Today in Labor History March 16, 2022

Refusing to accept a 9-cent wage increase, the United Packinghouse Workers of America initiated a nationwide strike against meatpacking companies Swift, Armour, Cudahy, Wilson, Morrell, and others. Packinghouse workers shut down 140 plants around the country. – 1948

The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) was formed in New York to represent New York City public school teachers and later, other education workers in the city. – 1960

On March 16, 1968, a platoon of American soldiers brutally kills as many as 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, one of a cluster of small villages located near the northern coast of South Vietnam. The crime, which was kept secret for nearly two years, later became known as the My Lai Massacre. 

In March 1968, a platoon of soldiers from Charlie Company received word that Viet Cong guerrillas had taken cover in the Quang Ngai village of Son My. The platoon entered one of the village’s four hamlets, My Lai 4, on a search-and-destroy mission on the morning of March 16. Instead of guerrilla fighters, they found unarmed villagers, most of them women, children and old men.