Mackay, Wurf, library workers, Matewan and the first baseball strike (Encore)

On this week's show (originally posted 5/13/2018): Labor historian Joe McCartin discusses the 1938 U.S. Supreme Court’s Mackay decision, which permits the permanent replacement of striking workers; Joe says this obscure decision was in fact a “ticking time bomb” that would go off to devastating effect more than 40 years later, when Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981, giving employers across the country a green light for union-busting.
PLUS: Joe Hower on how Jerry Wurf built AFSCME into one of the most powerful unions in America, Lane Windham on the first union of public library workers, and Saul Schniderman and David Fernandez on the Matewan Massacre. Chris Bangert-Drowns even manages to sneak in baseball’s first labor strike, when the 1912 Detroit Tigers refused to play after team leader Ty Cobb was suspended.

Plus music from Brooklyn Cablevision workers – and CWA members -- Jaywalk, Grim and Shatoya Thomas-Flemmings, and the immortal Hazel Dickens.

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Produced/hosted by Chris Garlock, with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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