Labor History Today

Trumka on the power of labor arts

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka spoke passionately about the key role of labor arts in the labor movement at the Great Labor Arts Exchange in 2009; he died in 2021 but we’ll hear his voice again on today’s show (the 40th gathering of GLAE will take place June 15 through 18 at the Maritime Conference Center and Hotel, in Linthicum Heights, Maryland). On this week’s Labor History in Two: 50,000 striking rubber workers end their 5-day walkout in Akron, Ohio.  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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The Memorial Day Massacre

Greg Mitchell and Lyn Goldfarb discuss their new film Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried, which explores a largely forgotten episode in labor--and media—history. On this week’s Labor History in Two:  The year was 1937. That was the day that workers at the Jones and Laughlin plant in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania voted in the first ever union election in the United States’ steel industry under the National Labor Relations Board.
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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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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