Today in Labor History

January 26  --  SOURCE: Union Communications Services, Inc.

In what could be considered the first workers’ compensation agreement in America, pirate Henry Morgan pledges his underlings 600 pieces of eight or six slaves to compensate for a lost arm or leg. Also part of the pirate’s code, reports Roger Newell: shares of the booty were equal regardless of race or sex, and shipboard decisions were made collectively. - 1695

(Kids Library: Mother Jones, Triangle Fire, Cesar Chavez: No pirate tales here, but, still, we’ve collected this special set of attractive and kid-friendly books to help today’s youngsters understand the historic struggle of working people for justice and dignity. Each book explains an historic figure or history-altering incident in easy-to-understand language.)

Samuel Gompers, first AFL president, born in London, England. He emigrated to the U.S. as a youth - 1850

The Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America is chartered by the American Federation of Labor to organize "every wage earner from the man who takes the bullock at the house until it goes into the hands of the consumer." - 1987

Workers win a two-day sitdown strike at the Brooklyn electric plant that powers the city's entire subway system - 1937

A handful of American companies announce nearly 60,000 layoffs today, as the recession that began during the George W. Bush presidency charges full-tilt toward what has become known as the Great Recession - 2009

Working Class Heroes 

-via- YES! Magazine

When she became first lady in 1933, Eleanor devoted considerable time to those hardest hit by poverty, visiting an encampment of World War I veterans (referred to at the time as “Bonus Marchers”) in Washington, sharecroppers in the South, and people on breadlines in San Francisco. Her public support for union organizing drives among coal miners, garment workers, textile workers, and tenant farmers (including the racially integrated and left-wing Southern Tenant Farmers Union) lent visibility and credibility to their efforts.

As Brigid O’Farrell documents in her book, She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker, Eleanor not only supported organizing efforts; she joined a union herself. In 1936, she proudly and publicly became a member of the American Newspaper Guild at a time when workers were being beaten, and some killed, for participating in organizing drives, strikes, and sit-down protests.

As first lady, Roosevelt donated the proceeds from her radio broadcasts to the Womens Trade Union League and promoted the WTUL in her columns and speeches. She invited women and union activists, including Schneiderman, to the White House and Hyde Park, seating them next to FDR so he could hear their concerns. As Schneiderman recalled in her autobiography, Eleanor overcame the trappings of privilege to become “a born trade unionist.”

She pushed to give women a larger voice in the Democratic Party and urged FDR to appoint women (including Perkins, the first female Cabinet member) to key positions in government. And soon after becoming first lady, she began holding her own press conferences for women reporters only—in part to help preserve their jobs during the Depression.

[Eleanor Roosevelt speaks at a podium at an AFL-CIO event. Photo by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives: http://bit.ly/W7OLno ~De

Eleanor: The Radical Roosevelt

Many younger Americans probably know little about Eleanor Roosevelt, and if their first encounter with her is the new film Hyde Park on Hudson, what they’ll learn is incredibly misleading and inaccurate. Historian Peter Dreier steps in to set the record straight: http://bit.ly/10T5Aq5

[Eleanor Roosevelt speaks at a podium at an AFL-CIO event. Photo by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives: http://bit.ly/W7OLno]