This week in labor history: August 29-September 4

AUGUST 29
1907 – Seventy-five workers die when the lower St. Lawrence River’s Quebec Bridge collapses while under construction.  A flawed design was found to be the cause.  Thirteen more workers were killed nine years later when the reconstructed bridge’s central span was being raised and fell into the river because of a problem with hoisting devices.
1998 – Northwest Airlines pilots, after years of concessions to help the airline, begin what is to become a two-week strike for higher pay.

AUGUST 30
1935 – President Franklin Roosevelt’s Wealth Tax Act increases taxes on rich citizens and big business, lowers taxes for small businesses.
1966 – OSHA publishes scaffold safety standard, designed to protect 2.3 million construction workers and prevent 50 deaths and 4,500 injuries annually.

AUGUST 31
1919 – John Reed forms the Communist Labor Party in Chicago.  The Party’s motto: “Workers of the world, unite!”
1912 – Some 10,000 striking miners began a fight at Blair Mountain, W.Va., for recognition of their union, the United Mine Workers of America. Federal troops were sent in and miners were forced to withdraw five days later, after 16 deaths.
1980 – “Solidarity” workers movement founded as a strike coordination committee at Lenin Shipyards, Gdansk, Poland. The strike launched a wave of unrest in the Soviet Union that ultimately led to its dissolution in 1991.
1991 – An estimated 325,000 unionists gathered in Washington, D.C., for a Solidarity Day march and rally for workplace fairness and healthcare reform.

SEPTEMBER 1
1894 – Congress declares Labor Day a national holiday.
1903 – Some 30,000 women from 26 trades marched in Chicago’s Labor Day parade.
1934 – A three-week strike in Woonsocket, R.I., part of a national movement to obtain a minimum wage for textile workers, resulted in the deaths of three workers. Ultimately more than 420,000 workers struck nationally.
1946 – In Hawaii, some 26,000 sugar workers represented by the Longshoremen’s union begin what is to become a successful 79-day strike that shuts down 33 of the 34 sugar plantations on the islands. The strike brought an end to Hawaii’s paternalistic labor relations and impacted political and social institutions throughout the then-territory.
1960 – Some 20,000 Pa. Railroad shop workers effectively halt operations in 13 states for 12 days. It was the first shutdown in the company’s 114-year history.

2013 – Margaret Mary Vojtko dies at age 83 in Homestead, Pennsylvania. She was an adjunct professor of French and medieval literature at Duquensne Unversity for 25 years — a pay-by-the-courses-taught part-timer with no benefits — before being told her contract wouldn’t be renewed, but was offered a tutoring job at two-thirds her old salary. She was making so little that she slept in her office, being unable to afford to heat her home because of medical bills. She had been active in trying to form an adjunct’s union. She died five months after being fired.

SEPTEMBER 2
1885 – White and Chinese immigrants battle in Rock Springs, Wyo., fueled by racial tensions and the practice of Union Pacific Railroad of hiring lower-paid Chinese over Whites. At least 25 Chinese died and 15 more were injured. Rioters burned 75 Chinese homes.
1921 – Mine owners bomb West Virginia strikers by plane, using homemade bombs filled with nails and metal fragments. The bombs missed their targets or failed to explode.
1954 – President Eisenhower signs legislation expanding Social Security by providing much wider coverage and including 10 million additional Americans, most of them self-employed farmers, with additional benefits.
1974 – The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was signed by President Ford, regulating and insuring pensions and other benefits and increasing protections for workers

SEPTEMBER 3
1891 – African-American cotton pickers organize and strike in Lee County, Texas, against miserably low wages and other injustices, including a growers’ arrangement with local law enforcement to round up Blacks on vagrancy charges, then force them to work off their fines on select plantations.  Throughout September a White mob put down the strike, killing 15 strikers in the process.
1928 – Some 300 musicians working in Chicago movie houses strike to protest their impending replacement by talking movies.
1991 – Twenty-five workers die, unable to escape a fire at the Imperial Poultry processing plant in Hamlet, N.C. Managers had locked fire doors to prevent the theft of chicken nuggets. The plant had operated for 11 years without a single safety inspection.

SEPTEMBER 4
1894 – Twelve thousand New York tailors strike over sweatshop conditions.
1991 – In what many believe was to become the longest strike in U.S. history, 600 Teamster-represented workers walk out at the Diamond Walnut processing plant in Stockton, Calif., after the company refused to restore a 30-percent pay cut they had earlier taken to help out the company.  The two sides ultimately agreed to a new contract after 14 years.

(Compiled by David Prosten, founder of Union Communication Services)