Labor History Today

This week's labor history: Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, first AFL woman organizer; novelist Jack London’s classic definition of a scab; Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union leads Missouri Highway sit-down; Roosevelt creates National War Labor Board to mediate labor disputes during World War II.
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, from Union Communication Services www.unionist.com/big-labor/today-in-labor-history
This week's music:Dropkick Murphys - Take Em Down https://youtu.be/heVhxlEPefQ
Power to the Working Class!https://youtu.be/cVqqOhfWJD8
Street Dogs ~ There is Power in a Unionhttps://youtu.be/cehLiGxguQI

This week's labor history: North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) takes effect, over objections of labor; Conference of 23 industrial unionists in Chicago leads to formation of IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as Wobblies;
In what became known as Palmer Raids, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer arrests 4,000 foreign-born “labor agitators.”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, from Union Communication Services www.unionist.com/big-labor/today-in-labor-history
This week's music:NAFTA The Lazy Songhttps://youtu.be/FFzn_Lfh7eAWe Have Fed You All for A Thousand Years by the Twin Cities Labor Chorushttps://youtu.be/L1qiq5AVr_oWe Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years, by Ellie Bryanhttps://youtu.be/8hrXmcbbp3AFrom the IWW songbook, words "by an Unknown Proletarian," music by Rudolf von Liebich, “of the General Recruiting Union, Chicago, and Composer of Music for the Working Class.”

This week's labor history: Workingmen’s Party is reorganized as the Socialist Labor Party; Nixon signs the Occupational Safety & Health Act. Plus Saul Schneiderman on the 1913 Massacre.
Joe McCartin is professor of history at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Tula Connell, an historian of the United States focusing on 20th century labor and social movements, is Senior Communications Officer at the Solidarity Center, an international labor rights organization. She’s the author of Conservative Counterrevolution. Challenging Liberalism in 1950s Milwaukee https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/75wfg8we9780252039904.htmlChris 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, from Union Communication Services www.unionist.com/big-labor/today-in-labor-history
This week's music:“Fight Back” from the privately-released “Power To The Working Class” LP; https://youtu.be/1Ph8hn9TVwY"I Wanna Be Safe" by Derek Wilson, features shipbuilders in Newport News rapping about safety on USS Enterprise, Gerald R. Ford and Virginia-class submarines; https://youtu.be/1-1BCF6_Dzs 1913 Massacre, Woody Guthrie https://youtu.be/oz7oguguIZE

This week's labor history: A 47-day strike at Greyhound Bus Lines ends with members of the Amalgamated Transit Union accepting a new contract containing deep cuts in wages and benefits; Thousands of workers begin a two-day strike of the New York City transit system over retirement, pension and wage issues; 21 Chicago firefighters, including the chief, died when a building collapsed as they were fighting a huge blaze at the Union Stock Yards.  PLUS: Catherine Alvarado Cilfone on the AFL convention’s endorsement of a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote.Joe McCartin is professor of history at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Tula Connell, an historian of the United States focusing on 20th century labor and social movements, is Senior Communications Officer at the Solidarity Center, an international labor rights organization. She’s the author of Conservative Counterrevolution. Challenging Liberalism in 1950s Milwaukee https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/75wfg8we9780252039904.htmlChris 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, from Union Communication Services www.unionist.com/big-labor/today-in-labor-history
This week's music:
Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Comehttps://youtu.be/7Znh0OM9jiA
Bad Romance Women's Suffragehttps://youtu.be/Rn_S-9Ig6Vk

Joe McCartin, Lane Windham and Ben Blake discussing 19,000 workers at Newport News Shipyard filing for a NLRB election and eight female bank tellers in Willmar, Minn. begin the first strike against a bank in U.S. history. PLUS: Peter Pocock on the Colored Farmers National Alliance, Rebekah Padgett on the “Amazon Army,” Mikhail Romanoff on the Bagel Bakers strike, and Saul Schneiderman on the IWW and the first sit-down strike in the U.S.
Joe McCartin is professor of history at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Lane Windham is at the Kalmanovitz Initiative and co-directs the Women Innovating Labor Leadership Empower project, a joint initiative of Kalmanovitz and the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and author of “Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide.”   Benjamin Blake works at the University of Maryland, where he’s a labor archivist. 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, from Union Communication Services www.unionist.com/big-labor/today-in-labor-history
This week's music:The Staple Singers: When Will We Be Paidhttps://youtu.be/ctfSmGpEqr4

This week's labor history: 25 unions found the American Federation of Labor; AFL-CIO President John Sweeney welcomes the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle; Birth of Newspaper Guild founder Heywood Broun. PLUS: Saul Schneiderman 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, from Union Communication Services http://www.unionist.com/big-labor/today-in-labor-history
This week's music:
Billy Bragg -There Is Power In A Unionhttps://youtu.be/DwbzxemJZIc
Bruce Springsteen - My Hometownhttps://youtu.be/KSS3V9M7a5g
Hazel Dickens, The Mannington Mine Disasterhttps://youtu.be/GldkcfdgMEM

This week's labor history: Six young women burn to death and 19 more die when they leap from the fourth-story windows of a blazing factory in Newark, N.J. in 1910; 1,200 workers sit down at Midland Steel in 1936; the National Labor Relations Board rules that medical interns can unionize and negotiate wages and hours in 1999; The pro-labor musical revue, “Pins & Needles,” opens on Broadway in 1937 with a cast of International Ladies Garment Workers Union members; birth of William Sylvis, founder of the National Labor Union. 
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."
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
This week's music:Dropkick Murphys - Worker's Songhttps://youtu.be/aTafZRecy2kWe Were Therehttps://youtu.be/Cjnyk06MZRY
Sit Down Strike - Bill Collins & The Rabblerousershttps://youtu.be/inHdyPInyzARose Marie Jun "Sing Me A Song With Social Significance*https://youtu.be/nzgD2QvOdlk
One Big Union for Two* https://youtu.be/t1Wp9kMp3Ac* from the 25th anniversary studio cast recording of the "Pins and Needles" musical revue.

Union City's Chris Garlock hosts, with Joe McCartin and David Fernandez-Barrial.
This week's labor history: The life and death of Joe Hill; miners battle for unions and job safety; Congress approves the North American Free Trade Agreement; teachers strike in St. Paul, Minn.,the first organized walkout by teachers in the country.
Joe McCartin is professor of history at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. David Fernandez-Barrial is Steward Director for AFSCME 2910 at the Library of Congress, and and foreign language library at the Library.
Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor