Labor History Today

The Haymarket Martyrs Monument: Past, Present, Future

Someone threw a bomb into the police ranks, who then opened fire on the unarmed crowd, creating a melee of blood and bullets. Within five minutes, the calamitous event was over.“The calamitous event” was the 1886 Haymarket Square Massacre – or the Haymarket Riot, depending on who you’re talking to. As part of the virtual public event "Monumental Labor: Justice Denied, Injustice Remembered," Dr. Melissa Dabakis examines the history of the Haymarket Square bombing. The series was organized by NPS Mellon Humanities Fellows Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman, and was made possible by the National Park Service in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.On Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1937. That was the day animators struck Fleischer Studio in New York City. It was the industry’s first strike.  Music by Jay Kulstad: Haymarket Massacre.  
Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Hosted and produced by Chris Garlock. 
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We Mean to Make Things Over: A History of May Day

We Mean to Make Things Over: A History of May Day is a new half-hour documentary video written and directed by Fred Glass, a labor historian (check out his book Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement) and retired union communications director. Fred is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) East Bay chapter and was recently elected a member of the California DSA State Committee. Elise Bryant and I -- joined by labor historian Joe McCartin -- talk with Fred about the origins of May Day and about the future of the fight for economic justice, and today’s show features clips from Fred’s terrific film.  
Also, the 2022 DC LaborFest/DC Labor FilmFest opens today and runs throughout the month of May, with a DC labor history walk, as well as films and music about work and workers. Music by Tom Morello (Union Town).  
Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Hosted and produced by Chris Garlock. 
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The death of “Big Steve” Sutton

Workers Memorial Day takes place annually around the world on April 28, an international day of remembrance and action for workers killed, disabled, injured, or made unwell by their work. “Big Steve” Sutton was one of those workers, killed on July 18, 1932 near the Marseilles dam on the Illinois River in Marseilles, Illinois. This Thursday, on Workers Memorial Day, a historical marker for “Big Steve” and the 21 other workers injured on that day, will be dedicated in Marseilles. On today’s show, we’ll find out who “Big Steve” was, and why we remember his death and the struggles of his fellow workers all these years later. Our guide is Michael Matejka, a labor historian and journalist, who spoke with co-hosts Chris Garlock and Ed Smith on the Your Rights At Work radio show on WPFW 89.3FM last week. Find out more from the Illinois Labor History Society; music by Tom Morello (Night Falls).   
Also on today’s show, a double shot of Labor History in 2:00: The California Spinach Riot (1937) and The Deadly Cost of Fashion (2013).
Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Hosted and produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Working on Earth Day

On this week’s show, which originally aired April 22, 2018, Joe Uehlein reveals the longstanding connections between labor and the environmental movement; Patrick Dixon interviews Peter Cole on the IWW’s 1923 West Coast strike, Damon Silvers on the arrest of Montgomery Ward Chairman Sewell Avery in 1944, and Saul Schniderman on Ida Mae Stull, the country’s first woman coal miner. Today’s music features Joe Uehlein and the U-Liners singing “You Can't Giddy Up By Sayin' Whoa” and “Power.”
Earth Day 2022: Labor is participating in the Fight For Our Future Rally For Climate, Care, Jobs, And Justice, Saturday, April 23 at 1PM in Lafayette Park in front of the White House.
Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Hosted and produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Big Top Labor: Life and labor in the circus world

There was always something about the circus that bothered me, maybe because by the time I saw it in the 1970s, “The Greatest Show on Earth” was reduced to playing in sports stadiums and arenas, a shadow of the glory days when towns and even cities declared “Circus Day” and closed down so everyone could go gawk at the spectacle of acrobatic performers wild animals and creepy sideshows.But now, thanks to Andrea Ringer, I know that it was the class struggle lurking right there in plain sight, just beneath the Big Top, the spangles and sequins. As Ringer explains in today’s show, the circus was a highly transient workplace, with a long history of exploiting its workers, and in a Zoom talk last month, she examined the life and work of the people who labored in tented shows during the circus Golden Age, from the 1880s until the late 1950s. Andrea Ringer is assistant professor of history at Tennessee State University. Her talk, “'Save the Circus’: Worker Strikes, Circusgoers, and the Mid-Twentieth Century Decline of the Big Top” was part of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" Brown Bag series sponsored by the Michigan Traditional Arts Program and the Labor Education Program at MSU’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations.  On today’s Labor History in 2:00: Minneapolis Teachers Brave the Cold for a Better Tomorrow.
Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Hosted and produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Michael Honey on Dr. King: “All Labor Has Dignity”

On today’s show, a conversation with Martin Luther King Jr. scholar Dr. Michael Honey. The online talk, “All Labor Has Dignity”, took place last year on April 5, 53 years after Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis and on the precipice of yet another “right to work” vote in New Hampshire. This was at least the 30th attempt to pass a right-to-work bill in New Hampshire in the last 40 years, and Dr. Honey’s talk was organized to remind folks in New Hampshire that not only did Dr. King die while supporting a labor strike, but that he was a strong opponent of Right to Work, which as he pointed out, “provides no rights and no work.”  The talk was organized by the American Friends Service Committee-New Hampshire Program and the New Hampshire United Church of Christ Economic Justice Ministry Team and with the support of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO.On today’s Labor History in 2:00: The First Woman in Congress.
Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Industrial murder at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

On today’s show, we remember the March 25, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. From Union Strong, the podcast from the New York State AFL-CIO, “A Day in History that Changed Workplace Safety”; a look back at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire through an interview with Edgar Romney, the Secretary-Treasurer of Workers United.Then, from Labor History in 2:00, “Industrial Murder at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory”.Next, historian Annelise Orleck discusses the labor-rights activism of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers on Democracy Now.And we wrap up with Ai-Jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, discussing the importance of protecting -- and not marginalizing -- our domestic workers today.Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Music: Ballad of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (Bev Grant); The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Song (Mike Stout).Special thanks to Friday's Labor Folklore; subscribe here: fridaysfolklore@gmail.com

Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver

On today’s show, as Women’s History Month continues, historian Jane Little Botkin explains how Jane Street, a single mother, firebrand, and little-known IWW organizer, orchestrated a 1916 housemaids’ rebellion in Denver, Colorado.
To fight for better pay and working conditions in Denver’s elite Capitol Hill neighborhood, Street worked with—and later, despite—the IWW to blacklist and shame the area’s worst domestic employers, thereby disrupting the comfort and reputations of some of Denver’s most influential and powerful families.
The author of The Girl Who Dared to Defy: Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver and Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family, Botkin has received two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, the Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy Department, and the Best Historical Nonfiction Award from the Texas Association of Authors.
Her story comes to us from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, which is a fellow member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.On this week’s Labor History in Two: Police Attack Women Sit-Downers. Questions, comments or suggestions 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. Produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Music: The Rebel Girl (Alyeah Hansen)