This Week In Labor History December 4-10

DECEMBER 4
1943 – President Roosevelt announces the end of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), concluding the four-year run of one of the American government’s most ambitious public works programs.
1952 – UAW President Walter Reuther elected president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

DECEMBER 5
1911 – Unionists John T. and James B. McNamara are sentenced to 15 years and life, respectively, after confessing to dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during a drive to unionize the metal trades in the city.
1955 – Ending a 20-year split, the two largest Labor federations in the U.S. merge to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million.
1999 – AFL-CIO President John Sweeney welcomes the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, declaring, “No deal is better than a bad deal.”
2008 – The U.S. Department of Labor reports employers slashed 533,000 jobs the month before — the most in 34 years — as the Great Recession surged.

DECEMBER 6
1869 – African-American delegates meet in Washington, D.C., to form the Colored National Labor Union as a branch of the all-White National Labor Union created three years earlier. Unlike the NLU, the CNLU welcomed members of all races.
1844 – The Washington Monument is completed in Washington, D.C. On the interior of the monument are 193 commemorative stones, donated by numerous governments and organizations from all over the world; one of them is from the Int’l Typographical Union, founded in 1852.
1907 – A total of 361 coal miners die at Monongah, W.Va., in nation’s worst mining disaster.
1961 – Int’l Glove Workers Union of America merges into Amalgamated Clothing Workers.
1977 – United Mine Workers begin what is to become a 110-day national coal strike.

DECEMBER 7
1888 – Heywood Broun born in New York City. Journalist, columnist and co-founder, in 1933, of The Newspaper Guild.
1896 – Steam boiler operators from 11 cities across the country meet in Chicago to form the National Union of Steam Engineers of America, the forerunner to the Int’l Union of Operating Engineers. Each of the men represented a local union of 40 members or fewer.
1931 – More than 1,600 protesters staged a national hunger march on Washington, D.C., to present demands for unemployment insurance.
1982 – United Hatters, Cap & Millinery Workers Int’l Union merges into Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union.
2009 – Delegates to the founding convention of the National Nurses United (NNU) in Phoenix, Ariz., unanimously endorse the creation of the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in U.S. history.

DECEMBER 8
1886 – Twenty-five unions founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in Columbus, Ohio; Cigarmaker’s union leader Samuel Gompers is elected president.
1962 – One-hundred-fourteen-day newspaper strike begins, New York City.

1993 – President Bill Clinton signs The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
2001 – Nearly 230 jailed teachers — about one-fourth of the 1,000-member Middletown Township, N.J., staff — are ordered freed after they and their colleagues agree to end a nine-day strike and go into mediation with the local school board.
2009 – Faced with a national unemployment rate of 10 percent, President Barack Obama outlines new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals, saying the country must continue to “spend our way out of this recession” until more Americans are back at work.

DECEMBER 9
2001 – Ratification of a new labor agreement at Titan Tire of Natchez, Miss., ends the longest strike in the history of the U.S. tire industry, which began May 1, 1998, at the company’s Des Moines, Iowa, plant.

DECEMBER 10
1906 – First sit-down strike in U.S. called by IWW at General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y.
1948 – Int’l Human Rights Day, commemorating the signing at the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, in part: “Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”
1970 – Cesar Chavez jailed for 14 days for refusing to end United Farm Workers’ lettuce boycott.

(Compiled by David Prosten, founder Union Communication Services)