Labor History Today

Labor history, justice, and Jesuits

All Who Labor podcast host Anna Nowalk speaks with Georgetown University’s Brother Ken Homan about the distance between what we say we believe and how those values are lived out, particularly as it relates to the Jesuits. The conversation stretches from topics further in the past, such as slavery, to more current labor activism at universities.On this week’s Labor History in Two:  The year was 1833. That was the day that the Oberlin Collegiate Institute was founded in north central Ohio. Today, it's known as Oberlin College. The college was the project of two Presbyterian ministers, John J. Seifert and Philo Stewart.
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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The Leadville Irish Miners’ Memorial

"In Ludlow, the workers were killed by bullets and kerosene; here they died from poverty.  The names are illuminated at night. People are claiming the memorial. They're leaving items, artifacts, relics, coins, stones, gifts for the dead, telling them that we see them."
The average age of the people in the pine boxes was 23 years old; half of them were children under 12. 70 percent were from Ireland. On today’s show we travel to the Evergreen Cemetery in Leadville, Colorado; where on September 16th a new memorial was unveiled commemorating the 1,100 unmarked graves of Irish workers and their families who fled the famine in their homeland to toil deep in the Colorado copper mines and who died penniless in the Promised Land. Today's show comes to us from the Labor Exchange radio show, Colorado's only labor focused radio show on KGNU Community Radio (88.5 FM / 1390 AM) On this week’s Labor History in Two: Newspaper Printers Quit!
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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Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA

Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art walks us through the BMA’s brand-new exhibit, Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA, which explores the importance of women artists many of whom are unknown today, yet who captured the human faces of industrial and domestic labor and its inherent racial, gendered, and class inequities while they used their art to support important reforms led by the era’s growing communist and socialist movements. From the Labor Heritage Power Hour radio show, which airs Thursdays at 1p ET on WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC.Singer-songwriter Si Kahn finds poetry in the many names for the third shift, that overnight work period that is the bane of existence for so many.On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1936; that was the day that workers at the General Motors plant in Atlanta, Georgia participated in a sit down strike.
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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Artwork: Harlem Dancers, by Elizabeth Olds

Under the Iron Heel: Repressing the IWW and free speech

Yesterday, the IWW -- the Industrial Workers of the World -- hosted a dedication ceremony for a new monument in Centralia, Washington. The Centralia Tragedy, also known as the Centralia Conspiracy and the Armistice Day Riot, was a violent and bloody incident that occurred in Centralia on November 11, 1919, during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day. The conflict between the American Legion and the IWW members resulted in six deaths, others being wounded, multiple prison terms, and an ongoing and especially bitter dispute over the motivations and events that precipitated the conflict. Both Centralia and the neighboring town of Chehalis had a large number of World War I veterans, with robust chapters of the Legion and many IWW members, some of whom were also war veterans. “For almost 100 years the Legion Statue, the Sentinel, has told one side of the story,” says the IWW. “It states that the four Legion members depicted were ‘slain while on peaceful parade’. The IWW memorial counters that narrative with the statement that the IWW victims were ‘Defending Their Union Hall’” Today’s show, which comes to us from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, also concerns the IWW. Ahmed White explains how American industrialists and government officials used violence and legal maneuverings to stultify the IWW and to silence its members in the early twentieth century. White teaches labor and criminal law at University of Colorado Boulder and is the author of Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers, which received the International Labor History Association Book of the Year Award in 2022.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1916; that was the day when what came to be known as the Everett Massacre took place in Washington State.
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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How matchgirls sparked the British labour movement

LHT’s Chris Garlock tours the East London site of the 1888 Matchgirls Strike with Union Dues podcast host Simon Sapper. On this week’s Labor History in 2:00: Birth of populist Will Rogers.  
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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Who “Oppenheimer” left out

The summer blockbuster “Oppenheimer” generated a lot of interest in the history of how nuclear weapons were developed in the United States, but the film leaves out an important part of this history: the sacrifice made by tens of thousands of workers in the production of our country’s nuclear weapons arsenal.Excerpted from the Heartland Labor Forum radio show.To learn more about eligibility for benefits from the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act or to start a claim, click here or call toll-free 866-888-3322. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The 1948 Donora Smog.  
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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The Triangle Fire: A new memorial, and ”Scenes from a Prosecution”

A talk with the writer, producer and director of Triangle: Scenes from a Prosecution, a new one-act dramatization of the criminal trial of the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory following the 1911 fire that took 146 lives in New York City. Plus, music and poetry by Bev Grant and Joe Glazer.The new Triangle Fire Memorial was unveiled and dedicated on October 11.On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1983. That was the day that musician Merle Travis died.
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.
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Weapons of the Boss

In 1953 the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) established a set of ten guiding principles at its’ tenth biennial convention in San Francisco. This manifesto represents a fascinating historical document, a snapshot in time but also a roadmap, a statement of aspiration calling upon union members to look beyond internal conflicts derived from factionalism, prejudice, even tradition.On today’s show, drawn from The Docker Podcast, Zack Pattin (ILWU Local 23) and Myka Dubay (ILWU Local 5 and ILWU International Executive Board) discuss their workshop at this year’s Young Workers Conference, “Weapons of the Boss: Racism and Anti-Trans Discrimination” and Zack walks us through the origins and context of the ILWU’s Ten Guiding Principles.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Labor’s Magna Carta.
Music: The Workers Song Community Project | The Longest Johns
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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