January 02 - SOURCE: Union
Communications Services, Inc.
Conference
of 23 industrial unionists in Chicago leads to formation of IWW, the
Industrial Workers of the World, also known as Wobblies - 1905
In what became known as Palmer Raids, Attorney General Mitchell
Palmer arrests 4,000 foreign-born labor agitators. He believed Communism
was “eating its way into the homes of the American workman,” and
Socialists were causing most of the country’s social problems - 1920
An underground explosion at Sago Mine in Tallmansville, W. Va., traps
12 miners and cuts power to the mine. Eleven men die, mostly by
asphyxiation. The mine had been cited 273 times for safety violations
over the prior 23 months - 2006
January 01
Women weavers form union, Fall River, Mass. - 1875
John L. Lewis is elected president of the United Mine Workers.
Fifteen years later he is to be a leader in the formation of what was to
become the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) - 1920
With the Great Depression in full force, the year 1932 opens with 14
million unemployed, national income down by 50 percent, breadlines that
include former shopkeepers, businessmen and middle-class housewives.
Charity is overwhelmed: only one-quarter of America’s unemployed are
receiving any help at all - 1932
(Union Strategies for Hard Times: Helping Your Members and Building Your Union, 2nd edition:
What can unions do as the economy and greedy employers ravage workers
and their unions and threaten to destroy decades of collective
bargaining gains? What must local union leaders do to help their
laid-off members, protect those still working, and prevent the gutting
of their hard-fought contracts—and their very unions themselves? How, in
fact, can local union leaders seize the time and turn crisis into
opportunity?)
Workers begin to acquire credits toward Social Security pension
benefits. Employers and employees became subject to a tax of one percent
of wages on up to $3,000 a year - 1937
Adolph
Strasser, head of the Cigar Maker’s Union and one of the founders of
the AFL in 1886, died on this day in Forest Park, Ill. - 1939
Members of the Transport Workers Union and Amalgamated Transit Union
working for the New York transit system begin what is to be a successful
12-day strike. Fiery TWU leader Mike Quill, jailed for several days
during the strike, then hospitalized, died three days after his release
from the hospital - 1966
After nine months of negotiations the United Transportation Union
comes into existence, the product of merger between four railroad
brotherhoods. The union represents rail, bus, mass transit and airline
workers - 1969
The federal minimum wage rises to $2.65 an hour - 1978
International Typographical Union, the nation’s oldest union, merges with Communications Workers of America - 1987
United Furniture Workers of America merges with Int’l Union of
Electronic, Electrical, Technical, Salaried & Machine Workers to
become International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine
& Furniture Workers, now a division of CWA - 1987
National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians merges with Communications Workers of America - 1994
International Union of Allied & Industrial Workers of America
merges with United Paperworkers International. Later merged into the
Steelworkers - 1994
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) takes effect, over objections of labor - 1994
Mechanics Educational Society of America merges with United Automobile Workers - 1997
Bakery, Confectionery & Tobacco Workers Int’l Union merges with
American Federation of Grain Millers to form Bakery, Confectionery,
Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers Int’l Union - 1999
"They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter. "
ReplyDelete"The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace."
"It is the minorities who have made the history of this world. It is the few who have had the courage to take their places at the front; who have been true enough to themselves to speak the truth that was in them; who have dared oppose the established order of things; who have espoused the cause of the suffering, struggling poor; who have upheld without regard to personal consequences the cause of freedom and righteousness."
"You need to know that you belong to the great majority of mankind. You need to know that as long as you are ignorant, as long as you are indifferent, as long as you are apathetic, unorganized and content, you will remain exactly where you are. You will be exploited; you will be degraded, and you will have to beg for a job. You will get just enough for your slavish toil to keep you in working order, and you will be looked down upon with scorn and contempt by the very parasites that live and luxuriate out of your sweat and unpaid labor." - Eugene Debs - Speech given at Canton, Ohio June 16, 1918