Today in Labor History

April 10

Birth date of Frances Perkins, named Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet-level office - 1880

133 people, mostly women and girls, are killed when an explosion in the loading room tears apart the Eddystone Ammunition Works in Eddystone, Pa., near Chester. Fifty-five of the dead were never identified - 1917

Birth of Dolores Huerta, a co-founder, with Cesar Chavez, of the United Farm Workers - 1930

Dancers from the Lusty Lady Club in San Francisco’s North Beach ratify their first-ever union contract by a vote of 57-15, having won representaion by SEIU Local 790 the previous summer. The club later became a worker-owned cooperative - 1997

Tens of thousands of immigrants demonstrate in 100 U.S. cities in a national day of action billed as a campaign for immigrants’ dignity. Some 200,000 gathered in Washington, D.C. - 2006

SOURCE: Union Communications Services, Inc.