Labor History Today

American labor unions have seen an incredible resurgence in recent years, which, suggests public historian Tom Goldscheider, “begs the question: why were they in decline in the first place?” In "At Sword’s Point", Tom revisits a pivotal moment in American history, when the furious power of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare found its first true target, and when the dismantling of American organized labor began. But this isn’t a story of workers caving in the face of mass hysteria; this is the story of a rural town where, against all expectations, the workers fought back.Today’s show is a documentary that recounts these dramatic events of the early 1950s – which still resonate today -- while also providing important context on the machine tool industry of Greenfield, Massachusetts — once a center of global innovation — as well as the origins of the United Electrical Workers Union, or UE.
Tom Goldscheider is a public historian and working farrier based in western Massachusetts. His research on Greenfield labor history was published in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts and shared through a series of talks given at area venues. He has also published and spoken on the origins and significance of Shays’ Rebellion, and developed an interactive curriculum on local abolitionist history for the David Ruggles Center for History and Education. He holds a Masters in History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Reach him at tom.goldscheider@gmail.com
Ian Coss is a creator of acclaimed podcasts. His nine-part documentary The Big Dig was named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by The New Yorker and Vulture, while spending over six weeks in the top 100 shows on Apple Podcasts; it’s really terrific and worth a listen.On this week’s Labor History in Two: Standing Up by Sitting Down.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Joe Jencks is a 25-year veteran of the international folk circuit, an award-winning songwriter, and a celebrated vocalist based in Chicago. Merging conservatory training with his Irish roots and working-class upbringing, Joe delivers engaged musical narratives filled with heart, soul, groove and grit. Pete Seeger said “The spirit of Folk music is people working together. Joe is a fantastic singer who carries on the traditions.”
Today, Joe tells us the story behind his song “Christmas in Mansfield,” where Armco locked out 620 steel workers on September 1, 1999.
A note from LHT host Chris Garlock: Labor History Today is brought to you by the Labor Heritage Foundation, which works to preserve labor culture and history. If you want to support our work, please consider contributing to LHF; it’s tax deductible and right now all contributions are being matched. Click here to give; thank you!Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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“This fight isn't just for the teamsters. This is for all American workers.”This weekend, Teamsters struck Amazon in New York City, Atlanta, Skokie, Southern California, San Bernardino and San Francisco. The union represents 10,000 Amazon workers at 10 warehouses and delivery stations.
But that quote at the top is not from the Amazon strike; it’s about the Teamsters’ strike against the United Parcel Service in 1997. Today, our colleagues at the Labor Jawn podcast take us back to that pivotal strike twenty seven years ago when 185,000 workers stood up to one of the largest shipping companies in the United States. And won.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Bucks Stove Boycott.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week's Labor History Today: Touring the American Labor MuseumThe American Labor Museum in Haledon, New Jersey, is also known as The Botto House, and that’s because for generations that’s what it was: the home of the Botto family. This unassuming house, sitting on an ordinary-looking street in a quiet residential neighborhood, played a key role in American labor history when it became the heart of the 1913 Patterson Silk Strike as tens of thousands of silk workers – most of them immigrants and many of them young children – demanded an eight-hour day and improved working conditions. They were supported by the IWW and the strike drew leaders like Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who spoke from that balcony at the Botto House, and recently LHT host Chris Garlock finally had a chance to make his own pilgrimage to this iconic labor landmark, for a personal tour with Education Director Evelyn Hershey.
And, on Labor History in Two: The year was 2005; that was the day the labor movement lost a man who was willing to go to jail to fight for the rights of working people.   
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week's Labor History Today: Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil during the early half of the twentieth century.
Producer Patrick Dixon talks with historian Sarah McNamara about her book Ybor City, Crucible of the Latina South, which tells the story of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas and Latinos who organized strikes, marched against fascism, and criticized U.S. foreign policy. While many members of the immigrant generation maintained their dedication to progressive ideals for years to come, those who came of age in the wake of World War II distanced themselves from leftist politics amidst the Red Scare and the wrecking ball of urban renewal.
This portrait of the political shifts that defined Ybor City highlights the underexplored role of women’s leadership within movements for social and economic justice as it illustrates how people, places, and politics become who and what they are. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The American Federation of Labor is founded.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals (top), commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson’s 1937 untitled mural (bottom), which originally hung in the UAW Local 174 union hall and now hangs behind the reference desk at the Reuther Library, champions the progress those industrial workers made laboring for their own welfare via union action.
Dr. Cephas is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. His essay “Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’: Representing Labor and Reappropriating Care in the Museum and in the Union Hall,” was published in the 2023 volume, Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common.Originally aired on the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast.On this week’s Labor History in Two: The World Loses the Miners’ Angel.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Five stunning paintings depicting labor organizing, pickets and the violence directed at workers in the turbulent 1930s were almost lost to history. The story of Philip Tipperman and how a small group of people saved those paintings. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Massacre At Bogalusa.Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Picketed, Beaten, by Philip Tipperman, 1939

Labor historian Mitch Troutman’s 2022 book, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942 is a detailed account of coal bootlegging in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the Prohibition/Depression decades when unemployed miners took over unused mines, asserting and defending a right to mine and market the coal to support their families. Excerpted from his June 23, 2022 talk for The Battle of Homestead Foundation.  On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1785. That was the day the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York was founded.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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