Today in labor history for the week of May 5, 2008

May 05
Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested in Boston for murder and payroll robbery. Eventually they are executed for a crime most believe they did not commit - 1920

Heavily armed deputies and other mineowner hirelings attack striking miners in Harlan County, Ky., starting the Battle of Harlan County - 1931

Lumber strike begins in Pacific Northwest, will involve 40,000 workers by the time victory is achieved after 13 weeks: union recognition, a 50 cent per our minimum wage and an eight-hour day - 1937

The U.S. unemployment rate drops to a 30-year low of 3.9 percent; the rate for blacks and Hispanics is the lowest ever since the government started tracking such data - 2000

May 06
Works Projects Administration (WPA) established, provided work opportunities for millions during the Great Depression - 1935

400 black women working as tobacco stemmers walk off the job in a spontaneous revolt against poor working conditions and a $3 weekly wage at the Vaughan Co. in Richmond, Va. - 1937

May 07
The Knights of St. Crispin union is formed at a secret meeting in Milwaukee. It grew to 50,000 members before being crushed by employers later that year - 1867

Two die, 20 are injured in “Bloody Tuesday” as strikebreakers attempt to run San Francisco streetcars during a strike by operators. The strike was declared lost in 1908, after many more deaths, including several in scab-operated streetcar accidents - 1907

May 08
The constitution of the Brotherhood of the Footboard was ratified by engineers in Detroit, Mich. Later Became the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers - 1863

May 09
Legendary Western Federation of Miners leader William “Big Bill” Haywood goes on trial for murder in the bombing death of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, who had brutally suppressed the state’s miners. Haywood ultimately was declared innocent - 1907

Longshoremen’s strike to gain control of hiring leads to general work stoppage, San Francisco Bay area - 1934

United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and his wife May die in a plane crash as they travel to oversee construction of the union’s education and training facility at Black Lake, Mich. - 1971

4,000 garment workers, mostly Hispanic, strike for union recognition at the Farah Mfg. Co. in El Paso, Tex. - 1972

May 10
Thanks to an army of thousands of Chinese and Irish immigrants, who laid 2,000 miles of track, the nation’s first transcontinental railway line was finished by the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines at Promontory Point, Utah – 1869

U.S. & Canadian workers form Western Labor Union - 1898

A federal bankruptcy judge frees United Airlines from responsibility for pensions covering 120,000 employees - 2005

May 11
Nationwide railway strike begins at Pullman, Ill. 260,000 railroad workers ultimately joined the strike to protest wage cuts by the Pullman Palace Car Co. - 1894

 

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota