was a contract employee. Both men had years of experience working on the tracks.    They were inspecting the tracks when they were hit an...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1945.  That was the day that Paul Robeson received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.  The award was given annually to the African American with the “highest achievement.”  Robeson certainly fit that criteria.  He was born in Princeton, New Jersey.  He attended Rutgers University, where he was an athletic standout and valedictorian.  He earned his law degr...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1987.  That was the day that more than 100,000 people gathered in Paris to stand up against poverty and hunger.  The gathering was inspired by Father Joseph Wresinski, a French Catholic Priest. He founded the All Together in Dignity Fourth World Movement, dedicated to addressing poverty.  That day unveiled a Commemorative Stone to honor the victims of extr...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1979.  That was the day that the United Nation’s established the idea of holding an annual “World Food Day.”  The aim of the day is to bring global attention to the problem of hunger and to build international solidarity to fight the problem.  The first World Food Day was observed two years later.  One feature of the day is a teleconference, that brings to...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1990.  That was the day that President George H. W. Bush signed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.  Worker safety at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site had been sacrificed during the Cold War era, as the United States rushed to keep pace with the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal. The result was an increase in cancers including leukemia from workers being exp...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1979.  That was the day that the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights took place in Washington D.C.  Estimates of marchers ranged from as few 75,000 to as many as 200,000. The year of the march was significant.  It marked the ten-year anniversary of the police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village.  When po...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1985.  That was the day that clerical and support staff at Columbia University went out on strike. More than 1,000 staff members were represented by United Auto Workers District 65.  The workers wanted improvements to benefits and wages. They were also concerned by pay discrimination for women and minorities.   Two days before the proposed strike was set t...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1845. That was the day that the first Industrial Congress of the United States met in New York.  People interested in the problems facing working people—including long hours, low pay and unsafe conditions gathered together. The labor movement was just beginning in this country.  These were the years when early trade unions were formed.  Women played an imp...

On this day in labor history, the year was 1899. That was the day union miners in Mt. Olive, Illinois began commemorating Miners Day.  Every year thousands came into town for a parade, music and speeches. Mt. Olive was the site of the only union-owned cemetery in the United States, established by UMWA local 728, in the aftermath of the Virden massacre.  A year before to the day, striking miners ha...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1874.  That was the day that Mary Heaton Vorse was born in New York City.  She grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts in a well-off family.  She traveled across Europe with her parents, receiving her education and learning to speak multiple languages fluently.  She then worked as a book reviewer for the Criterion magazine.  In 1912 Mary and the man who would be...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1913.  At 2:02 in the afternoon President Woodrow Wilson at the White House touched of an explosion at the Gamboa Dike in Panama.  With that touch of a button the last barrier to joining the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Panama Canal went up in smoke.  The Chicago Tribune described the scene in Panama, “Then suddenly came the muffle...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1997.  That was the day that a group of female employees at the investment firm Smith Barney came to a tentative agreement to settle a sexual harassment law suit against the firm.  Smith Barney was one of the oldest Wall Street firms, with a reputation for respectability.  But behind closed doors the firm more closely resembled what the Chicago Tribune des...

On this day in Labor History the year was 1871.  That was the day that the Great Chicago Fire began.  The fire started in a barn on the property of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary.  Legend pins the blame for starting a fire on a cow. Whatever the cause, the fire spread quickly through the cities wooden houses.  For two days the uncontrollable fire raged destroying everything in its path.  In the wak...