JUNE 5
1976 – Thirty-five members of the Teamsters, concerned about the infiltration of organized crime in the union and other issues, meet in Cleveland to form Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
1998 – A strike begins at a General Motors Corp. parts factory in Flint, Mich., that spreads and ultimately forces the closure of GM plants across the country for seven weeks.
JUNE 6
1933 – The U.S. Employment Service was created.
1937 – A general strike by some 12,000 autoworkers and others in Lansing, Mich., shuts down the city for a month in what was to become known as the city’s “Labor Holiday.”
1948 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman and American Federation of Musicians President James Petrillo perform a piano duet at the union’s convention in Asbury Park, N.J.
1996 – Labor Party founding convention opens in Cleveland, Ohio.
JUNE 7
1904 – Militia sent to Cripple Creek, Colo., to suppress Western Federation of Miners strike.
1929 – Striking textile workers battle police in Gastonia, N.C. Police Chief O.F. Aderholt is accidentally killed by one of his own officers. Six strike leaders are convicted of “conspiracy to murder” and are sentenced to jail for from five to 20 years.
1979 – Founding convention of the United Food and Commercial Workers. The merger brought together the Retail Clerks Int’l Union and the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.
2006 – The United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club announce the formation of a strategic alliance to pursue a joint public policy agenda under the banner of Good Jobs, A Clean Environment and A Safer World.
JUNE 8
1852 – The earliest recorded strike by Chinese immigrants to the U.S. occurred when stonemasons, who were brought to San Francisco to build the three-story Parrott granite building — made from Chinese prefabricated blocks — struck for higher pay.
1904 – A battle between the Militia and striking miners at Dunnville, Colo., ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later.
1917 – Spectator mine disaster kills 168, Butte, Mont.
1966 – Some 35,000 members of the Machinists union begin what is to become a 43-day strike—the largest in airline history—against five carriers. The mechanics and other ground service workers wanted to share in the airlines’ substantial profits.
1971 – New York City drawbridge tenders, in a dispute with the state over pension issues, leave a dozen bridges open, snarling traffic in what the Daily News described as “the biggest traffic snafu in the city’s history.”
JUNE 9
1865 – Helen Marot is born in Philadelphia to a wealthy family. She went on to organize the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union in New York, and to organize and lead the city’s 1909-1910 Shirtwaist Strike. In 1912, she was a member of a commission investigating the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
JUNE 10
1937 – The mayor of Monroe, Mich. organizes a vigilante mob of 1,400 armed with baseball bats and tear gas to break the organizing picket line of 200 striking workers at Newton Steel. The line is broken; eight are injured and hospitalized.
1946 – U.S. Supreme Court rules in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. that preliminary work activities, where controlled by the employer and performed entirely for the employer’s benefit, are properly included as working time.
1963 – President Kennedy signs a law mandating equal pay to women who are performing the same jobs as men (Equal Pay Act).
JUNE 11
1913 – Police shoot at maritime workers striking United Fruit Co. in New Orleans; one killed, two wounded.
1969 – John L. Lewis dies. A legendary figure, he was president of the United Mine Workers from 1920 to 1960 and a driving force behind the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
(Compiled by David Prosten, founder of Union Communication Services)
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