This Week in Labor History: 8/20 – 8/26

August 20 The Great Fire of 1910, a wildfire that consumed about 3 million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana—an area about the size of Connecticut—claimed the lives of 78 firefighters over two days.  It is believed to be the largest, although not deadliest, fire...

This Week in Labor History: 8/13 – 8/19

August 13 Striking miners at Tracy City, Tenn., capture their mines and free 300 state convict strikebreakers. The convicts had been "leased" to mineowners by officials in an effort to make prisons self-supporting and make a few bucks for the state. The practice...

This Week in Labor History: 8/6 – 8/12

August 06 Cigarmakers' Int’l Union of America merges with Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union - 1974 American Railway Supervisors Association merges with Brotherhood of Railway, Airline & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station...

This Week in Labor History: 7/30 – 8/5

July 30 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965, establishing Medicare and Medicaid - 1965 Former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappears. Declared legally dead in 1982, his body has never been found - 1975 United Airlines agrees to offer...

This Week in Labor History: 7/23 – 7/29

July 23 Anarchist Alexander Berkman shoots and stabs but fails to kill steel magnate Henry Clay Frick in an effort to avenge the Homestead massacre 18 days earlier, in which nine strikers were killed. Berkman also tried to use what was, in effect, a suicide bomb, but...

This Week in Labor History: 7/16 – 7/22

July 16 Ten thousand workers strike Chicago's Int’l Harvester operations - 1919 Martial law declared in strike by longshoremen in Galveston, Texas - 1920 San Francisco Longshoremen's strike spreads, becomes 4-day general strike - 1934 July 17 Two ammunition ships...

This Week in Labor History: 5/28 – 6/3

The Ladies Shoe Binders Society formed in New York - 1835 Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia for dancing the Turkey Trot.  They were on their lunch break, but management thought the dance too racy - 1912 At...