Six laborers in Dorset, England—the "Tolpuddle Martyrs"—are banished to the Australian penal colony for seven years for forming a union, the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. Some 800,000 residents of the United Kingdom signed petitions calling for their release - 1834
Police evict retail clerks occupying New York Woolworth’s in fight for 40-hour week - 1937
The Post Office’s first mass work stoppage in 195 years begins in Brooklyn and Manhattan and spreads to 210,000 of the nation’s 750,000 postal employees. Mail service is virtually paralyzed in several cities, and President Nixon declares a state of emergency. A settlement comes after two weeks - 1970
The Los Angeles City Council passes the first living wage ordinance in California. The ordinance required almost all city contractors to pay a minimum wage of $8.50 an hour, or $7.25 if the employer was contributing at least $1.25 toward
health benefits, with annual adjustments for inflation - 1997Wal-Mart agrees to pay a record $11 million to settle a civil immigration case for using undocumented immigrants to do overnight cleaning at stores in 21 states - 2005
(The New Immigrant Workforce: Organizing Innovations: This ground-breaking look at immigrant labor organizing and mobilization today draws on participant observation, ethnographic interviews, historical documents, and new case studies. The writers provide real evidence of immigrants’ eagerness for collective action and organizing, and they argue that this desire to organize stems from the immigrants’ social isolation.)
As the Great Recession continues, President Obama signs a $17.6 billion job-creation measure a day after it is passed by Congress - 2010
Working Class Heroes -- via -- www.unionist.com
The Post Office’s first mass work stoppage in 195 years begins in
Brooklyn and Manhattan and spreads to 210,000 of the nation’s 750,000
postal employees. Mail service is virtually paralyzed in several cities, and President Nixon declares a state of emergency. A settlement comes after two weeks - 1970 ~De
The strike began just after midnight on March 18, 1970, as members of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) local #36 voted 1,555 to 1,055 to walk out the next morning. Even as NALC president James Rademacher urged his membership to return to work, the wild-cat strike spread across the nation. By the time President Nixon appeared on television to announce his decision to call up the reserves to help move mail in New York City, the strike had spread to 100 US cities, and involved over 200,000 postal workers.
As workers marched in picket lines in front of post offices from New York to Los Angeles, Americans who might have taken their mail for granted in previous weeks were anxiously seeking a resolution to the strike. At a time before cell phones and the internet, when fax machines were brand new and few in number, mail carriers toted the nation’s commerce and information in their bags. Letters, bills and checks to pay those bills, birthday cards, passports, legal documents, and even draft notices piled up in mail sacks on post office floors across the nation.
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