Saturday, February 01, 2014

Today in Labor History

February 012014.01.27history-strike-bookcover
Led by 23-year-old Kate Mullaney, the Collar Laundry Union forms in Troy, N.Y., and raises earnings for female laundry workers from $2 to $14 a week - 1864
Bricklayers begin working 8-hour days - 1867
Some 25,000 Paterson, N.J., silk workers strike for 8-hour work day and improved working conditions.  Eighteen hundred were arrested over the course of the six-month walkout, led by the Wobblies.  They returned to work on their employers’ terms - 1913
(Strike!: Read about the Paterson silk workers and other strikes in this book which tells you something your school history books almost certainly did not: how working Americans for the past 125 years have used the strike again and again to win a degree of justice and fair play.)
The federal minimum wage increases to $1.60 per hour - 1968
Int’l Brotherhood of Firemen & Oilers merge with Service Employees Int’l Union - 1995

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