Today in Labor History

July 01  --  Union Communications Services, Inc.

The American Flint Glass workers union is formed, headquartered in Pittsburgh.  It was to merge into the Steelworkers 140 years later, in 2003 - 1873

Steel workers in Cleveland begin what was to be an 88-week strike against wage cuts - 1885

Homestead, Pa., steel strike.  Seven strikers and three Pinkertons killed as Andrew Carnegie hires armed thugs to protect strikebreakers - 1892

The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers stages what is to become an unsuccessful 3-month strike against U.S. Steel Corp. Subsidiaries - 1901

One million railway shopmen strike - 1922

Some 1,100 streetcar workers strike in New Orleans, spurring the creation of the po’ boy sandwich by a local sandwich shop owner and one-time streetcar man. "Whenever we saw one of the striking men coming," Bennie Martin later recalled, "one of us would say, ‘Here comes another poor boy.’" Martin and his wife fed any striker who showed up - 1929

(The Lexicon of Labor: If you’ve never quite understood all the major legislative acts affecting labor, like Taft-Hartley or Davis-Bacon or Walsh-Healy; if you need a better understanding of key labor figures like Mother Jones, Sam Gompers, John L. Lewis, Cesar Chavez and George Meany; if terms like "Boulwarism," "maquiladora" or "zipper clause" beg for explanation; if you need to know exactly when the first Labor Day parade or sit-down strike occurred, this is the book for you.)

In what was to be a month-long strike, 650,000 steelworkers shut down the industry while demanding a number of wage and working condition improvements.  They won all their demands, including a union shop - 1956

National Association of Post Office & General Service Maintenance Employees, United Federation of Postal Clerks, National Federation of Post Office Motor Vehicle Employees & National Association of Special Delivery Messengers merge to become American Postal Workers Union - 1971

Int’l Jewelry Workers Union merges with Service Employees Int’l Union - 1980

Graphic Arts Int’l Union merges with Int’l Printing & Graphic Communications Union to become Graphic Communications Int’l Union, now a conference of the Teamsters - 1983

Copper miners begin a years-long, bitter strike against Phelps-Dodge in Clifton, Ariz. Democratic Gov. Bruce Babbitt repeatedly deployed state police and National Guardsmen to assist the company over the course of the strike, which broke the union - 1983

Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union merges with Int’l Ladies' Garment Workers Union to form Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees - 1995

Int’l Chemical Workers Union merges with United Food & Commercial Workers Int'l Union - 1996

The Newspaper Guild merges with Communications Workers of America - 1997

United American Nurses affiliate with the AFL-CIO - 2001