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News Article | August 31, 2010
Forty Years Later, The Fight for Safety in the Workplace Goes On
Before passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in December 1970, millions of Americans risked their lives every time they reported for duty: There were no national safety laws to protect workers. Forty years ago, the groundbreaking legislation created the Occupational Health and Safety Adm...
News Article | June 30, 2010
The Battle of Blair Mountain
Following a wave of strikes, by 1920 the United Mine Workers (UMW) had succeeded in winning union contracts for miners across much of the nation, but coal barons in the southern West Virginia were determined to keep workers down. Company bosses cut their pay, raised prices in company stores, and hir...
News Article | April 30, 2010
Bloody Showdown on the Road to Union Rights
The mines of Appalachia were no place for the timid during the “coal wars” of the early 20th century. Following World War I, coal companies exploited workers, who were forced to endure miserable, dangerous job conditions. Wielding dynamite, picks, and shovels, miners removed coal from cramped and di...
News Article | December 31, 2009
Black Women Advance Labor’s Cause In an Unlikely Setting: 1881 Atlanta
A little known yet largely successful job action waged in 1881 by black women in Atlanta is credited with helping to set the stage for a century of labor and civil rights struggles.
News Article | August 31, 2009
Studs Terkel: The Voice of Work and the American Worker
Late last year, the city of Chicago — and working people everywhere — lost a great voice when Louis “Studs” Terkel died at age 96. For more than 70 years, the radio and TV host and prolific author chronicled the aspirations of working people in their pursuit of the American Dream, and railed against...
News Article | June 30, 2009
Sports Unions Work to Level the Playing Field
Although their average salary is considerably higher and their “work year” is much shorter, members of the nation’s four major sports unions share much in common with their counterparts in other industries, especially the historical basis for their creation: Poor wages and unfair working conditions.
News Article | April 30, 2009
Esther Peterson: Advocate for Labor, Women, Consumers
Throughout her life, Esther Eggersten Peterson was “a powerful and effective catalyst for change,” notes a tribute to her in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Among other achievements, she helped launch the women’s movement in the 1960s and was considered by many to be the driving force behind the...
News Article | December 31, 2008
Isaac Myers: Pioneer of the African-American Trade Union Movement
It’s not unusual for a labor leader to have humble beginnings. Isaac Myers started out literally at the bottom, applying sticky sealant to the hulls of oceangoing ships. But he had a natural leadership style, and while his determination to prosper ultimately resulted in contributions to the labor mo...
News Article | October 31, 2008
Jack London: Famous Author Chronicled Workers’ Struggles
Though best known as the author of widely acclaimed adventure stories such as The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and To Build a Fire, Jack London also chronicled the harsh lives many working people faced at the dawn of the 20th Century.
News Article | August 31, 2008
Andrew Furuseth: ‘The Abe Lincoln of the Sea’
The struggles of workers aboard commercial ships have seldom received much public attention, but some of history’s worst employment practices occurred at sea, where sailors were often subject to forced labor, brutal discipline, deplorable working conditions, and little certainty about being paid. Wh...
News Article | June 30, 2008
Setting the Stage For the ‘Talent’ Unions
Among the catchphrases associated with the theatrical arts, “The Show Must Go On” is the most familiar. To workers, the phrase is more than a cliche: The longer-running the show, the more money to be earned. Nowadays, all the world’s a stage: Performances are set up, staged, recorded, rebroadcast, r...
News Article | April 30, 2008
Ralph Fasanella: Self-Taught Artist Chronicled Workers’ Lives
By the time he started painting pictures at age 31, Ralph Fasanella had developed a strong disdain for the social and economic injustices he witnessed every day in the streets of New York City. Over the rest of his life, the self-taught artist created hundreds of paintings, most of which spread the...
News Article | February 29, 2008
1912 Textile Strike Put Women in the Line of Fire
Early in the 20th Century, fully half of the 80,000 people living in Lawrence, MA, labored in its textile industry. The typical workplace was dimly lit, dangerously cramped with machinery, cold in the winter, and hot in the summer. Most of the workers were female immigrants younger than 18. In the f...
News Article | December 31, 2007
Bayard Rustin: Unsung Crusader for Social Justice
Although he was always at the forefront of the civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin’s contributions to the struggle are often overlooked. Perhaps best known as the lead organizer for the 1963 March on Washington that set the stage for Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, Rustin was a ground...
News Article | August 31, 2007
The History of Labor’s ‘Day’
The celebration of the first Monday in September as a holiday “is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In the mid-1890s, Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Lab...