This week in labor history: March 7-13

MARCH 7
1860 – Some 6,000 shoemakers, joined by about 20,000 other workers, strike in Lynn, Mass. They won raises, but not recognition of their union.
1932 – Three thousand unemployed auto workers, led by the Communist Party of America, braved the cold in Dearborn, Mich., to demand jobs and relief from Henry Ford. The marchers got too close to the gate and were gassed. After regrouping, they were sprayed with water and shot at. Four men died immediately; 60 were wounded.
1937 – Steel Workers Organizing Committee — soon to become the United Steel Workers — signs its first-ever contract, with Carnegie-Illinois, for $5 a day in wages, benefits.
1942 – IWW founder and Labor organizer Lucy Parsons dies.
1988 – Hollywood writers represented by the Writers Guild of America strike against 200 television and movie studios over residuals payments and creative rights. The successful strike lasted 150 days, one of the longest in industry history.
2003 – Musicians strike Broadway musicals and shows go dark when actors and stagehands honor picket lines. The strike was resolved after four days.

MARCH 8
1924 – Three explosions at a Utah Fuel Co. mine in Castle Gate, Utah, kill 171. Fifty of the fatalities were native-born Greeks, 25 were Italians, 32 English or Scots, 12 Welsh, four Japanese, and three Austrians (or South Slavs). The youngest victim was 15; the oldest, 73.
1926 – New York members of the Fur and Leather Workers Union, many of them women, strike for better pay and conditions. They persevere despite beatings by police, winning a 10 percent wage increase and a five-day workweek.
1932 – The Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act took effect on this day. It limits the ability of federal judges to issue injunctions against workers and unions involved in Labor disputes.
1977 – With roots in the socialist movements of the early 20th century, the first International Women’s Day is commemorated as established by the United Nations General Assembly.
1979 – César Chávez leads 5,000 striking farmworkers on a march through the streets of Salinas, Calif.

MARCH 9
1912 – The Westmoreland County (Pa.) Coal Strike — known as the “Slovak strike” because some 70 percent of the 15,000 strikers were Slovakian immigrants — begins on this date and continues for nearly 16 months before ending in defeat. Sixteen miners and family members were killed during the strike.
1933 – Spurred by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. Congress begins its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation. Just one of many programs established to help Americans survive the Great Depression was The Civilian Conservation Corps, which put 2.5 million young men on the government payroll to help in national conservation and infrastructure projects.
1974 – Work begins on the $8 billion, 800-mile-long Alaska Oil pipeline connecting oil fields in northern Alaska to the seaport at Valdez. Tens of thousands of people worked on the pipeline, enduring long hours, cold temperatures and brutal conditions. At least 32 died on the job.

MARCH 10
1919 – U.S. Supreme Court upholds espionage conviction of Labor leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs. Debs was jailed for speaking out against World War I. Campaigning for president from his Atlanta jail cell, he won 3.4 percent of the vote — nearly a million votes.
1941 – New York City bus drivers, members of the Transport Workers Union, go on strike. After 12 days of no buses — and a large show of force by Irish-American strikers at the St. Patrick’s Day parade — Mayor Fiorello La Guardia orders arbitration.
1968 – United Farm Workers leader César Chávez breaks a 24-day fast, by doctor’s order, at a mass in Delano, California’s public park. Several thousand supporters were at his side, including Sen. Robert Kennedy. Chavez called it “a fast for non-violence and a call to sacrifice.”

MARCH 11
1811 – Luddites smash 63 “labor-saving” textile machines near Nottingham, England.
1950 – Transport Workers Union members at American Airlines win 11-day national strike, gaining what the union says was the first severance pay clause in industry.

MARCH 12
1901 – Greedy industrialist turned benevolent philanthropist Andrew Carnegie pledges $5.2 million for the construction of 65 branch libraries in New York City — barely one percent of his net worth at the time. He established more than 2,500 libraries between 1900 and 1919 following years of treating workers in his steel plants brutally, demanding long hours in horrible conditions and fighting their efforts to unionize. Carnegie made $500 million when he sold out to J.P. Morgan, becoming the world’s richest man.
1904 – The first tunnel under the Hudson River is completed after 30 years of drilling, connecting Jersey City and Manhattan. In just one of many tragedies during the project, 20 workers died on a single day in 1880 when the tunnel flooded.
1912 – The Lawrence, Mass., “Bread and Roses” textile strike ends when the American Woolen Co. agrees to most of the strikers’ demands; other textile companies quickly followed suit.
2004 – Steelworkers approve a settlement with Oregon Steel Mills, Inc. and its CF&I Steel subsidiary, ending the longest labor dispute in the USWA’s history and resulting in more than $100 million in back pay for workers.

MARCH 13
1830 – The term “rat,” referring to a worker who betrays fellow workers, first appears in print in the New York Daily Sentinel. The newspaper was quoting a typesetter while reporting on replacement workers who had agreed to work for two-thirds of the going rate.
1884 – “The laborers on the Cape Cod ship canal refuse to work and say they will not return until better food is provided.” No further details were offered in this Trenton Times report.
1946 – A four-month UAW strike at General Motors ends with a new contract. The strikers were trying to make up for the lack of wage hikes during World War II.

(Compiled by David Prosten, founder of Union Communication Services)