This Week In Labor History January 1-7

JANUARY 1
1920 – John L. Lewis is elected president of the United Mine Workers. Fifteen years later, he is to be a leader in the formation of what was to become the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
1931 – Workers begin to acquire credits toward Social Security pension benefits. Employers and employees became subject to a tax of one percent of wages on up to $3,000 a year.
1966 – Members of the Transport Workers Union and Amalgamated Transit Union working for the New York transit system begin what is to be a successful 12-day strike.
1994 – North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) takes effect, despite objections by Labor.

JANUARY 2
1920 – In what became known as Palmer Raids, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer arrests 4,000 foreign-born labor activists.
2006 – An underground explosion at Sago Mine in Tallmansville, W. Va., traps 12 miners and cuts power to the mine. Eleven men die, mostly by asphyxiation. The mine had been cited 273 times for safety violations over the prior 23 months.

JANUARY 3
1949 – The Supreme Court rules against the closed shop, a Labor-management agreement that only union members can be hired and must remain members to continue on the job.

1981 – AFL-CIO American Institute for Free Labor Development employees Mike Hammer and Mark Pearlman are assassinated in El Salvador along with a Peasant Workers’ Union leader with whom they were working on a land reform program.

JANUARY 4
1961 – What many believe to be the longest strike in modern history, by Danish barbers’ assistants, ends after 33 years.

JANUARY 5
1869 – The nation’s first Labor convention of Black workers was held in Washington, D.C., with 214 delegates forming the Colored National Labor Union.
1914 – Ford Motor Company raises wages from $2.40 for a nine-hour day to $5 for an eight-hour day in effort to keep the unions out.
1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins. Ten of the 11 deaths on the job came when safety netting beneath the site — the first-ever use of such equipment — failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen.

JANUARY 6
1882 – The Toronto Trades and Labour Council endorses the principle of equal pay for equal work between men and women.
1916 – Eight thousand workers strike at Youngstown Sheet & Tube. The following day the strikers’ wives and other family members join in the protest. Company guards use tear gas bombs and fire into the crowd; three strikers are killed, 25 wounded.

JANUARY 7
1892 – An explosion at Osage Coal and Mining Company’s Mine Number 11 near Krebs, Okla., kills 100, injures 150 when an untrained worker accidentally sets off a stash of explosives.

(Compiled by David Prosten, founder Union Communication Services)