Today in Labor History

September 09  --  Union Communications Services, Inc.

In convention at Topeka, Kan., delegates create the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America. The men who repaired the nation's rail cars were paid 10 or 15¢ an hour, working 12 hours a day, often seven days a week - 1890

More than a thousand Boston police officers strike after 19 union leaders are fired for organizing activities. Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge announced that none of the strikers would be rehired, mobilized the state police, and recruited an entirely new police force from among unemployed veterans of the Great War (World War I) - 1919

Sixteen striking Filipino sugar workers on the Hawaiian island of Kauai are killed by police; four police died as well. Many of the surviving strikers were jailed, then deported - 1924

United Auto Workers President Leonard Woodcock is named in Pres. Richard Nixon’s “Enemy’s List,” a White House compilation of Americans Nixon regarded as major political opponents.  Another dozen union presidents were added later.  The existence of the list was revealed during Senate Watergate Committee hearings - 1973

On this day in history, Sept. 9, 1919, Boston police walked off the job at 5:45 pm. They were fed up with working 73-, 83- and 98-hour weeks and earning less than unskilled factory workers. The public had been fed propaganda about the "Bolshevik menace" and the newspapers went wild attacking the strikers. Some gangs took advantage of the strike to loot and vandalize, which the press also sensationalized. Gov. Calvin Coolidge called in the militia and order was quickly restored, but the damage was done. The strike was broken, and Coolidge parlayed his fame into the White House.