Labor History Today

Founding the American Federation of Labor

For today’s show, we’re digging deep into our archives while we put together some exciting new shows. This was just our fourth show, released on December 3, 2017, and it features a round-table chat with labor historians Joe McCartin and Leon Fink. Hopefully we’ll be able to get Joe and Leon back in the studio soon for some more of these fascinating chats.Our topics included the founding of the American Federation of Labor; AFL-CIO President John Sweeney welcoming the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, and the birth of Newspaper Guild founder Heywood Broun. PLUS: Saul Schniderman on miner’s ballads and George Farenthold on the founding of National Nurses United. Joe McCartin is professor of history at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.Leon Fink, Professor Emeritus of the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, edits the journal, "Labor: Studies in Working Class History."Chris Garlock, Union Cities Coordinator for the Metro Washington AFL-CIO, hosts Union City Radio on WPFW 89.3FM.
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.Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, compiled by David Prosten.
This week's music: Billy Bragg -There Is Power In A Union; Bruce Springsteen - My Hometown; Hazel Dickens - The Mannington Mine Disaster.

Long live Mother Jones!

“I'm Mary Harris Jones. But I'm called a lot of other names: ‘Bolshevik’, ‘Socialist’, ‘The most dangerous woman in America’, ‘The Walking Wrath of God’”. Today, the Irish-born schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent American union organizer and activist – she preferred “hellraiser” -- is known simply as Mother Jones. She died on November 30, 1930 in Silver Spring, Maryland and on today’s show we feature memories, tributes and re-enactments from her life, from the Labor Heritage Foundation’s Saul Schniderman, Kaiulani Lee, and Loretta Rymer Williams, all bringing Mother Jones to life with vivid tales from a life of tragedy and an unbreakable commitment to fighting for workers that still inspires us today, 91 years after her death. And, on Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1908. That was the day that an explosion at the coal mine in Marianna, in Washington County Pennsylvania claimed the lives of 154 miners. It was one of the deadliest disasters in US mining history.
Credits/Resources: Empathy Media Lab; Jase Media Service Podcast; Mother Jones marker; The Spirit of Mother Jones - Andy Irvine; Gene Autry sings "The Death of Mother Jones" (1931). Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @AFLCIO @LaborHeritage1

Murder, Race and (In)Justice

With the trial for the three White men charged with killing Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery now underway in Glynn County, Georgia, it seems like a good time to get a little historical perspective and find out what a murder case in 1930s Mississippi reveals about race relations, criminal justice, and life in the Jim Crow South.So today, from the archives of the Working History podcast, Karen Cox, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, discusses her book, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South, and its tale of a toxic stew of white privilege, racism, and rage.  As Cox says, “This story offers us a window into how the criminalization of black lives emerged as a means of sustaining white supremacy and control over African Americans in the post-slavery period. It's why,” she says, “so many black southerners migrated out of the region to northern cities like Detroit and Chicago hoping for better—not that they found it. Racism followed African Americans wherever they went.” Just ask Ahmaud Arbery’s family, nearly a century later.  
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1945; that was the day that 320,000 United Auto Workers went out on strike against General Motors.Music: Harmonica Shah Live at The Cove with Jack De Keyzer. 
Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @AFLCIO @SouthernLaborSA

Tom Morello holds the line

Today’s show features a brand-new song from Tom Morello, who teamed up with grandson and wrote the song "Hold the Line" to honor "every working person fighting for their rights on the picket line." The song and the video seamlessly merge labor history past and present, just like we do here on Labor History Today. Click here for the AFL-CIO’s Strike Map.On October 26, Michigan Congressman Andy Levin, member of the House Education and Labor Committee, hosted a Special Order Hour to honor the life and work of the late AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, who died on August 5. Before getting elected to Congress, Andy worked for Trumka at the AFL-CIO, and he talks here about Trumka’s working-class roots and the historic role he played in the American labor movement.  Electrician and journey wire-woman Kim Spicer is a proud member of The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local #3, in Queens, New York. Kim talked to the America Works podcast about how she tried numerous other, less fulfilling jobs before apprenticing to become an electrician and why she loves it. She touches on her training, some of the tasks and skills involved in her work, her daily on-the-job routines, and the challenges of being a woman in a traditionally male trade.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1938; that was the day that the national Federation of telephone workers was founded in new Orleans Louisiana. 
Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @AFLCIO @tmorello @The_AFM @grandson @LibnOfCongress

Communists and community in wartime Detroit

Dr. Ryan Pettengill explains how communist activists in Detroit worked with labor activists during and after the Second World War to enhance the quality of life in the community by advocating for civil rights, affordable housing, protections for the foreign-born, and more. Excerpted from the Tales From the Reuther Library podcast.And, on Labor History in 2:00: Taft-Hartley’s effect on labor. Produced by Patrick Dixon and Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @ReutherLibrary

From the Necropolis Strike to Striketober

Today’s the last day of what’s come to be known as Striketober, as tens of thousands of American workers walked out – or threatened to walk out – across the country. Whether these strikes have been caused by the labor shortage, the pandemic, or people just fed up with working crappy jobs for low pay, no benefits and few if any job protections – or all of the above – it’s clear that workers have reached a historic breaking point.Back in May we featured an excerpt from the April 6 symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Strike!”, Jeremy Brecher’s classic labor history. On today’s show we bring you the man himself, Jeremy Brecher, at that same symposium, talking not only about how his book came to be, but why labor history itself matters. It’s not only a delightful talk, but inspirational, too, as Jeremy shares his thoughts about the future of our history of worker struggle. Part Two of today’s show is on the Necropolis Strike, from the new podcast Strike! Podcasts like this are very much a part of carrying Jeremy’s work forward; Strike! host Sarah Gram does an impressive deep dive into the first recorded strike in human history and manages to not only explore it in fascinating detail but to connect it back to today’s struggles.
And, on Labor History in 2:00, ghosts and goblins are going door to door to gather up candy. But did you know that some of that candy is made by union workers?Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @PMPressOrg @labornotes @LN4S

Voices of Guinness

In 2005 the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal, West London closed after seven decades of production. Tim Strangleman spent the last six months of the Brewery’s life working with a photographer to record in words and picture the site before it closed. Subsequent research revealed an incredibly rich story of corporate cultural change and the transformation of work and the workplace. Drawing on material from his 2019 book, Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery, Strangleman, Professor of Sociology, in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury, reflects on what that story tells us about work meaning, identity and organizational life in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Our show is excerpted from Strangleman’s Zoom presentation at the October 5 edition of Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives, the lecture series sponsored by the Michigan Traditional Arts Program and the Labor Education Program at Michigan State University. To get on the ODW/ODL email list email John Beck at mailto:beckj@msu.eduClick here for photos of the Park Royal Guinness Brewery.   And, on Labor History in 2:00, the year was 1940; that was the day that the federally mandated 40-hour work week went into effect for U.S. workers.Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @MichiganTradArts @MSUSHRLR @DIndustrialKent @SSPSSR @OxUniPress

“It Didn’t Start with Amazon: A Conversation About the History of Organized Labor in the South”

Last month the United Campus Workers of Georgia, the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council, The Labor and Working Class History Association and the Southern Labor Studies Association hosted a distinguished panel of labor historians on “It Didn’t Start with Amazon: A Conversation About the History of Organized Labor in the South.”Today’s show features excerpts from that conversation, which reveals that although unions are notoriously weak in the southern states, workers there actually have a rich history of fighting for their rights and organizing to win power.    And, on Labor History in 2:00, The year was 1877; that was the day that John D. Rockefeller, and his company Standard Oil struck a deal with the Pennsylvania Railroad that would cement his monopoly on the nation’s oil refineries.Music for today’s show by Hazel Dickens; special thanks to Eric Castater and Ryan Richardson for getting us the panel audio file.
Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @ucwgagt @ATL_Labor @lawcha_org @SouthernLaborSA