DECEMBER 11
1886 – A small group of Black farmers organize the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union in Houston County, Texas. They had been barred from membership in the all-White Southern Farmers’ Alliance.
1951 – Ten days after an Illinois State mine inspector approved coal dust removal techniques at New Orient mine in West Frankfort, the mine exploded, apparently due to accumulated methane gas, killing 119 workers.
1968 – The U.S. Department of Labor announces that the nation’s unemployment rate had dropped to 3.3 percent, the lowest mark in 15 years.
1995 – Forty thousand workers go on general strike in London, Ontario — a city with a population of 300,000 — protesting cuts in social services.
2012 – Michigan becomes the 24th state to adopt so-called “right-to-work” legislation. The Republican-dominated state Senate introduced two measures — one covering private workers, the other covering public workers — by surprise five days earlier and immediately voted their passage; the Republican House approved them five days later (the fastest it legally could) and the Republican governor immediately signed both bills.
DECEMBER 12
2006 – A U.S. immigration sweep of six Swift meat plants results in arrests of nearly 1,300 undocumented workers.
DECEMBER 13
1924 – Death in San Antonio, Texas, of Samuel Gompers, president and founder of the American Federation of Labor.
DECEMBER 14
1995 – Some 33,000 striking members of the Machinists end a 69-day walkout at Boeing after winning pay and benefit increases and protections against subcontracting some of their work overseas.
DECEMBER 15
1913 – AFL convention passes a one-cent per capita assessment to aid the organization of women workers.
1921 – The Kansas National Guard is called out to subdue from 2,000 to 6,000 protesting women who were going from mine to mine attacking non-striking miners in the Pittsburg coal fields. The women made headlines across the state and the nation: they were christened the “Amazon Army” by the New York Times.
1941 – Eight days after the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, the AFL pledges that there will be no strikes in defense-related plants for the duration of World War II.
1967 – The U.S. Age Discrimination in Employment Act becomes law. It bars employment discrimination against anyone aged 40 or older.
2003 – California’s longest nurses’ strike ended after workers at Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo and Pinole approved a new contract with Tenet Healthcare Corp., ending a 13-month walkout.
2005 – Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers union organizer Clinton Jencks, who led New Mexico zinc miners in the strike depicted in the classic 1954 movie “Salt of the Earth,” dies of natural causes in San Diego at age 87.
DECEMBER 16
1900 – The National Civic Federation is formed by business and Labor leaders, most prominently AFL President Sam Gompers, as a vehicle to resolve conflicts between management and Labor. Not all unionists agreed with the alliance. The group turned increasingly conservative and Labor withdrew after Gompers’ 1924 death.
1902 – New York City’s Majestic Theater becomes first in the U.S. to employ women ushers.
1951 – The Bagel Bakers of America union is continuing a work slowdown at 32 of New York’s 34 bagel bakeries in a dispute over health and welfare fund payments and workplace sanitation, the New York Times reports.
1968 – Four railway unions merge to become the United Transportation Union: Trainmen, Firemen & Enginemen, Switchmen, and Conductors and Brakemen.
1977 – Eight female bank tellers in Willmar, Minn., begin the first strike against a bank in U.S. history. At issue: they were paid little more than half what male tellers were paid. The strike ended in moral victory but economic defeat two years later.
DECEMBER 17
1996 – Int’l Union of Aluminum, Brick & Glass Workers merges with United Steelworkers of America.
(Compiled by David Prosten, founder Union Communication Services)
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