2020-06
2020-06
Monday Jun 22, 2020
SCOTUS bans LGBTQ workplace discrimination; Queer history of the UAW
Monday Jun 22, 2020
Monday Jun 22, 2020
“You're 36% more likely if you're LGBTQ to have either lost your job or had your hours reduced since COVID-19 hit and for black queer folks, that's over 40% more likely.”Pride At Work Executive Director Jerame Davis and activist and author (“Steel Closets” and “Semi Queer”) Anne Balay on last week’s historic Supreme Court ruling banning workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. “The MCS -- the Marine Cooks and Stewards union -- had this turn of phrase that said ‘For solidarity, no red baiting, no race baiting and no queen baiting.” Wayne State history PhD candidate James McQuaid, on the gradual awareness and acceptance of queer workers in the twentieth century. Plus, a celebration of The Power of Unity on the anniversary of the founding of the steelworkers union.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Patrick Dixon edited the Jerame Davis interview from the June 18 Your Rights At Work WPFW radio show; the James McQuaid interview is excerpted from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. Links:Your Rights At Work (WPFW 89.3FM)Tales from the Reuther Archive
Sunday Jun 14, 2020
Sunday Jun 14, 2020
“We're sick and tired of being left out. We're sick and tired of not being heard. And we're sick and tired of our communities, where we live and work, are not being heard.” That’s Ken Rigmaiden, president of the Painters union. Our Cool Things at the Meany Archive team caught up with him last Monday when the Painters joined the Black Lives Matters protests in downtown Washington, DC… “I'll be frank with you, I've watched police behavior and reform and policies over time. It's been sort of a surprising, shocking that many of the police departments have sort of reverted to tactics, you know, that mirrored or that represented how police operated before African American mayors and before African-Americans became police chiefs and police commissioners.” W. Marvin Dulaney, emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas Arlington and the author of Black Police in America talks with LHT’s Patrick Dixon about the history of black police in America. “Just the fact that they've devoted so much space to trying to explain how we got here I think sort of validates the idea that you really need to understand the past to understand what's happening in the present.” Archivist Megan Courtney talks about the 1968 Kerner Commission Report with Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English in their podcast Tales from the Reuther Archive…
That’s all on this week’s Labor History Today, along with a song from the R.J. Phillips Band recorded three years ago for the families who have lost loved ones as a result of police brutality. And, on Labor History in 2, we hear about a miner shot dead trying to organize.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Patrick Dixon produced and edited the W. Marvin Dulaney interview; Alan Wierdak produces Cool Things from the Meany Archives. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. Links:Tales from the Reuther Archive
Labor History in 2
Sunday Jun 07, 2020
Sunday Jun 07, 2020
“The first thing that (AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka) let me know was nobody was hurt, no protesters or no AFL-CIO people were hurt, which to me showed his priority of taking care of people first and the building secondary. And he later made public statements to that effect. You know, we can clean up the building, but what's important is to support the movement for racial justice and equality.” Just a block from The White House, AFL-CIO headquarters have been right in the middle of the DC protests against the murder of George Floyd and police brutality. Ben Blake of the Meany Labor Archives reports from the scene. “102 years ago this June Debs stepped onto a stage in Canton, Ohio and gave a soul-stirring speech against American intervention in world war one. Even though he knew he would be arrested for speaking out against the war.”On this week’s show, we preview 'Debs In Canton,' an original radioplay that airs later this week at the HEAR Now Festival…“On July six, 1892, about 300 Pinkertons landed right over there. They killed seven strikers here that day. You're standing on sacred ground here for the labor movement in Western PA. We were founded through these very bloody struggles and the Battle of Homestead is something that has always had a big impact on me.”What’s the connection between the 1892 Battle of Homestead memorial, the Henry K. Frick Car Museum, and Carnegie Mellon University? Labor reporter Mike Elk takes us on a very unauthorized tour this week. “There was no considerable working class movement until 1967 because of the existence of the dictatorship and its suppression. But after 1967 despite the coercion, the workers struggle took a new turn.” Jessica Pauzek has been thinking a lot about what it means to be part of a global community and how our actions in one part of the world are impacted by and impact others far away. This week she brings us the voices of exiled Iranian workers. That’s all coming up in this week’s Labor History Today, plus, on Labor History in 2, we remember the strike at Loray Mills…“The year was 1929. That was the day that police chief Orville Aderholt was shot and killed at a camp of striking textile workers in Gastonia, North Carolina.” Produced by Chris Garlock. Evan Papp of the Empathy Media Lab produced the Homestead Strike piece; find out more about their great work at empathymedialab.com. Alan Wierdak produces Cool Things from the Meany Archives. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. Links:NATF Playhouse: Debs In Canton
Learn from the Homestead Strike with labor reporter Mike Elk of Paydayreport.com
FWWCP Digital Collection
Labor History in 2
Sunday May 31, 2020
The Minneapolis general strike; “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property”
Sunday May 31, 2020
Sunday May 31, 2020
“On Tuesday, May 22nd the picketers took the offensive and succeeded in driving both the police and the deputies from the market and the area around the union's headquarters.”Political scientist and historian Michael Munk connects what’s going on in Minneapolis today as workers and the community react to the killing of Michael Floyd with the general strike that took place there in 1934…“It's one of the great mysteries of human history, about when people rise up and why they don't rise up much more frequently than they do given the kinds of indignities and abuses and exploitation that have been the lot of most working people in American history.”Steve Fraser, author of the new book “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History”…“Vast impregnable and immovable barricades of automobiles were set up, blocking all the main arteries into the Ford fortress.”With the AFL-CIO planning car caravans around the country this Wednesday to demand swift action on the pending Heroes bill in Congress to help American workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Meany Archives' Ben Blake reveals that the labor movement has used this technique effectively in the past.“I worked in this quarry 21 years. I was head derrick man. See that shack on the other side? I operated from there awhile. I worked all through here. It's one of the biggest quarries on the hill. There’s still a lot of good stone left in there. All kinds of good stone…” The latest episode of the “En Masse” podcast takes us inside the New England quarries nearly a century ago, when workers blasted, dug and pried out the stone that built many of the buildings that still stand today in our towns and cities. Plus we celebrate the life of Rosie the Riveter on Labor History in 2.
Produced by Chris Garlock with editing by Patrick Dixon; to contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. Links:Minneapolis general strike of 1934Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American HistorySteve Fraser on "Your Rights At Work" on WPFW 89.3FMAFL-CIO // Workers First Caravan (DC)En Masse Episode 6: "Poor Devil"Labor History in 2