Today in Labor History

March 28  --   Union Communications Services, Inc.

Members of Gas House Workers’ Union Local 18799 begin what is to become a 4-month recognition strike against the Laclede Gas Light Co. in St. Louis. The union later said the strike was the first ever against a public utility in the U.S. - 1935

Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march of striking sanitation workers, members of AFSCME Local 1733, in Memphis, Tenn. Violence during the march persuades him to return the following week to Memphis, where he was assassinated – 1968

March 27

Mother Jones is ordered to leave Colorado, where state authorities accuse her of “stirring up” striking coal miners - 1904

(Mother Jones Speaks: Speeches and Writings: Admirers and students of Mother Jones will want this comprehensive collection of her speeches, letters, articles, interviews and testimony before Congressional committees. In her own words, this brave and determined heroine to millions of workers, active from the end of the Civil War until shortly before her death in 1930, explains her life, her mission, her passion on behalf of working people. Here are her fiery speeches to crowds of striking miners, textile workers, railroad workers and others; her correspondence with political and union leaders of her era—even newspaper accounts of her activities that include confrontations with police and militia.)
 
U.S. Supreme Court rules that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired - 2002