Today in Labor History

August 10

The Air Line Pilots Association is founded at a meeting in Chicago attended by 24 activists from across the country - 1931

Hundreds of Transport Workers Union members descend on a New York City courthouse, offering their own money to bail out their president, Mike Quill, and four other union leaders arrested while making their way through Grand Central Station to union headquarters after picketing the IRT offices in lower Manhattan - 1935

President Roosevelt signs amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act, broadening the program to include dependents and survivors' benefits - 1939

Construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway begins. Ultimately 22,000 workers spent five years building the 2,342 mile route from the Atlantic to the northernmost part of the Great Lakes - 1954

I.W. Abel, president of the United Steel Workers of America from 1965 to 1977, dies at age 79 - 1987

Pres. Barack Obama signs a $26 billion bill designed to protect 300,000 teachers, police and others from layoffs spurred by budgetary crises in states hard-hit by the Great Recession - 2010

SOURCE: Union Communications Services, Inc.

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Working Class Heroes

Today in #LaborHistory: Aug 10 -via- unionist.com

President Roosevelt signs amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act, broadening the program to include dependents and survivors' benefits - 1939

"The Amendments added two new categories of benefits: payments to the spouse and minor children of a retired worker (so-called dependents benefits) and survivors benefits paid to the family in the event of the premature death of a covered worker. This change transformed Social Security from a retirement program for workers into a family-based economic security program." - from http://www.larrydewitt.net/SSinGAPE/newdeal/briefhistory.htm

"In the months following passage of the 1939 Amendments, Corson had been travelling the country explaining the 1939 law to employees of the Agency." - from http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/1939no3.html