Saturday, March 09, 2013

Today in Labor History

March 09 -- SOURCE: Union Communications Services, Inc.

Ten thousand Boston teamsters, freight clerks, freight handlers and longshoremen strike in sympathy with 100 freight handlers working for the New Haven Railroad.  The workers struck the previous evening rather than work with freight handled by non-union handlers - 1902

The Westmoreland County (Pa.) Coal Strike—known as the "Slovak strike" because some 70 percent of the 15,000 strikers were Slovakian immigrants—begins on this date and continues for nearly 16 months before ending in defeat. Sixteen miners and family members were killed during the strike - 1912

Spurred by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. Congress begins its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation. 2013.03.04history-kings Just one of many programs established to help Americans survive the Great Depression: The Civilian Conservation Corps, which put 2.5 million young men on the government payroll to help in national conservation and infrastructure projects - 1933

(Kings in Disguise: A Graphic Novel: This award-winning tale, set in the height of the Great Depression, received rave reviews long before graphic novels became the phenomenon they are today. Hailed as one of the top 100 comics of all time by The Comics Journal, Kings in Disguise now reemerges as a classic.)

Work begins on the $8 billion, 800-mile-long Alaska Oil pipeline connecting oil fields in northern Alaska to the sea port at Valdez. Tens of thousands of people worked on the pipeline, enduring long hours, cold temperatures and brutal conditions. At least 32 died on the job - 1974


The Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act took effect on this day. It limits the ability of federal judges to issue injunctions against workers and unions involved in labor disputes - 1932 ~De

The Act states that in yellow-dog contracts, where workers agree as a condition of employment to not join a labor union, are therefore unenforceable in federal court and establishes that employees are free to form unions without employer interference, and can withdraw from the federal courts jurisdiction relative to the issuance of injunctions in nonviolent labor disputes. The three provisions include protecting worker's self-organization and liberty or "collective bargaining", removing jurisdiction from federal courts, and outlawing the "yellow dog" contract.

Section 13A of the act was fully applied by the Supreme Court of the United States in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co., in an opinion authored by Justice Owen Roberts. The Court held that the act meant to prohibit employers from proscribing the peaceful dissemination of information concerning the terms and conditions of employment by those involved in an active labor dispute, even when such dissemination occurs on an employer's private property

Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska and Representative Fiorello H. La Guardia of New York, both Republicans, were the chief sponsors of the Act
 

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