September 17 --
Seventy-five workers die in explosion at Allegheny Arsenal, Pittsburgh, Pa. - 1862
At a New York convention of the National
Labor Congress, Susan B. Anthony calls for the formation of a Working
Women's Association. As a delegate to the Congress, she persuaded the
committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. But male delegates deleted the reference to the vote - 1868
One hundred thousand Pennsylvania
anthracite coal miners go on strike. Their average annual wage is $250.
They are paid by the ton, defined by Pennsylvania as 2,400 pounds, but
which mine operators have increased to as much as 4,000 pounds - 1900
(Breaker: A Boy’s Story of the 1902 Pennsylvania Coal Strike is the story of the 1902 Pennsylvania coal miners’ strike seen through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Pat McFarlane. Pat lives in Scatter Patch, a small town of immigrants and poor, working-class citizens ruled by the anthracite mine and run by a rich and aloof boss. ("They don’t suffer," said mine owner George Baer during the 1902 strike. "They don’t even speak English." Real quote, not fiction!) When his father is killed in a massive cave-in, Pat must go to work as a breaker boy. Under terrible and dangerous conditions, he and the other boys spend their days picking slate out of streams of coal. Highly recommended for young adults, ages 10-14.)
National Federation of Federal Employees
(NFFE) formed at a convention in Washington, D.C. In 1999 it became
part of the Int’l Association of Machinists (IAM) - 1917
Some Depression-era weekly paychecks
around the New York area: physician, $55.32; engineer, $40.68; clerk,
$22.15; salesman, $25.02; laborer, $20; typist, $15.09 - 1933
Southern employers meeting in
Greenville, N.C., ready their big counter-offensive to break the textile
labor strikes that have hit the Eastern seaboard. Ultimately they
deploy 10,000 national guardsmen and 15,000 deputies, but fail to drive
hundreds of thousands of strikers back to work - 1934
A Southern Pacific train loaded with
sugar beets strikes a makeshift bus filled with 60 migrant workers near
Salinas, Calif., killing 32. The driver said the bus was so crowded he
couldn't see the train coming - 1963
A total of 98 United Mine Workers of
America members and a minister occupy the Pittston Coal Company's Moss 3
preparation plant in Carbon, Va., beginning a year-long strike. Among
other issues: management demands for drastic limitations in health and
pension benefits for retired and disabled miners and their dependents
and beneficiaries - 1989
The Occupy Wall Street movement is
launched with an anti-Wall Street march and demonstration that ended up
as a 2-month encampment in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. The event led to
protests and movements around the world, with their focus on economic
inequality, corruption, greed and the influence on government of monied
interests. Their slogan: “We are the 99%.” - 2011
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