Today in Labor History

November 07  --  Union Communications Services, Inc.

Some 1,300 building trades workers in eastern Massachusetts participated in a general strike on all military work in the area to protest the use of open-shop (a worksite in which union membership is not required as a condition of employment) builders. The strike held on for a week in the face of threats from the U.S. War Department - 1917

President Eisenhower’s use of the Taft-Hartley Act is upheld by the Supreme Court, breaking a 116-day steel strike - 1959

Lemuel Ricketts Boulware dies in Delray Beach, Fla., at age 95. As a GE vice president in the 1950s he created the policy known as Boulwarism, in which management decides what is "fair" and refuses to budge on anything during contract negotiations. IUE President Paul Jennings described the policy as "telling the workers what they are entitled to and then trying to shove it down their throats." - 1990

(Offensive Bargaining: Negotiating Aggressively in Contract Campaigns: David Rosenfeld, partner in a well-known California labor law firm, has represented unions in negotiations since 1973, and in the process has developed an arsenal of tactics, contained in this controlled-availability book, to deal with and overcome employers who refuse to bargain in good faith. Rosenfeld shows you how to fight fire with fire, and then some.
   Union negotiators are offered techniques to meet particularly harsh or outrageous employer proposals and tactics, use information requests in ways you never thought of, prevent impasse and force employers to withdraw concessionary demands, bargain for a first contract, and much, much more. If you ever face negotiations with a difficult employer, you need this book.)

November 06

A coal mine explosion in Spangler, Pa., kills 79. The mine had been rated gaseous in 1918, but at the insistence of new operators it was rated as non-gaseous even though miners had been burned by gas on at least four occasions - 1922