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News Article | October 31, 2015
A Century Later, Labor’s Legendary Troubadour Lives On
Joe Hill (This article first appeared in the November/December 2015 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.) One hundred years have passed since a firing squad at the Utah State Penitentiary executed Joe Hill at sunrise on Nov. 19, 1915. The renowned labor organizer had been framed on a murde...
News Article | August 31, 2015
‘Big Bill’ Haywood: The ‘Wobbly’ Giant
“Big Bill” Haywood was a big man with a big heart and a big dream – to build one big union for workers from every industry. He could break a man’s jaw with a single blow, but he wept openly when a poem moved him. “Big Bill” was born William Dudley Haywood on Feb. 4, 1869, in Salt Lake City. He lear...
News Article | April 30, 2015
May Day: Fighting for the Eight-Hour Day
Chicago in the 1880s was a hotbed of labor organizing. Fed up with the status quo, where industrial workers toiled long hours in squalid conditions, the International Working People’s Association formed in 1883 and dedicated its resources to establishing an eight-hour work day. Led by Albert Parsons...
News Article | February 28, 2015
From ‘Collective Begging’ Collective Bargaining
March 2015 marks the 45th anniversary of the Great Postal Strike of 1970. The courage and solidarity shown by thousands of union members during the wildcat job action resulted in vastly improved wages and benefits.
News Article | February 28, 2015
Rose Schneiderman Organizes Garment Workers in New York
Rose Schneiderman was a trailblazer for workers’ rights in the Lower East Side of New York City at the turn of the 20th Century. She organized and co-founded several unions, was a friend and advisor to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was a champion for rights still being fought for today. Twenty-y...
News Article | December 31, 2014
A Look Back: The Charleston Five
Soon after dockworkers formed a picket line at the Port of Charleston, SC, in January 2000, five among them became the focus of worldwide protests and international solidarity – symbols of the fight for justice. And after a 22-month battle, a groundbreaking victory over worker repression and racial...
News Article | September 30, 2014
The ‘Strike for Better Schools’
Almost 70 years after a strike by St. Paul teachers, their battle holds lessons for today’s postal workers and other public employees: The educators didn’t strike only on their own behalf – they walked a picket line for better schools. In 1946, the idea of a teachers’ strike was revolutionary. But i...
News Article | August 31, 2014
The Real Norma Rae
Early On May 30, 1973, the J.P. Stevens textile mill in Roanoke Rapids, NC, fired 32-year-old Crystal Lee Sutton. Before Sutton left the plant, she climbed atop a table on the shop floor and raised above her head a piece of cardboard with the word “UNION” scrawled on it, turning slowly in a circle s...
News Article | June 30, 2014
War on the Waterfront
Early in the morning on July 5, 1934, storefront owners in the Mission District of San Francisco were opening their doors. In the financial district, bankers and businessmen were trading stocks. Across the harbor, the Oakland Bay Bridge construction crew was hard at work. The police stood watch as 5...
News Article | April 30, 2014
Ludlow Massacre Forges Mine Workers’ Struggle
Life was not easy a century ago for coal miners in Southern Colorado, where heavily industrialized mines produced high-grade coal needed by the steel and railway industries. The largest mining operation in the region, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), was controlled by oil magnate John D. R...
News Article | February 28, 2014
Black Women Raise Their Voices in the Tobacco Industry
By 1938, Louise "Mamma" Harris had worked at the I.N. Vaughan Export stemmery in Richmond VA for nearly six years. The women who worked at Export were among the poorest in Richmond; they had to wrap themselves in tobacco burlap to stay warm in the winter. The stemmers earned an average of $3 a week...
News Article | December 31, 2013
APWU Helps Usher in the End of Apartheid
Twenty years ago South Africa held its first free and fair election. Amid violent attacks by groups seeking to disrupt the historic vote, a delegation of APWU representatives traveled to South Africa to act as election observers.
News Article | October 31, 2013
Photographer Honored Workers, Helped End Child Labor
In August, the Postal Service released a series of stamps honoring American workers. Many of the stamps’ images were captured in the 1930s by photographer Lewis Hine, whose pictures celebrate the skills, daring and dignity of the industrial workers who built the nation. But Hine was more than a gift...
News Article | August 31, 2013
1934: Southern Workers Spark Massive Textile Strike
In 1934, thousands of workers in Southern textile mills walked off the job seeking better pay and working conditions. The job actions they launched spread to New England and the Mid-Atlantic states and became one of the biggest industrial strikes in U. S. history. Though the strike was unsuccessful,...
News Article | June 30, 2013
To Stand Up, Auto Workers Sat Down
On Dec. 30, 1936, workers in Flint MI began a historic “sit down” strike that helped win union representation for auto assembly employees across the nation.