Labor History Today

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

Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and how she uses histories in her work. From the Working History podcast, produced by the Southern Labor Studies Association. On this week’s Labor History in Two:  Putting America Back to Work.
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 Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  @SouthernLaborSA @workinghistory

Working Class Giant

First published in 1981, Working Class Giant: The Life of William Z. Foster is the classic biography of the radical American labor organizer and Communist politician. A new edition includes a foreword by today’s guest, union activist and organizer Chris Townsend, who talks about how Foster’s life and legacy continues to inspire a new generation of workers.On this week’s Labor History in Two: Coxey’s Army Marches on the Nation’s Capitol (1894), and the day that updated National Labor Relations Board rules regarding the formation of new unions went into effect (2012).
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 Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory @IntPubNYC

Ludlow: My name is Louis Tikas (Encore)

(Originally released on April 18, 2021)Brockman Sewell’s original dramatic performance based on the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado, which occurred 119 years ago on April 20, 1914. Labor History Today contributor Saul Schniderman with his tribute to labor and protest singer Anne Feeney.On today’s Labor History in 2: We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years
To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by Chris Garlock and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @ILLaborHistory @RickSmithShow #LaborHistoryEdited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips

Bitter Kisses for Labor

Dr. Carol Quirke, Professor of History at SUNY-Old Westbury, on "Bitter Kisses for Labor: Mass Consumer Capitalism and the Hershey Chocolate Sit-down Strike, 1937," part of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" Brown Bag series sponsored by the MSU School of Human Resources and Labor Relations. Quirke tracks the use of photography to present unions and strikes as violent and un-American, and describes how Hershey management fought off the attempt at unionization. PLUS: More Perfect Union’s "Hershey Prison" 2022 report on brutal working conditions at a Hershey factory. On this week’s Labor History in Two:  Another Day in the Class War.
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 Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

Tom Breiding’s songs of struggle

Labor history in song, from the “Coal Miners’ Balladeer,” performed live at the April 1, 2023 “Annual Commemoration of the History of Working People” put on by the Pennsylvania Labor History Society and The Battle of Homestead Foundation in Windber, Pennsylvania.On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1937. That was the day sparring between Henry Ford and John L. Lewis spilled over into the press.
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 Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory @HomesteadFdn @breiding_tom

The 1922-23 Windber Coal Strike

Yesterday I drove a few hours west through howling wind and driving rain to the little town of Windber, Pennsylvania; a couple miles from Johnstown. The Pennsylvania Labor History Society and The Battle of Homestead Foundation were holding their “Annual Commemoration of the History of Working People” and despite the rough weather the basement hall at the Slovak Educational Club soon filled up with folks eager to hear a daylong program that included commemorating the United Mine Workers 1922-23 Windber strike for union recognition, discussions on “Women in Coal and Steel” and “John Brophy and Labor Education”. As folks sipped their hot coffee and munched on donuts, “Coal Miners’ Balladeer” Tom Breiding regaled them with labor songs.  - Chris GarlockNOTE: the last speaker talking about her student days of organizing and diapering her children on the university president’s desk  was not Bonnie Boyer but Amy Niehouse.On this week’s Labor History in Two:  The year was 1937. That was the day workers sat down at the Hershey chocolate plant in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
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 Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  @HomesteadFdn

Erasing Virginia’s labor history

History standards in Virginia are updated every seven years. The new proposed standards put forth by Governor Glenn Youngkin and his Virginia Department of Education would remove the American labor movement; the state’s labor movement is fighting back, and last week on the Your Rights At Work radio show, we talked with the Virginia Education Association’s Shane Riddle and Brian Peyton from Teamsters 322.
In our second segment, Labor History Today producers Mel Smith and Patrick Dixon get a hands-on feel for labor history when they visit the George Meany Memorial Archives at the University of Maryland College Park, where Ben Blake and Alan Wierdak showed off a collection of construction hardhats and talk about how such physical artifacts provide an entry point -- as well as a key to understanding -- labor history.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Gompers embraces anti-immigrant legislation.Be sure to stick around at the end of the show for a special bonus; a song by the R.J. Phillips Band which recalls the events of the Columbia Eagle incident in 1970,when two merchant seamen staged a strike – at sea it’s called a mutiny -- against the war in Vietnam.  
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 Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  @riddle_shane of @VEA4Kids @IBTLocal322 @Virginia_AFLCIO @VirginiaUnified @Teamsters