November 14 --
Trade unions form the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Organizations, later becoming the AFL. Under the leadership of Samuel Gompers and Peter McGuire, the AFL became the most influential labor organization in the nation - 1881
Women’s Trade Union League founded, Boston - 1903
The American Railway Supervisors Association is formed at Harmony Hall in Chicago by 29 supervisors working for the Chicago & North Western Railway. They organized after realizing that those railroaders working under their supervision already had the benefits of unionization and were paid more for working fewer hours - 1934
The Depression-era Public Works Administration agrees with New York City today to begin a huge slum clearance project covering 20 acres in Brooklyn, where low cost housing for 2,500 families will be completed. It was the first of many such jobs-and-housing projects across the country - 1934
The National Federation of Telephone Workers—later to become the Communications Workers of America—is founded in New Orleans - 1938
To “organize workers into a powerful industrial union,” United Mine Workers of America President John L. Lewis calls a meeting in Pittsburgh’s Islam Grotto, founding the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) - 1938
(There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America is a sympathetic, thoughtful and highly readable history of the
American labor movement traces unionism from the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1820s to organized labor’s decline in the 1980s and struggle for survival and growth today.)
(There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America is a sympathetic, thoughtful and highly readable history of the
American labor movement traces unionism from the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1820s to organized labor’s decline in the 1980s and struggle for survival and growth today.)
Jimmy Carter-era OSHA publishes standard reducing permissible exposure of lead, protecting 835,000 workers from damage to nervous, urinary and reproductive systems - 1978
Federation of Professional Athletes granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1979
November 13
A total of 259 miners died in the underground Cherry Mine fire. As a result of the disaster, Illinois established stricter safety regulations and in 1911, the basis for the state’s Workers Compensation Act was passed - 1909
(Fire in the Hole! Fourteen-year-old Mick doesn’t want to end up like his father, a rough-hewn miner working for low wages in the Coeur d’Alene silver-mining district of Idaho. He doesn't like the militant, often confrontational approach of his father’s union as the men struggle against an uncaring mine owner and would rather do his fighting with words like his mentor, Mr. Delaney, who runs the town newspaper. But when a handful of radicals blow up the mining company’s ore-concentrating mill, Mick’s dreams blow up with it.)
(Fire in the Hole! Fourteen-year-old Mick doesn’t want to end up like his father, a rough-hewn miner working for low wages in the Coeur d’Alene silver-mining district of Idaho. He doesn't like the militant, often confrontational approach of his father’s union as the men struggle against an uncaring mine owner and would rather do his fighting with words like his mentor, Mr. Delaney, who runs the town newspaper. But when a handful of radicals blow up the mining company’s ore-concentrating mill, Mick’s dreams blow up with it.)
A Western Federation of Miners strike is crushed by the militia in Butte, Mont. - 1914
The Holland Tunnel opens, running under the Hudson River for 1.6 miles and connecting the island of Manhattan in New York City with Jersey City, N.J. Thirteen workers died over its 7-year-long construction - 1927
GM workers’ post-war strike for higher wages closes 96 plants - 1945
Striking typesetters at the Green Bay, Wisc., Press Gazette start a competing newspaper, The Green Bay Daily News. With financial support from a local businessman who hated the Press Gazette, the union ran the paper for four years before their angel died and it was sold to another publisher. The Gannett chain ultimately bought the paper, only to fold it in 2005 - 1972
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union activist Karen Silkwood is killed in a suspicious car crash on her way to deliver documents to a newspaper reporter during a safety investigation of her Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant in Oklahoma - 1974
(The Killing of Karen Silkwood: This is an updated edition of the groundbreaking book about the death of union activist Karen Silkwood, an employee of a plutonium processing plant, who was killed in a mysterious car crash on her way to deliver important documents to a newspaper reporter in 1974. Silkwood’s death at age 28 was highly suspicious: she had been working on health and safety issues at the plant, and a lot of people stood to benefit by her death.)
(The Killing of Karen Silkwood: This is an updated edition of the groundbreaking book about the death of union activist Karen Silkwood, an employee of a plutonium processing plant, who was killed in a mysterious car crash on her way to deliver important documents to a newspaper reporter in 1974. Silkwood’s death at age 28 was highly suspicious: she had been working on health and safety issues at the plant, and a lot of people stood to benefit by her death.)
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