Colorad Labor Blog

by James Hansen

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• This week In labor history

  March 25
  
  Toronto printers strike for the 9-hour day in what is believed to be Canada’s first major strike -1872
  

  First “Poor People’s March” on Washington, in which jobless workers demanded creation of a public works program. Led by populist Jacob Coxey, the 500 to 1,000 unemployed protesters became known as “Coxey’s Army” - 1894
  

  A total of 146 workers are killed in a fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a disaster that would launch a national movement for safer working conditions - 1911
  

  An explosion at a coal mine in Centralia, Ill., kills 111 miners. Mineworkers President John L. Lewis calls a 6-day work stoppage by the nation’s 400,000 soft coal miners to demand safer working conditions - 1947
  

  March 26
  
  San Francisco brewery workers begin a 9-month strike as local employers follow the union-busting lead of the National Brewer’s Association. and fire their unionized workers, replacing them with scabs. Two unionized brewers refused to go along, kept producing beer, prospered wildly and induced the Association to capitulate. A contract benefit since having unionized two years earlier, certainly worth defending: free beer - 1868
  

  March 27
  
  Mother Jones is ordered to leave Colorado, where state authorities accuse her of “stirring up” striking coal miners - 1904
  

  U.S. Supreme Court rules that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired - 2002
  

  March 28
  
  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 in Memphis, Tenn. Violence during the march persuades him to return the following week to Memphis, where he was assassinated - 1968
  

  March 29
  
  Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 and women to work more than 10 hours a day - 1852
  

  Sam Walton, founder of the huge and bitterly anti-union Wal-Mart empire, born in Kingfisher, Okla. He once said that his priority was to “Buy American,” but Wal-Mart is now the largest U.S. importer of foreign-made goods—often produced under sweatshop conditions - 1918
  

  “Battle of Wall Street,” police charge members of the United Financial Employees’ Union, striking against the New York Stock Exchange and New York Curb Exchange (now known as the American Stock Exchange). Forty-three workers are arrested in what was to be the first and only strike in the history of either exchange - 1948
  

  National Maritime Union of America merges with National Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association - 1988
  

  March 30
  
  Chicago stockyard workers win 8-hour day - 1918
  

  At the height of the Great Depression, 35,000 unemployed march in New York’s Union Square. Police beat many demonstrators, injuring 100 - 1930
  

  The federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act is enacted - 1970
  

  Harry Bridges, Australian-born dock union leader, dies at age 88. He helped form and lead the Int’l Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for 40 years. A Bridges quote: “The most important word in the language of the working class is ‘solidarity’” - 1990
  

  Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild announce that the membership has voted to merge with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, creating the 150,000-member SAG-AFTRA - 2012
  

  March 31
  
  President Martin Van Buren issues a broadly-applicable executive order granting the 10-hour day to all government employees engaged in manual labor - 1840
  

  Cowboys earning $40 per month begin what is to become an unsuccessful two-and-a-half-month strike for higher wages at five ranches in the Texas Panhandle - 1883
  

  Cesar Chavez born in Yuma, Ariz.- 1927
  

  Construction begins on the three-mile Hawk’s Nest Tunnel through Gauley Mountain, W. Va., as part of a hydroelectric project. A congressional hearing years later was to report that 476 laborers in the mostly black, migrant workforce of 3,000 were exposed to silica rock dust in the course of their 10-hour-a-day, six-days-a-week shifts and died of silicosis. Some researchers say that more than 1,000 died - 1930
  

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs legislation establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps to help alleviate suffering during the Depression. By the time the program ended after the start of World War II it had provided jobs for more than six million men and boys. The average enrollee gained 11 pounds in his first three months - 1933
  

  Wisconsin state troopers fail to get scabs across the picket line to break a 76-day Allis-Chalmers strike in Milwaukee led by UAW Local 248. The plant remained closed until the government negotiated a compromise - 1941
  

  Federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, later to become a Supreme Court justice, issues an injunction against baseball team owners to end a 232-day work stoppage - 1995
  

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• Thought for the Day

  A question for the Colorado Democratic congressional delegation
  
  Hey, Michael Bennet, Mark Udall, Diana Degette, Ed Perlmutter and Jared Polis:
  
  Where do you stand on the war on the middle class and the unions being waged In Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Missouri, New Mexico and Ohio?
  
  We haven’t heard from you. We really need to know who is on our side in this historic struggle.
  
  Please let us know.
  
  Thanks
  
  –JH
  
  

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