Today in Labor History

May 02  --  Union Communications Services, Inc.

Chicago's first Trades Assembly, formed three years earlier, sponsors a general strike by thousands of workers to enforce the state's new 8-hour-day law. The one-week strike was unsuccessful - 1867

Birth of Richard Trevellick, a ship carpenter, founder of American National Labor Union and later head of the National Labor Congress, America’s first national labor organization - 1830


First Workers’ Compensation law in U.S. enacted, in Wisconsin - 1911

President Herbert Hoover declares that the stock market crash six months earlier was just a "temporary setback" and the economy would soon bounce back. In fact, the Great Depression was to continue and worsen for several more years - 1930

Nazi forces occupy the headquarters, seize the funds, and imprison the leaders of two of Germany’s largest trade union federations, comprised of 41 unions representing about 4.5 million workers.  Independent trade unions were abolished - 1933


May 01
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones born in County Cork, Ireland - 1830

(Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America: Her rallying cry was famous: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." A century ago, Mother Jones was a celebrated organizer and agitator, the very soul of the modern American labor movement. At coal strikes, steel strikes, railroad, textile, and brewery strikes, Mother Jones was always there, stirring the workers to action and enraging the powerful. In this first biography of "the most dangerous woman in America," Elliott J. Gorn proves why, in the words of Eugene V. Debs, Mother Jones "has won her way into the hearts of the nation's toilers, and... will be lovingly remembered by their children and their children's children forever.")
Cigar makers in Cincinnati warn there could be a strike in the fall if factory owners continue to insist that they pay 30¢ per month for gas heat provided at work during mornings and evenings - 1883

Eight-hour day demonstration in Chicago and other cities begins tradition of May Day as international labor holiday - 1886

The Cooks’ and Waiters’ Union strikes in San Francisco, demanding one day of rest per week, a 10-hour work day and a union shop for all restaurants in the city - 1901

Mother Jones’ 100th birthday celebrated at the Burgess Farm in Adelphi, Md. She died six months later - 1930

New York City’s Empire State Building officially opens. Construction involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, and hundreds of Mohawk iron workers. Five workers died during construction - 1931

Congress enacts amendments to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, extending protections to the employees of state and local governments—protections which didn’t take effect until 1985 because of court challenges and regulation-writing problems - 1974

The federal minimum wage rises to $2 per hour - 1974

Int’l Molders & Allied Workers Union merges with Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers Int’l Union - 1988

Woodworkers of America Int’l merges with Int’l Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers - 1994

Int’l Leather Goods, Plastics & Novelty Workers Union merges with Service Employees Int’l Union - 1996

Rallies in cities across the U.S. for what organizers call “A Day Without Immigrants.” An estimated 100,000 immigrants and sympathizers gathered in San Jose, Calif., 200,000 in New York, 400,000 each in Chicago and Los Angeles.  In all, there were demonstrations in at least 50 cities - 2006

(Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S. Labor Market: In recent years, New Yorkers have been surprised to see workers they had taken for granted—Mexicans in greengroceries, West African supermarket deliverymen and South Asian limousine drivers—striking, picketing, and seeking support for better working conditions. Suddenly, businesses in New York and across the nation had changed and were now dependent upon low-paid immigrants to fill entry-level jobs.)