Today in Labor History

August 10  --  Union Communications Services, Inc.
The Air Line Pilots Association is founded at a meeting in Chicago attended by 24 activists from across the country - 1931

Hundreds of Transport Workers Union members descend on a New York City courthouse, offering their own money to bail out their president, Mike Quill, and four other union leaders arrested while making their way through Grand Central Station to union headquarters after picketing the IRT offices in lower Manhattan - 1935

President Roosevelt signs amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act, broadening the program to include dependents and survivors' benefits - 1939

Construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway begins. Ultimately 22,000 workers spent five years building the 2,342-mile route from the Atlantic to the northernmost part of the Great Lakes - 1954

I.W. Abel, president of the United Steel Workers of America from 1965 to 1977, dies at age 79 - 1987

President Barack Obama signs a $26 billion bill designed to protect 300,000 teachers, police and others from layoffs spurred by budgetary crises in states hard-hit by the Great Recession - 2010

August 09
Knights of Labor strike New York Central railroad, ultimately to be defeated by scabbing - 1890

Nine men and one woman meet in Oakland, Calif., to form what was to become the 230,000-member California School Employees Association, representing school support staff throughout the state - 1927

A fire and resultant loss of oxygen when a high pressure hydraulic line was cut with a torch in a Titan missile silo near Searcy, Ark., kills 53 people, mostly civilian repairmen - 1965

United Papermakers & Paperworkers merge with Int'l Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite & Paper Mill Workers of the U.S. & Canada to become United Paperworkers Int’l Union, now a division of the Steelworkers Union - 1972

Some 73,000 Bell Atlantic workers end a successful two-day strike over wages and limits on contracting out of work - 1998

The United Steelworkers and Amicus, the largest manufacturing union in the United Kingdom, announce formation of a strategic alliance to work on a range of mutual concerns - 2005