FEBRUARY 5
1830 – First daily Labor newspaper, N.Y. Daily Sentinel, begins publication.
1993 – President Bill Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave Act. The law requires most employers of 50 or more workers to grant up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for a family or medical emergency.
2003 – In what turns out to be a bad business decision, Circuit City fires 3,900 experienced sales people because they’re making too much in commissions. Sales plummet. Six years later the company declares bankruptcy.
FEBRUARY 6
1896 – Ironworkers from six cities meet in Pittsburgh to form the Int’l Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers of America.
1910 – Philadelphia shirtwaist makers vote to accept arbitration offer and end walkout as Triangle Shirtwaist strike winds down.
1919 – Seattle General Strike begins. The city was run by a General Strike Committee for six days as tens of thousands of union members stopped work in support of 32,000 striking longshoremen.
FEBRUARY 7
1894 – Union miners in Cripple Creek, Colo., begin what is to become a five-month strike that started when mine owners cut wages to $2.50 a day, from $3. The state militia was called out in support of the strikers — the only time in U.S. history that a militia was directed to side with the workers. The strike ended in victory for the union.
1904 – It took 1,231 fire fighters 30 hours to put down The Great Baltimore Fire, which started on this day and destroyed 1,500 buildings over an area of some 140 acres.
1957 – Hockey players formed the NHL Players Association in New York City after owners refuse to release pension plan financial information. The union was busted when owners transferred key activists, but it successfully re-formed 10 years later.
2008 – Thirteen workers are killed, 42 injured in a dust explosion at an Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga.
FEBRUARY 8
1912 – Vigilantes beat IWW organizers for exercising free-speech rights, San Diego.
FEBRUARY 9
1917 – Wobbly activist Tom Mooney convicted in bombing frame-up orchestrated by the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was pardoned and released 22 years later.
1937 – Congress approves legislation allowing for a total of $940 million to be used for Depression-era relief projects, with $790 million intended to be used to fund work relief and flood recovery programs.
1961 – President Kennedy asks Congress to approve creation of the Medicare program, financed by an increase in Social Security taxes, to aid 14.2 million Americans aged 65 or older.
2000 – Some 19,000 Boeing engineers and technical workers in Washington state and Oregon begin what is to become a 40-day strike over economic issues.
FEBRUARY 10
1908 – The American Federation of Labor (AFL) founds the Building and Construction Trades Department as a way to overcome the jurisdictional conflicts occurring in the building and construction unions.
1963 – Eleven members of the Carpenters’ union in Reesor Siding, Northern Ontario are shot, three fatally, by independent local farmer-settlers who were supplying wood to a Spruce Falls Power and Paper Co. plant.
1973 – Forty workers are killed on Staten Island, N.Y., when a huge storage tank filled with liquefied gas explodes.
FEBRUARY 11
1919 – The Seattle General Strike ends after six days. Some 65,000 workers struck for higher pay after two years of World War I wage controls.
1948 – “White Shirt Day” at UAW-represented GM plants. Union members are encouraged to wear white shirts, marking the anniversary of the 1936-1937 Flint sit-down strike that gave the union bargaining rights at the automaker.
1968 – Some 1,300 sanitation workers begin what is to become a 64-day strike in Memphis, ultimately winning union recognition and wage increases.
2011 – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announces he will call out the National Guard, if necessary, to deal with any “unrest” among state employees in the wake of his decision to unilaterally end nearly all collective bargaining rights for the workers.
(Compiled by David Prosten, founder Union Communication Services)
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