Labor History Today: Recent Episodes
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Gripping stories of the historic battles for worker rights and how they fuel today's struggles. Part of the Labor Radio/Podcast Network: #LaborRadioPod
On this week’s Labor History Today: Dave Zirin discusses his new book, The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, exploring the historian's influence on generations of activists—and even on Hollywood.
Then, marking the August 7 birthday of labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, producer Anthony Dominiczak looks back at the life of the legendary "Rebel Girl" and the fight over her historical legacy.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: A hand-held fan donated to the Museum of Vancouver tells the story of Canadian workers who volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Its wooden struts bear the signatures of loggers, miners, and trade unionists from British Columbia who traveled thousands of miles to defend Spain's democratically elected government.
From the On the Line: Stories of BC Workers podcast, historian David York explores the lives behind those names and the labor movement's long tradition of international solidarity. At a time when authoritarian movements are once again on the rise, their story is a powerful reminder that the fight for democracy and workers' rights knows no borders.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Historian Dr. Jeffrey Johnson tells the story of the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing and the infamous frame-up of labor leader Tom Mooney, who spent more than two decades behind bars before his eventual release and pardon. Recorded live at the 9th Annual Reuther-Pollock Labor History Symposium, Johnson explores how xenophobia, anti-labor fervor, and miscarriages of justice from a century ago still echo loudly today.
Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: The Battle of Blair Mountain.
Original airdate: 8/31/2025
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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As Spain and Argentina meet in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, Labor History Today looks beyond the action on the pitch to explore soccer's deep roots in working-class communities and labor struggles.
British labor journalist and trade unionist Simon Sapper traces the history of "the people's game," from its origins in factory towns and mining communities to today's battles over billionaire ownership, rising ticket prices, and the commercialization of the world's most popular sport.
Then we revisit one of the most important—and least remembered—labor struggles of the Progressive Era. While the 1912 "Bread and Roses" strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts is well known, a similar uprising unfolded just months later in Little Falls, New York. In an interview from our friends at the Green and Red Podcast, historian James Cheney, author of Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York, 1912–1913, tells the story of the immigrant women textile workers who launched a spontaneous strike that drew support from the Industrial Workers of the World and became a landmark in labor history.
Finally, on Labor History in 2:00, we remember the 1969 Charleston Hospital Workers Strike, when more than 400 Black hospital workers walked off the job, forging a powerful alliance between the labor and civil rights movements in the fight for dignity, equality, and union rights.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: The FIFA World Cup is once again captivating fans around the globe as the 2026 tournament heads into the semifinal round, with France facing Spain on July 14 and England taking on Argentina on July 15. While soccer is often viewed as a relatively recent arrival in the United States, the game actually has deep roots here, thanks to immigrant workers from Britain and Europe who brought football to mining towns, factories, and mill communities in the late nineteenth century. This week's Labor History Today – originally released during the 2022 World Cup -- explores the long—and often overlooked—history of soccer as a workers' game.
From 1927 to 1935, the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) established the Labor Sport Union, a coalition of worker athletic clubs, primarily located in the urban Northeast and Midwest. The CPUSA’s 1925 sport manifesto emphasized that sports should be used as a medium for class struggle and even to create “proletarian fighting units against militarism and fascism.”
One of their successful sporting accomplishments was the Workers’ Soccer Association, or WSA, which organized leagues in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. This communist soccer league played two seasons per year and competed for city, regional, and national championships.
On today’s show, Gabe Logan recounts the history of the Workers’ Soccer Association and explains an overlooked aspect of U.S. soccer that intersected political ideology, labor, and athletics.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: No Justice, No Bagels!
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week's Labor History Today: As the nation reflects on Independence Day, we turn from the "Great Men" of history to the voices of the people. We begin with Frederick Douglass's searing 1852 speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, performed by James Earl Jones, then hear from the Labor and Working-Class History Association's People's 250 project, where workers, historians, and activists share stories that place working people at the center of the American story. Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: July 4 Freedom to Join a Union
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Thanks to Democracy Now for the James Earl Jones clip.
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This week on Labor History Today: Silk stockings were all the rage in the 1920s, but the workers who made them paid the price. When the H.C. Aberle Hosiery Company in Philadelphia imposed wage cuts and harsher working conditions in 1930, more than a thousand workers walked out, setting off one of the city's most dramatic labor struggles.
As tensions escalated between strikers, strikebreakers, police, and company management, 22-year-old Carl Mackley was killed in a confrontation that galvanized Philadelphia's labor movement. Tens of thousands attended his funeral, and his legacy lived on in the pioneering Carl Mackley Houses, a union-sponsored cooperative housing project built during the New Deal.
Labor Jawn’s Sam James and Gabe Christy trace the origins of the strike, the violence that engulfed Kensington, the fight for arbitration, and how one young worker's death became a lasting symbol of labor solidarity.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today (originally broadcast 1/11/2026), Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of British Labor, 1780–1924. The book traces the rise of the world’s first modern labor movement through banners, boxes, coins, tools, and images created by working people during the Industrial Revolution and beyond—right up to the moment labor stood on the brink of political power in the 1920s.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today (Originally released October 12, 2025): A visit to the Donora Smog Museum, where a six-day inversion in 1948 trapped toxic fumes over a Pennsylvania mill town and changed how the U.S. thinks about work, health, and accountability.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The Mother Jones Monument is Dedicated.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Labor History Today visits Old Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, widely considered the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.
In this excerpt from The Manufacturing Report, host Scott Paul tours the historic mill with National Park Service Ranger Allison Horrocks. Together they explore how Samuel Slater brought Britain's closely guarded textile technology to the United States, the role of Moses Brown and early investors, the rise of the Rhode Island mill system, and the transformation of work from home-based production to factory labor.
The conversation also examines the human costs of industrialization, including child labor, the commodification of workers, the emergence of wage labor, and the first worker resistance to the factory system.
Plus: Labor History in Two remembers the 1929 Gastonia textile strike and the struggle of Southern textile workers to organize.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On Labor History Today: What happens if the labor laws that have governed workplace organizing since the 1930s simply disappear? Historian Leigh Campbell-Hale joins Labor Exchange host Robert Lindgren to discuss the 1927 Columbine Mine Strike, the stories labor history remembers—and forgets—and why those narratives matter for workers today.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today: Hazel Dickens remembered. The Mine Wars Forum talks with Hazel’s nephew Buddy Dickens about the legendary labor singer’s deep roots in the West Virginia coalfields, her fierce commitment to miners and working people, and why her music still resonates today. From picket lines and black lung fights to the new Fly Away Home festival honoring her legacy, Buddy shares personal stories about one of labor’s most beloved voices.
Plus: Labor History in 2:00 on the 1946 coal strike and the first Chicago Teachers Union strike; new stories from the People’s 250 campaign about steelworkers, civil rights, and shop-floor struggles; and reflections on labor memory, justice, and organizing from Appalachia to Baltimore.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s edition of Labor History Today: the People’s 250 campaign asks whose stories belong in America’s history, from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to today’s fights for worker dignity and democracy. Then historian Eric Bernardino joins America’s Work Force Radio to discuss the massive 1938 San Antonio pecan shellers strike led largely by Mexican women workers and fiery organizer Emma Tenayuca. Plus: the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum’s “Courage in the Hollers” labor history trail, Birmingham unionists who stopped a Klan church bombing, and this week’s Labor History in Two on the historic 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike.
Questions, comments, or suggestions? Contact us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation in partnership with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory
On Labor History Today: What do Chicago’s three Haymarket monuments reveal about labor history, public memory, and who gets to shape the story of the past? Labor historian Peter Cole explains. Plus: Australia’s early fight for the eight-hour day, and Labor History in 2:00 on the 1934 West Coast Maritime Strike.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: a powerful look at past and present struggles for worker rights and justice. We revisit the Haymarket Affair and the origins of May Day, then hear from historian Marla Ramírez on the forced “banishment” of Mexican American families in the early 20th century—and how those policies echo in today’s debates over deportation and mixed-status families. Plus, a tribute to Pete Seeger and the music that helped sustain generations of labor and social movements.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Can resistance to Trumpism help rebuild worker power?
Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike!, joins labor historian Joe McCartin and organizer Stephen Lerner to discuss their argument that bold, disruptive action—from strikes to economic pressure campaigns—can revive the labor movement, drawing on both history and on-the-ground organizing to map a way forward.
We also visit Tacoma, Washington, where Sarah Gray takes us to the gravesite of “Solidarity Forever” author Ralph Chaplin—showing how labor history lives on in local traditions.
And in Labor History in 2, Rick Smith marks the 1999 West Coast port shutdown, when dockworkers struck in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal—demonstrating the power of international labor solidarity.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
This week’s Labor History Today features Labor Express Radio in Chicago, previewing May Day 2026. From the 1886 fight for the eight-hour day to today’s call for an “economic blackout,” organizers are mobilizing for what could be a major test of workers’ power. Find out more about May Day activities at maydaystrong.org
Music: We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years by George Mann.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
On this week’s Labor History Today, producer producer Harold Phillips talks with Victoria McCallum and Lantz Simpson, co-writers of The Last Words of Joe Hill, a short play imagining Joe Hill in a modern coffee shop, sparking conversations about unions, work, and power.
The interview is interspersed with scenes from the radio version of the play, as Hill’s voice challenges young workers navigating low wages, job insecurity, and organizing drives—echoing struggles that continue today.
From the legacy of the Industrial Workers of the World to current campaigns like Starbucks Workers United, the episode explores how labor history still speaks to the present—and why, as Hill urged, the message remains: don’t mourn, organize.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. stood with striking sanitation workers in Memphis—members of AFSCME Local 1733—delivering his powerful “Mountaintop” speech just one day before his assassination. We reflect on King’s labor legacy and what it means for organizing today.
With the 2026 baseball season underway, we also take a look at the business of the game, featuring a segment from the Heartland Labor Forum on how players organized to break free from a system that bound them to their teams—and built one of the most powerful unions in the country.
Along the way, Conor Casey, Labor Archivist and Head of the Labor Archives at the University of Washington, brings us the story of the Seattle Union Record, a pioneering labor newspaper that showed the power of workers telling their own stories.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: As Women’s History Month draws to a close, we mark the founding of the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974, when more than 3,000 women from 58 unions came together in Chicago to demand a stronger voice in the labor movement.
Then, from America’s Workforce Union Podcast, historian Carie Rael takes us inside the largest strike in Disneyland history, when workers across multiple unions joined forces in the Reagan era to challenge one of the most powerful corporations in the country.
From the Labor Heritage Foundation’s Labor Landmarks project, producer Anthony Dominiczak travels to Victor, Colorado, where the bullet-scarred remains of a union hall tell the story of the violent 1903–04 Colorado labor wars — and the ongoing fight to preserve this historic site.
We also remember the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the deadliest workplace disasters in U.S. history, which galvanized the fight for workplace safety reforms.
And we close with music: a new song written and performed by Mike Stout, “Women of Steel,” honoring the United Steelworkers women who fought discrimination, organized for equality, and helped reshape the labor movement.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, we explore moments when workers didn’t just demand change—they forced it.
Detroit, 1937: sit-down strikers face a violent police raid—and resist, floor by floor, in a pivotal moment in the fight for union recognition.
Seattle, 1919: Conor Casey takes us inside the Labor Temple, as workers coordinate a general strike that briefly turns organized labor into the city’s governing force. See photos on LHF’s Labor Landmarks Map.
New York City, 1970: postal workers launch an illegal strike that spreads nationwide, defies federal troops, and wins real gains.
From America’s Workforce, historian Jesse Wilkerson takes us to the 1929 Elizabethton Rayon Strike, where young women led thousands in a bold challenge to low wages, toxic conditions, and repression.
In Michigan, from Madison Labor Radio, we hear the story of “Big Annie” Clements, who led copper miners in 1913—and the effort today to honor her legacy with a long-overdue monument.
And in Labor History in Two: Alice Henry, journalist and organizer, who helped amplify the voices of working women in the early labor movement.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today: From the fiery tragedy that shocked the nation—the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—to the powerful solidarity of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. We’ll also hear how a rebellious group of DJs turned a Bay Area radio station into a labor battleground in 1968, proving that the counterculture wasn’t just about rebellion—it was also about dignity, creativity, and fair pay on the job. And we visit Idaho’s Sunshine Mine Disaster Memorial, where a towering miner stands watch over 91 tombstones honoring workers lost in one of the deadliest hard-rock mining disasters in U.S. history. Reports from UUP’s The Voice podcast, Madison Labor Radio, and Labor History in 2:00.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today, we continue our look at the legacy of A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major Black-led union in the United States.
Recorded at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, SEIU International President April Verrett reflects on what Randolph’s legacy means for workers today.
Posting on International Women’s Day, this conversation highlights the role of women workers—especially in care and service jobs—in carrying forward the fight for dignity, organizing rights, and democracy. Verrett connects the porters’ struggle a century ago with today’s battles over worker power, immigration, and the changing nature of the working class.
PLUS: Remembering Lucy Parsons on Labor History in 2:00 and We Were There, from Bev Grant and the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today, historian Eric Arnesen marks the centennial of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, tracing how A. Philip Randolph and Black railway workers built the first major Black-led union in 1925, fought for what Randolph called “manhood rights”—dignity on the job—and helped lay the groundwork for the 1941 and 1963 Marches on Washington, reshaping both the labor movement and the modern civil rights struggle.
Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: The Price of Demanding Equal Pay, The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down, and Remembering E.D. Nixon.
NOTE: Arnesen’s February 10 talk was part of a special Black History Month and Labor Spring event featuring April Verrett, the first Black woman president of SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, sponsored by the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. We’ll bring you highlights from Verrett’s talk in next week’s show.
Explore LHF’s new Labor Landmarks Map and suggest a site near you at laborheritage.org!
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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today, host Chris Garlock explores how workers’ struggles leave lasting marks—not just on history, but on the physical landscape itself.
In Hamilton, Ontario, the 1946 Stelco strike helped secure collective bargaining rights for Canadian steelworkers—but also triggered a backlash that literally reshaped Woodlands Park, once known as the “People’s Park,” to prevent workers from gathering there again.
And in Marion, North Carolina, Chris traces the story of the 1929 Marion Massacre, when sheriff’s deputies opened fire on striking textile workers. Today, even the small gravestone marking where workers were killed may have disappeared—raising urgent questions about how labor history is remembered, and how easily it can be erased.
These stories are drawn from the Labor Heritage Foundation’s new Labor Landmarks Map, a growing, crowd-sourced resource documenting sites of working-class struggle, resistance, and memory.
In our second segment, Tales from the Reuther Library celebrates its 100th episode by exploring how bold philanthropy helped fund labor organizing and civil liberties movements during some of America’s darkest times.
Plus, four from Labor History in 2:00: Fighting for a Floor, The First Female Telegraph Operator, The Elusive 8 Hour Workday and Historic Sit-In by Memphis Sanitation Workers.
Together, these stories remind us that labor history lives all around us—in parks, factories, memorials, and the landscapes workers fought to shape.
Explore the Labor Landmarks Map and suggest a site near you at laborheritage.org!
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Labor History in 2:00 on the Sons of Vulcan’s 1865 strike, a Labor Jawn conversation with songwriter Mindy Murray about her song “Striking at Kings,” and a return to 1937 Anderson, Indiana, and the violence following the Flint sit-down strike. Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory
This week on Labor History Today: The 66th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins — a turning point that helped ignite the modern Civil Rights Movement and reshaped American politics. We feature an in-depth conversation from The Green and Red Podcast, tracing the origins of the sit-in movement, from Greensboro and Nashville to the rise of SNCC, and exploring how militant nonviolence, media exposure, and youth-led organizing forced a national reckoning — with powerful parallels to today’s struggles against state violence.
Then, on Labor History in 2:00, we revisit another watershed moment in collective action: the 1919 Seattle General Strike, when tens of thousands of workers shut down a city and demonstrated the power of solidarity.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory
This week on Labor History Today, we remember Pete Seeger and how his songs helped build movements—from union halls to civil rights and environmental campaigns. Then we turn to the 1933 Funsten Nut Strike in St. Louis, led by Black women who organized more than 2,000 workers, and talk with the creators of the new play A Brick and a Bible.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory
This episode of Labor History Today features historian Marcella Bencivenni on Arturo Giovannitti—Italian immigrant, poet, socialist, and labor organizer—whose role in the 1912 Lawrence textile strike made him a target of state repression and a powerful voice of labor resistance. Arrested for his words, Giovannitti turned imprisonment into poetry that helped define an era of immigrant-led radical organizing. The episode explores free speech struggles, anti-immigrant repression, and labor solidarity—lessons from more than a century ago that still resonate in 2026 America. We close with the Labor Song of the Month, featuring “Joe Hill’s Ashes,” performed by Otis Gibbs. Today’s show comes to us from the always fabulous Heartland Labor Forum on KKFI in Kansas City.
This week on Labor History Today, we explore how the 1892 Homestead Strike continues to live on—not just in books and archives, but in film, music, and living memory.
We begin with labor scholar and cultural critic Kathleen Newman, who takes us inside Ting Tong Chang’s The Hidden Shift, a two-screen film installation at Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory. Inspired by the Homestead Strike, the piece layers a fictionalized labor drama with behind-the-scenes footage of museum workers making the work itself—blurring the lines between labor and culture, past and present.
Kathleen reflects on Homestead as both a proud moment in worker history and a shameful chapter in corporate history, and connects the strike’s legacy to today’s service-sector workers—from museum staff to baristas—whose labor too often goes unseen.
We close with music that has carried the story for more than a century. “Homestead Strike Song” turns the events of 1892 into a communal act of remembrance. In this 1980 recording, Pete Seeger sings the song, invites a singalong, and shares the story of how the song survived—passed down in halls and bars long after the strike itself was crushed.
Together, these segments remind us that labor history isn’t just remembered—it’s made, performed, and sung.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of British Labor, 1780–1924. The book traces the rise of the world’s first modern labor movement through banners, boxes, coins, tools, and images created by working people during the Industrial Revolution and beyond—right up to the moment labor stood on the brink of political power in the 1920s.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, we move from repression to resistance—and from history to possibility.
We begin with Labor History in Two and the 1917 trial of labor leader Tom Mooney, a stark reminder of how the justice system has been used to silence working-class dissent.
Then we turn to the present with a report from the Working Class History podcast, bringing us to the 2025 Working Class Literature Festival at the occupied former GKN factory outside Florence, Italy—where workers are fighting not only to save their jobs, but to transform their workplace into a cooperative and tell their own stories.
We close with another Labor History in Two—the 2006 Sago Mine disaster—underscoring the deadly consequences of corporate negligence and regulatory failure.
History doesn’t just explain the world we’re in. It helps us imagine the one we’re trying to build.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: From Camp Solidarity in Matewan, West Virginia—the heart of the legendary Mine Wars—UMWA President Cecil Roberts reflects on the long struggle of coal miners to claim America’s promise that “this land belongs to all of us.” On the eve of his retirement, Roberts’ words connect today’s fights for justice with a century of labor history rooted in the hollers of Appalachia. (Originally broadcast 9/21/25; updated with today’s Labor History in 2:00)
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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In this episode of Labor History Today, labor organizer and researcher Eric Dirnbach talks with Dave Kamper, author of Who’s Got the Power: Hope for Troubled Times, about the post-pandemic union upsurge. From graduate student organizing and teachers’ strikes to the UAW’s stand-up strike and bargaining for the common good, Kamper reflects on what history can teach us about moments of possibility, and why solidarity is re-emerging as a force for change.
Labor History in 2:00: Red Scare Hysteria Deportations Begin
Music: Little Flame, by Carsie Blanton.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, we head to Philadelphia with an excerpt from the Labor Jawn podcast. Hosts Sam and Gabe talk with labor historian Dr. Francis Ryan about Philly’s central role in U.S. labor history, why working-class stories are often erased, and what today’s movement can learn from the city’s past.
Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: the birth of civil rights organizer Ella Baker in 1903.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, we revisit the 1946 Oakland General Strike through the eyes of labor educator and activist Stan Weir — and uncover the surprising role a chart-topping “country” hit played on the picket line. After we hear the day’s events from Labor History in 2:00, host Chris Garlock digs into Weir’s vivid account of the strike’s carnival-like atmosphere, where bars rolled jukeboxes into the streets and “Pistol Packin’ Mama” — the first country song ever to top the Billboard pop chart — echoed off downtown buildings for 54 hours. We trace how an American Federation of Musicians strike helped turn the tune into a national sensation, and why its defiant energy resonated with the mostly women department-store strikers who ignited the Oakland uprising.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, we’re marking the 50th anniversary of the Walter P. Reuther Library building at Wayne State University with a special episode from our friends at Tales from the Reuther Library. Hosts Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English revisit the origins of one of the nation’s premier labor archives, sharing stories from its early days and reflecting on why preserving labor history remains vital in a moment of renewed attacks on worker rights.
As part of the celebration, they sit down with Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, whose union recently placed its records with the Reuther. Nelson discusses the history and evolution of the flight attendant profession, the fights that shaped it, and why knowing our past is essential to winning today’s battles.
Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: the 2012 walkout by more than 100 New York City fast food workers that helped spark a movement.
A NOTE TO OUR LISTENERS: Recently we passed the 100,000-download mark here at Labor History Today. Now, we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to metrics and all that sort of stuff; we don’t have sponsors and we’ve been putting the show together every week since 2017 because – like Sara Nelson – we believe that the key to the future of working people and their unions lies in knowing about our past struggles.
Still, it’s nice to know that so many of you are listening out there; so here’s a promise: you keep listening and we’ll keep putting out the show. And if you get a chance, share the show with a colleague, friend or family and what the hell, let’s rack up another hundred thousand downloads even quicker!
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: We turn up the “today” in Labor History Today with a special edition focused on the historic, open-ended strike now underway at Starbucks. Nearly 2,000 union baristas at 95 stores in more than 65 cities have walked out — the boldest action yet in the Red Cup Rebellion — and we bring you the Labor Radio Podcast Weekly’s roundup of how shows across the network are covering this fast-moving struggle.
Hear frontline voices from Working People, Work Stoppage, We Rise Fighting, Labor Notes, and WBAI’s What’s Going On as baristas, organizers, and labor reporters break down understaffing, impossible time standards, corporate cup-writing mandates, community solidarity, and why workers are calling for a nationwide Starbucks boycott.
Plus: a brand-new strike song from veteran labor troubadour David Rovics, and — at the end — a little bonus from the Labor Radio Podcast Weekly crew.
No contract, no coffee. Tune in.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Historian and former UAW organizer Rudi Batzell joins America’s Workforce Union Podcast to explain how the failure of land reform after slavery — and employers’ use of racial division and strikebreaking — shaped the early U.S. labor movement. From “40 acres and a mule” to the CIO, Batzell shows how race and class remain inseparable in American labor history.
And on Labor History in 2:00: Justice for Janitors.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On today’s Labor Radio Podcast Daily: Organising for a Change digs into the reform vote and the real fight ahead for labor. In labor history, on this date in 1919, a deadly clash between American Legionnaires and Wobblies erupted during the Armistice Day Parade in Centralia, Washington. Quote of the day: Eugene Victor Debs.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders accepts the 60th annual Eugene V. Debs Award from the Eugene V. Debs Foundation in Terre Haute, Indiana — and pays tribute to the labor legend not as a figure of the past, but as an inspiration for the struggles of today. From the Pullman Strike to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, from Debs’ call for human kinship — “while there is a soul in prison, I am not free” — to Sanders’ warning about today’s billionaire class, this episode connects the struggles of the past to the movements of the present.
Plus, music by The Local Honeys, who performed at the Debs dinner, and Labor History in 2:00 remembers Debs.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Our friends at America’s Workforce mark Halloween with a chillingly real tale — the untold story of John Henry and his lasting legacy on labor. Host Ed “Flash” Ferenc talks with historian Scott Nelson of the University of Georgia, author of Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend. Nelson uncovers the truth behind the legend of John Henry — a 19-year-old Black convict laborer who died driving steel in a Virginia railroad tunnel — and how his story still echoes through labor history. Plus: Labor History in Two! on the 1835 Philadelphia general strike for the ten-hour day.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On Labor History Today: 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 – which originally aired on October 24, 2021 -- is excerpted from Strangleman’s Zoom presentation at the October 5, 2021 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.edu
Click 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 Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Justice Denied: David Gariff on “Ben Shahn and the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti.” Saul Schniderman remembers musician activist Elaine Purkey. From the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, “When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism.”
And, on Labor History in 2: Paul Robeson, “The Voice of an Era.”
Originally aired October 18, 2020; produced and edited by Chris Garlock and Evan Papp. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network; #LaborRadioPod
On this week’s Labor History Today: A visit to the Donora Smog Museum, where a six-day inversion in 1948 trapped toxic fumes over a Pennsylvania mill town and changed how the U.S. thinks about work, health, and accountability.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The Mother Jones Monument is Dedicated.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week's Labor History Today: 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.
Today’s show is an encore of our January 7-13, 2018 and features labor historians Joe McCartin and Leon Fink.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today: From the 2025 Camp Solidarity, West Virginia Mine Wars Museum co-founder Wilma Steele unpacks the red bandana—tracing its paisley roots from Persia to Appalachia—and how a scrap of cloth became labor’s emblem of courage, memory, and solidarity.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The Uprising of the 20,000.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: From Camp Solidarity in Matewan, West Virginia—the heart of the legendary Mine Wars—UMWA President Cecil Roberts reflects on the long struggle of coal miners to claim America’s promise that “this land belongs to all of us.” On the eve of his retirement, Roberts’ words connect today’s fights for justice with a century of labor history rooted in the hollers of Appalachia.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, labor historian Joseph McCartin joins Chris Garlock to unpack his recent congressional testimony on unions, antisemitism, and the long fight for solidarity. From the labor movement’s diverse roots to employers’ historic use of antisemitic attacks to weaken unions, McCartin offers critical perspective on the dangers of rewriting history and why today’s struggles echo the past.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Activist and artist Austin Sauerbrei talks about his debut graphic novel Trouble! at Coal Creek, which brings to life the 1890s miners’ uprising in Tennessee, where striking workers and Black prisoners found common cause against exploitation. It’s a moving call for solidarity, told in powerful words and images. Austin talked with our colleague Robert Lindgren, who hosts and produces Labor Exchange, the excellent radio show that airs weekly on KGNU Community Radio in Boulder, Colorado.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Historian Dr. Jeffrey Johnson tells the story of the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing and the infamous frame-up of labor leader Tom Mooney, who spent more than two decades behind bars before his eventual release and pardon. Recorded live at the 9th Annual Reuther-Pollock Labor History Symposium, Johnson explores how xenophobia, anti-labor fervor, and miscarriages of justice from a century ago still echo loudly today.
Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: The Battle of Blair Mountain.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today: the Solidarity Forever podcast explores how enslaved Black laborers resisted and strategized before the Civil War. At a time when the President attacks the Smithsonian for “focusing too much on slavery,” we’re keeping the people’s history—our history—alive.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
Music: I Be So Glad... When The Sun Goes Down (Ed Lewis) &
Oh Freedom! (The Golden Gospel Singers)
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On this week’s Labor History Today, scholar and creator Shana L. Redmond sits down with Naomi R Williams, Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University, to discuss Williams' new book A Blueprint for Worker Solidarity: Class Politics and Community in Wisconsin.
Williams takes us into the history of Racine, Wisconsin — a small industrial city where, in the 1970s and 80s, workers built cross-racial, cross-sector alliances that transformed their community. From “total person unionism” to coalitions linking labor, civil rights, and women’s movements, Racine’s story offers a powerful blueprint for building democracy and justice today. NOTE: This conversation is excerpted from a longer version on the Labor Heritage Power Hour, available on all podcast platforms.
This episode also features John Lewis Says Freedom, a brand-new song from musical storyteller and political satirist Charlie King.
And, on Labor History in Two: A Little Security for Workers.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today: From Nixon’s “hard hat” protest to reform battles inside the Steelworkers, from Philly’s once-every-40-years sanitation strikes to the enduring call of the Delano grape boycott — we explore how workers have fought, organized, and reshaped history. Today’s show features excerpts from America’s Workforce Radio, Tales from the Reuther Library, The Labor Jawn, Solidarity Works, and The Rick Smith Show’s Labor History in 2:00.
Plus: a 1922 railroad walkout that rattled the steel industry.
On this week’s Labor History Today, we feature the Tales from the Ruther Library podcast, where Dan Golodner talks with historian Dr. Justine Modica about the history of childcare labor in the U.S. and the “Worthy Wage” movement that emerged in Seattle in the 1990s. Plus: in labor history, striking Teamsters in 1934 Minneapolis defy martial law. Hosted by Patrick Dixon.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On today’s Labor Radio Podcast Daily: The Worker Power Hour tackles the housing crisis and wage stagnation in Southern California.
In labor history, on this date in 1970, Delano grape growers signed their first union contracts with the United Farm Workers.
Quote of the day: Cesar Chavez.
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This week on Labor History Today: author Mark S. Ferrara joins labor educator Linda Donahue to explore the hidden history of the workers who built and lived along the Erie Canal. Based on Ferrara’s book The Raging Erie, the conversation uncovers the stories of Native Americans whose land was taken, immigrant laborers who carved the canal by hand, orphan children who worked as mule drivers, and the canallers who helped shape America’s expansion westward.
As the Erie Canal celebrates its 200th anniversary, this episode shines a light on the hardship, solidarity, and resistance that defined life along its banks—and the enduring legacy of labor beneath the surface of this iconic public project.
Click here to enter the Unions Power America sweepstakes; Grand Prize is $40K + a dream holiday trip to NYC, plus, they’ve got some life-changing cash for First, Second and Third Prizes!
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Ben Fletcher was one of the most important black labor leaders in American history. Yet he’s almost entirely unknown. In today’s show, from the Working Class History podcast (originally aired here on 7/23/23), we learn about this little-known dock worker and labor organizer, who helped organize thousands of workers on the Philadelphia docks into the most powerful multiracial union in the country.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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For decades, rumors have circulated about a strike in space. The story goes that in 1973, the three astronauts on the Skylab 4 mission took an unplanned day off to protest ground controls management style, and the job action resulted in improved working conditions. It's a great story, but according to crew member Ed Gibson, that's not exactly what happened. Reporter Meagan Day says the real story is still a testament to the potential of strikes — or even just the threat of strikes — to shift the balance of power in the workplace. She wrote about it in Jacobin and brings us her report today. MULTIVERSE composed & produced by SutheeComposer.
And on this week’s Labor History in 2:00…The year was 1969. That was the day hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina won union recognition. This episode originally aired on July 18, 2021.
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.
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This week on Labor History Today, we bring you a special episode celebrating folk legend Pete Seeger. In the first episode of A Weekend With Pete Seeger, recorded in 1999, Seeger sings, plays banjo, and shares stories of a lifetime fighting for labor rights, peace, and the environment. Captured just before his 80th birthday, these intimate conversations—long tucked away—bring Seeger’s voice and spirit vividly to life. Our thanks and appreciation to Jean-Claude Kuner and Claus Vittus, who created the 5-episode Pete Seeger podcast for the Tønder Festival, an annual folk music festival in Tønder, Denmark.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On today’s Labor History Today, from our friends at The Docker Podcast, we join ILWU longshore workers James Brophy and Leith Jasinowski-Kahl to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1935 Battle of Ballantyne Pier. From police violence on Vancouver’s waterfront to the songs that keep resistance alive, they share why this history still matters today.
And on Labor History in 2:00: the year was 1936; Jesus Pallares, a Chicano miner and union organizer was deported from the United States.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week on Labor History Today, we bring you a special episode from the We Rise Fighting Labor Podcast, exploring the power and potential of today’s mass protests—from the streets of LA to immigrant rights rallies; where is all this energy going, and what vision can turn protest into real, lasting change?
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: We remember legendary union leader Tony Mazzocchi—his fight for worker safety, his role in founding the Labor Party, and his lasting impact on labor arts.
Plus, Seth Newton Patel’s song about the untold story of the multiracial cowboy strike of 1883, and a look back at the 1937 miners’ solidarity strike.
This week on Labor History Today: From the Library of Congress’ America Works podcast: Bill Favaro shares the origins of his family’s Louisiana rod & reel shop, and Juan Salcido Sanchez reflects on a lifetime caring for racehorses. Plus, we mark two deadly events in mining labor history—from Butte, Montana (1917) to Cripple Creek, Colorado (1904).
Music: “The Miners” by The Elders.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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On this week’s Labor History Today: "This drunk came on and he started showing me a bad time, and I up and popped him and knocked him out. The soldier got one arm, I got the other and we put him beside the telephone pole. We got back in, gave a bell, and away we went. Never knew what happened to the guy. He could still be sitting there—I don’t know."
That was Pearl Wattum, one of Vancouver’s legendary “conductorettes”—the women who kept the city’s streetcars running during World War II while the men were away fighting fascism. On today’s show, from our colleagues at On The Line: Stories of BC Workers, we share their stories—firsthand accounts of grit, humor, and union solidarity from the front lines of public transit. It’s a powerful look at gender, labor, and what it took to keep a city moving in wartime.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The Day Rosie the Riveter Died.
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This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property (Encore)
Steve Fraser discusses his book “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History” and political scientist and historian Michael Munk connects 2024 Minneapolis with the general strike that took place there in 1934. Plus,Meany Archivist Ben Blake on how the labor movement has used car caravans, the “En Masse” podcast takes us inside the New England quarries nearly a century ago, and we celebrate the life of Rosie the Riveter. Originally released May 31, 2024.
On this week's Labor History Today: Before she turned 20, Emma Tenayuca led thousands of Mexican American pecan shellers into one of the largest strikes of the 1930s. A fearless young organizer from San Antonio, Texas, Tenayuca fought for workers’ rights, racial justice, and dignity—despite arrest, red-baiting, and death threats. Her story, largely left out of mainstream labor history, still resonates in today’s struggles for immigrant and worker justice. This episode features a segment from Solidarity Works, the podcast of the United Steelworkers
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On this week’s Labor History Today podcast: In a special crossover episode with the Power At Work podcast, historians Joe McCartin and Veronica Martinez-Matsuda join me and Power At Work host Seth Harris to connect the past to labor’s present “perilous moment.” They explore the legacy of the 1981 PATCO strike, today’s threats to federal workers' rights, the farm labor movement’s long exclusion from labor law, and why history doesn’t swing back on its own—people make it.
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On this episode of Labor History Today, we mark the 40th anniversary of the end of one of the most significant labor struggles of the 20th century: the 1984–85 British Miners’ Strike. Former miner and strike veteran John Dunn shares his harrowing personal account of the violence, repression, and community solidarity that defined the year-long battle between the National Union of Mineworkers and Margaret Thatcher’s government. Dunn’s story, told in conversation with Heartland Labor Forum host Tino Scalici, brings to life the cost of resistance, the brutality of the state, and the enduring legacy of working-class struggle.
We also feature labor music from the Oyster Band, with “Coal Not Dole,” a poem by Kay Sutcliffe set to song, and Labor History in Two on the Haymarket Affair.
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Sara Nelson’s inspirational keynote at the April 6, 2021 symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jeremy Brecher’s classic labor history book “Strike!” On today’s Labor History in 2: Our Thing is DRUM!
Originally released May 2, 2021.
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This week on Labor History Today: The 25th annual DC Labor FilmFest kicks off May Day at the AFI Silver! Host Chris Garlock previews the powerful lineup of films about work and workers with AFI programmers Todd Hitchcock, Abbie Algar, Eli Prysant, and Javier Chavez — including LILLY, The Last Showgirl, and more.
Plus: On Labor History in 2:00, we remember the 1914 Ludlow Massacre. And historian Nick Juravich shares a favorite labor song celebrating the radical legacy of the National Maritime Union.
🎟️ Full festival info at laborheritage.org
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On Labor History Today: Para Power: AFT president Randi Weingarten talks with Nick Juravich, associate director of the Labor Resource Center at UMass Boston, about class, race and education and his book Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education. PLUS: Nick’s almost-favorite labor song, and, on Labor History in 2:00, Florence Reece is born.
Labor History Today is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.
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On Labor History Today: In 1934, as part of an effort to boost morale and encourage citizens to find community in their traditions, the Roosevelt administration sent artists to homesteads throughout the country to lead group activities—including listening to and making folk music.
On today’s show, a conversation centered around A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR’s Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time, a book by award-winning author and music scholar Sheryl Kaskowitz.
The event took place at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College on October 16, 2024; our show today is excerpted from a longer video.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Rose Schneiderman is born.
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On Labor History Today: Kings and presidents and CEOs like to think that they make history but real history is actually made by thousands of small actions like this: a handful of grounds workers at a local school district refusing to handle South African chicken wire, multiplied around the globe until, eventually, the entire racist system of apartheid collapses. Today’s episode tells the impressive story of international solidarity by union members in British Columbia – B.C. -- who worked tirelessly in support of those fighting to end apartheid. It comes to us from On The Line: Stories of BC Workers, a consistently terrific podcast from our friends in the free and independent country of Canada.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Fifteenth Amendment adopted; Remembering ILWU Leader Harry Bridges
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OnLabor History Today: Joe McCartin, Leon Fink and Patrick Dixon discuss the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that undocumented workers don’t have the same rights as Americans, Sam Walton’s anti-union legacy, and they remember dock union leader Harry Bridges and the Texas cowboys strike. PLUS: Saul Schniderman on Martin Luther King and striking sanitation workers in Memphis. Music this week includes “Glory,” with Common and John Legend, from the motion picture "Selma” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke. Originally released March 25, 2018.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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Labor History Today: During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 800 nurses walked out on strike in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As concern rises about the return of measles and cuts to healthcare staff and budgets, this edition of the Labor Jawn podcast from February 2022 is especially timely.
And, a double-hit of Labor History in Two: The day The Grapes of Wrath opened in movie theaters, and the day Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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Labor History Today: This week’s edition of the show takes us to Australia, but the history of slavery and the ongoing failure to come to terms with the resulting racism and discrimination there echo uncomfortably loudly here in the United States as Donald Trump ramps up his campaign to stamp out any effort to acknowledge that such things exist, as though by simply abolishing the words diversity, equity and inclusion we can magically erase generations of oppression.
It cannot do so, but we clearly have a long way to go here at home, and it’s instructive – and a bit inspiring -- to hear how our brothers and sisters Down Under are struggling with the same issues.
Today’s show comes to us from the Melbourne-based radio show Stick Together; host James Brennan talks with author Santilla Chingaipe about her book “Black Convicts: How slavery shaped Australia.”
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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On Labor History Today: A visit to the Northern Ireland city of Derry and a search for the real Factory Girls.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Jefferson Outlaws the Slave Trade; Greyhound Bus Drivers Strike
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Sources:
Derry’s Factory Girls Deserve Better?
Londonderry's factory girls celebrated with new mural
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As Black History Month comes to a close, the On the Line podcast marks the occasion with a fascinating look back at the history of train sleeping car porters, almost all of whom were Black. It's a story that has only recently started to be told, and combines the history of Black employment in Canada, unionization and the fight for dignity and equality. On The Line examines those long-lost days mostly through the voice of Warren Williams, whose Uncle Lee was in the forefront of the drive to organize Sleeping Car Porters in Canada. Warren is the current President of CUPE Local 15 (Vancouver), one of the biggest CUPE locals in Canada. Listen to Warren's full interview here.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Black Food Workers Lead Historic Strike at UNC.
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For 150 years, Richmond's place in history has been as "the capital of the Confederacy." But this label hides a much richer and more complex history. On today’s show, originally aired on Feb. 20, 2022, we hear from Peter Rachleff, Co-Executive Director of the East Side Freedom Library, a retired professor of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and author of "Black Labor in Richmond, 1865 -1890," as he reveals part of that hidden history, that of Black and White workers in the second half of the 19th century.
Note: Excerpted from Rachleff’s Feb. 2, 2022 talk for The Virginia Worker; click here for the complete talk.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Yale Grad Students Strike (2/17/1992).
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Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
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On Labor History Today: Grit and Working-Class Solidarity: B.C. Workers Respond to the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. The On the Line: Stories of BC Workers podcast reports on “A time of unsurpassed working-class consciousness and resistance, the likes of which Canada had not seen before, nor since.”
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Moral Mondays.
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On Labor History Today: The 1917 “Bath Riots”. The story of Carmelita Torres, the "Latina Rosa Parks," and the so-called “Bath Riots” on the U.S.-Mexico border in 1917. On Labor History in Two: auto workers sit down and Black students sit in.
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On this week's Labor Heritage Power Hour: MLK in Memphis; “We Will Not Be Turned Around”, Part 3 of AFSCME’s I AM STORY podcast about the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike.
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On this week’s Labor History Today: While historians have written prolifically about the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, there has been a lack of attention to the Columbine Massacre in which police shot and killed six striking coal miners and wounded sixty more protestors during the 1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike, even though its aftermath exerted far more influence on subsequent national labor policies.
In her 2023 book Remembering Ludlow but Forgetting the Columbine: The 1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike, Leigh Campbell-Hale reorients understandings of labor history from the 1920s through the 1960s and the construction of public memory—and forgetting—surrounding those events.
Our colleague Robert Lindgren, who hosts the Labor Exchange radio show on KGNU, Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins, recently released a 3-part interview with Campbell-Hale; on today’s show, Part 1. Click here for Part 2 and here for Part 3.
And, on Labor History in Two: Is Colorado in America?
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On this week’s Labor History Today: Battle of the Eureka Stockade. Australia’s history closely tracks American history; the subjugation of indigenous people is the most obvious parallel, and the battles for basic worker rights is another. On today’s show -- which comes to us from Stick Together, Australia's only national radio show focusing on industrial, social and workplace issues -- the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, the first major event of post-colonial Australia, where in 1854, during the Victorian gold rush, the army and police violently attacked miners – killing dozens -- for daring to call for the end of mining licenses and universal suffrage.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Cox’s Army marches on the nation’s Capitol.
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American labor unions have seen an incredible resurgence in recent years, which, suggests public historian Tom Goldscheider, “begs the question: why were they in decline in the first place?”
In "At Sword’s Point", Tom revisits a pivotal moment in American history, when the furious power of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare found its first true target, and when the dismantling of American organized labor began.
But this isn’t a story of workers caving in the face of mass hysteria; this is the story of a rural town where, against all expectations, the workers fought back.
Today’s show is a documentary that recounts these dramatic events of the early 1950s – which still resonate today -- while also providing important context on the machine tool industry of Greenfield, Massachusetts — once a center of global innovation — as well as the origins of the United Electrical Workers Union, or UE.
Tom Goldscheider is a public historian and working farrier based in western Massachusetts. His research on Greenfield labor history was published in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts and shared through a series of talks given at area venues. He has also published and spoken on the origins and significance of Shays’ Rebellion, and developed an interactive curriculum on local abolitionist history for the David Ruggles Center for History and Education. He holds a Masters in History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Reach him at tom.goldscheider@gmail.com
Ian Coss is a creator of acclaimed podcasts. His nine-part documentary The Big Dig was named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by The New Yorker and Vulture, while spending over six weeks in the top 100 shows on Apple Podcasts; it’s really terrific and worth a listen.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Standing Up by Sitting Down.
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Joe Jencks is a 25-year veteran of the international folk circuit, an award-winning songwriter, and a celebrated vocalist based in Chicago. Merging conservatory training with his Irish roots and working-class upbringing, Joe delivers engaged musical narratives filled with heart, soul, groove and grit. Pete Seeger said “The spirit of Folk music is people working together. Joe is a fantastic singer who carries on the traditions.”
Today, Joe tells us the story behind his song “Christmas in Mansfield,” where Armco locked out 620 steel workers on September 1, 1999.
A note from LHT host Chris Garlock: Labor History Today is brought to you by the Labor Heritage Foundation, which works to preserve labor culture and history. If you want to support our work, please consider contributing to LHF; it’s tax deductible and right now all contributions are being matched. Click here to give; thank you!
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“This fight isn't just for the teamsters. This is for all American workers.”This weekend, Teamsters struck Amazon in New York City, Atlanta, Skokie, Southern California, San Bernardino and San Francisco. The union represents 10,000 Amazon workers at 10 warehouses and delivery stations.
But that quote at the top is not from the Amazon strike; it’s about the Teamsters’ strike against the United Parcel Service in 1997.
Today, our colleagues at the Labor Jawn podcast take us back to that pivotal strike twenty seven years ago when 185,000 workers stood up to one of the largest shipping companies in the United States. And won.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Bucks Stove Boycott.
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On this week's Labor History Today: Touring the American Labor Museum
The American Labor Museum in Haledon, New Jersey, is also known as The Botto House, and that’s because for generations that’s what it was: the home of the Botto family. This unassuming house, sitting on an ordinary-looking street in a quiet residential neighborhood, played a key role in American labor history when it became the heart of the 1913 Patterson Silk Strike as tens of thousands of silk workers – most of them immigrants and many of them young children – demanded an eight-hour day and improved working conditions.
They were supported by the IWW and the strike drew leaders like Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who spoke from that balcony at the Botto House, and recently LHT host Chris Garlock finally had a chance to make his own pilgrimage to this iconic labor landmark, for a personal tour with Education Director Evelyn Hershey.
And, on Labor History in Two: The year was 2005; that was the day the labor movement lost a man who was willing to go to jail to fight for the rights of working people.
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On this week's Labor History Today: Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil during the early half of the twentieth century.
Producer Patrick Dixon talks with historian Sarah McNamara about her book Ybor City, Crucible of the Latina South, which tells the story of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas and Latinos who organized strikes, marched against fascism, and criticized U.S. foreign policy. While many members of the immigrant generation maintained their dedication to progressive ideals for years to come, those who came of age in the wake of World War II distanced themselves from leftist politics amidst the Red Scare and the wrecking ball of urban renewal.
This portrait of the political shifts that defined Ybor City highlights the underexplored role of women’s leadership within movements for social and economic justice as it illustrates how people, places, and politics become who and what they are.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The American Federation of Labor is founded.
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Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals (top), commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson’s 1937 untitled mural (bottom), which originally hung in the UAW Local 174 union hall and now hangs behind the reference desk at the Reuther Library, champions the progress those industrial workers made laboring for their own welfare via union action.
Dr. Cephas is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. His essay “Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’: Representing Labor and Reappropriating Care in the Museum and in the Union Hall,” was published in the 2023 volume, Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common.
Originally aired on the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The World Loses the Miners’ Angel.
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Five stunning paintings depictinglabor organizing, pickets and the violence directed at workers in the turbulent 1930s were almost lost to history. The story of Philip Tipperman and how a small group of people saved those paintings.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Massacre At Bogalusa.
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Picketed, Beaten, by Philip Tipperman, 1939
Labor historian Mitch Troutman’s 2022 book, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942 is a detailed account of coal bootlegging in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the Prohibition/Depression decades when unemployed miners took over unused mines,
asserting and defending a right to mine and market the coal to support their families. Excerpted from his June 23, 2022 talk for The Battle of Homestead Foundation.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1785. That was the day the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York was founded.
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Bev Grant is a cultural worker from Brooklyn, NY; she’s a social justice feminist, a choral director, an occasional bandleader, a dance artist and a photographer.
She’s also a much beloved singer/songwriter, and on today’s show, she tells us the story behind one of her best-known songs – and one that seems especially meaningful this post-election week, Together We Can Move Mountains.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Benevolent Dictator.
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“The life and music of Barbara Dane,” from The Harry Bridges Project. The story of America told through its social upheaval, its achievements and, above all, its music. Originally broadcast on WPFW's Labor Heritage Power Hour (10/31/24).
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1975; that was the day that the National Organization for Women, or NOW, called for a strike by women across the nation.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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LHT tours the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum with Executive Director Mackenzie New-Walker.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1948. That was the day that a thick yellow fog rolled over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania just south of Pittsburgh.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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The Pittsburgh Labor Choir’s Tom Hoffman and Kira Yeversky lead a master class in the history of labor songs in their inspirational session at this year’s Reuther-Pollack Labor History Symposium, recorded with a live – and enthusiastically singing – audience.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1945; that was the day that Paul Robeson received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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I could not put this away. Once I saw what happened here: the orange Tug River from the strip mines…the strip mining, the desecration, the poverty. I owed it to the world to tell what happened.William Trent Pancoast has worked as a construction laborer, gas station attendant, railroad section hand and brakeman, factory laborer, commercial laundry foreman, and machinist. He’s been an English teacher and a journeyman die-maker.
In 1986 The Wall Street Journal dubbed Pancoast a "Blue collar writer" and that’s just fine with him, as he told the Journal, "The reason I write about work is that that's just about damn near all I've ever done."
His working-class-flavored short stories and essays have appeared in many Midwestern and international magazines and newspapers.
Pancoast's novel Crashing was published in 1983. In 1986, his United Auto Worker's union history was published. Pancoast spent the next twenty years as the editor of a monthly union newspaper-the Union Forum-while continuing to publish his fiction, essays, and editorials not only in the Union Forum but also in the UAW's 1.2 million circulation Solidarity magazine.
A revised version of his novel The Road to Matewan has just been published and yesterday Bill Pancoast drove down from his home in Ohio to give a reading and talk at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum so I figured the least I could do was make the 7-hour drive down – my own 300-mile Road to Matewan – to record it for you.
By the way, as you’ll hear, the train still runs through town right across from the museum.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1965; that was the day acclaimed photojournalist Dorothea Lange died.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Chris talks with labor historian Dana Frank; her new book is What Can We Learn From the Great Depression? Stories of Ordinary People and Collective Action in Hard Times. The book takes a new look at working-class activism during the 1930s from the perspective of our own time, examining mutual aid, eviction protests, the expulsion of a million Mexicans, a sit-down strike by African American women working as wet-nurses, and a white supremacist fascist organization in Ohio known as the Black Legion.
Dana will be in conversation with Bill Fletcher Jr. this Tuesday, October 7, at the K Street Busboys and Poets; click here for details.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1918. That was the evening that a series of explosions began at the T.A. Gillespie Company near Morgan, New Jersey.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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William Lucy – an icon of the labor movement -- died this past Wednesday at the age of 90. “Bill Lucy served as a brilliant strategist whose words instantly cut to the heart of an issue,” said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler, who called Lucy “a bridge across generations of our movement; and a leader in connecting the fights of working people all across the world.”
As Shuler noted, when Lucy was just 34 years old, “he wrote four simple words—'I Am a Man’—that would change the course of history in Memphis, Tennessee,” helping “all Americans see the humanity of Black sanitation workers in their struggle for dignity and respect on the job.”
Bill Lucy also co-founded the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and it’s that aspect of his extraordinary career that we’re going to explore on today’s show.
In January 2021, Lucy talked with the Black Work Talk podcast about the relationship between Black unionists, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and the labor movement during the 60s and 70s.
Labor Movement Celebrates Extraordinary Life and Career of Bill Lucy
“Tired of Going to Funerals”: The 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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The Animation Guild (TAG), Local 839 of the Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), resumed negotiations with Hollywood studios this week and are fighting for pay equity for color designers, a job historically staffed by women. Today’s show originally ran on July 6, 2023, when the strike by Hollywood writers was in its’ 10th week. Among those turning out to support that strike were members of the Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839); in March of 2023, the animators staged a “solidarity walk” around Walt Disney Studios in Burbank with dozens of the studio’s animation production workers protesting Disney’s refusal to voluntarily recognize its unionization efforts. Those who know their Hollywood labor history will have recognized the echoes of another Hollywood strike, the 1941 walkout by hundreds of animators at Walt Disney Studios. On today’s show, animation historian Jake Friedman joins us to discuss his book The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age. (Original airdate 7/6/2023)
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Squeegee Strike.
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Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Labor journalist Hamilton Nolan on the labor movement past, present and future and his new book “The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.” Recorded live at the eighth annual Reuther-Pollack Labor History Symposium on August 31 in Wheeling, West Virginia. Music by the Pittsburgh Labor Choir.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1970; that was the day 350,000 GM workers kicked off a 67-day strike.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Today’s show recorded by Patrick Dixon and produced by Chris Garlock; photo by Garlock.
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J. Albert Mann, author of “Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States,” a children’s book that’s unusual not just in its subject matter but in the way it treats kids seriously as the future citizens they are. Recorded live at the Reuther-Pollack Labor History Symposium in Wheeling, West Virginia on August 31, 2024. Recording by Patrick Dixon, produced by Chris Garlock.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 2011; that was the day hundreds of ILWU strikers blocked railroad tracks near Longview, Washington.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Walter Reuther’s name is forever linked to Detroit, Michigan, where he and his brother Victor built the United Automobile Workers -- the UAW -- into one of the largest and most progressive labor unions in American history. In Wheeling, West Virginia, where he was born on September 1, 1907, Reuther is a hometown boy who made good.
Each year for the last eight years, the Wheeling Academy of Law and Science Foundation (WALS) has organized the Reuther-Pollack Labor History Symposium on Labor Day weekend. The annual event also celebrates the life and work of local stogie maker -- and union supporter -- Augustus Pollack.
LHT producers Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon drove out to Wheeling last Friday to cover the symposium, which included presentations by “Shift Happens” author J. Albert Mann, labor journalist Hamilton Nolan, West Virginia Mine Wars Museum co-founder Lou Martin and the Pittsburgh Labor Choir. We’ll be sharing audio from those presentations in upcoming shows.
West Virginia historian Hal Gorby led a walking tour on Saturday to statues of both Reuther and Pollack in a park along the Ohio River in downtown Wheeling. The noontime walk was interrupted by an intense but thankfully brief mountain thunderstorm, so you’ll hear the rain and thunder in the background as we took shelter and the intrepid Dr. Gorby continued his local history talk beneath his oversized umbrella.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1921. On that day the “Battle of Blair Mountain” raged in Logan County, West Virginia.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Labor action is effectively one of two things: political action, or direct action. This week, from the Solidarity Forever podcast, we learn about political action, in the courts through the landmark Pullis decision, and charting the rise and fall of the Working Man's Parties in the days of Andy Jackson.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1925. Five hundred African American sleeping car porters gathered at the Elks Hall at 129th Street in Harlem.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Blood in the Streets, photographer Chuck Avery’s illustrated history of American labor struggles, and Kurt Stand shares an excerpt from his essay, Peekskill, 1949: What Was Lost, What Remained, What It Means Today.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1918; that was the day that 101 leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies were convicted in a Chicago Federal Court.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Labor historian Peter Rachleff on how a Midwest strike helped shape national labor law plus a preview of his talk on the 1886 takeover of the Richmond (VA) City Council by black and white union activists.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the birth of the original Rebel Girl, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Between 1955 and 1965, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) investigated numerous southern institutions of higher education that had dismissed faculty members for publicly supporting desegregation and racial equality. In today’s episode, from the AAUP Presents podcast, a discussion with Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, dean of the graduate school and professor of social and cultural foundations in the College of Education at the University of Washington, drawing on her recently published article, "The AAUP and the Black Freedom Struggle, 1955–1965.”
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1821. That was the day Knights of Labor founder Uriah Smith Stephens was born near Cape May, New Jersey.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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From the Fragile Juggernaut podcast; the escalating confrontation between fascism and anti-fascism in the 1930’s and ‘40’s; Was there an American fascism? Where did it come from and what did it look like? How did it relate to the labor movement? And what was the meaning of the Popular Front, the broad left coalition against fascism? Questions that still resonate today…
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1932. That was the day that flames burned in the US Capitol.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Sweet Honey in the Rock founder Bernice Johnson Reagon, on today’s Labor Heritage Power Hour
Today’s labor history: First US general strike
Today’s labor quote: Bernice Johnson Reagon
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The Labor and Energy podcast takes a look
Today’s labor history: Alliance for Labor Action founded
Today’s labor quote: Thomas Donahue
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A Teamster leader speaks out on The Real News Network
Today’s labor history: Anarchist attacks steel magnate
Today’s labor quote: Alexander Berkman
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On July 17, 1944, a group of sailors and civilians were loading ships with ammunition and bombs at Port Chicago, a naval magazine and barracks in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tragically, the ships blew up in a massive explosion that instantly killed 320 workers and injured hundreds more. Most of the dead were African Americans, since racial segregation consigned Black soldiers and sailors to manual labor and service, including the dangerous work of transporting munitions. When the surviving workers were ordered back on the job without any additional safety measures or training, 50 refused to return. The resisters, dubbed the “Port Chicago 50,” were found guilty of disobedience of a lawful order and mutiny and received lengthy sentences and dishonorable discharges.
Today, the disaster and its aftermath are memorialized at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, one of a small number of National Park sites that commemorate death and dying on the job. In 2021, "Monumental Labor," a three-part online series, explored the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and National Historic Landmarks, a distinguished panel discussed “Tragedy and Resistance at Port Chicago Naval Magazine.” Dr. Albert Broussard, Professor of History at Texas A&M University, Tom Leatherman, former Superintendent at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, and Dr. Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, discussed African American labor in the West, the memorial’s role in shaping the memory of the Port Chicago disaster, and how the event should inform commonly-told histories of “America’s Greatest War.”
The "Monumental Labor" series was organized by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman. Dr. Mahoney has contributed to Labor History Today before, and we appreciate her help bringing this discussion to the podcast as Black History Month wraps up. Thanks also to the National Park Service, and to the National Park and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, which helped make the series possible.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down (1937), and Criminalization of the Sit-Down (1939).
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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
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On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in the United States nearly 50 years ago. The decision sent shock waves across the country and through the American labor movement, which recognizes that reproductive rights are a worker issue, affecting millions of working women and their families. Labor historian Joe McCartin argues that “for most of its history, the court's just been a disaster for workers” and on today’s show, McCartin explores that history, warning that “We're not going to see a better Supreme Court…without a movement, without something happening in the streets, without a struggle.”
On Labor History in 2:00: the day that American folklorist Archie Green was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and the day known as the East St. Louis Race Riot.
This show originally aired on July 3, 2022. Got a question? 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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I’m up in British Columbia this week for the first time since the pandemic; it’s a beautiful place and at least where my friend Phil and I go, it’s very peaceful, the perfect place to unwind and relax. But, as you'll hear, today’s show is anything but peaceful: it’s about a 1966 wildcat strike by 400 mostly women members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at Lenkurt Electric in Burnaby, British Columbia, which was a turning point for the province's labor movement. Back then, courts and police routinely jailed and fined union members during labor disputes, and Canadian members of international unions were demanding more autonomy.
Our show comes to us from the On The Line: Stories of BC Workers podcast, and the story of the Lenkurt Electric strike is described by Ian McDonald, whose book "The Red Baron of IBEW Local 213: Les McDonald, Union Politics, and the 1966 Wildcat Strike at Lenkurt Electric" will be published in 2024. You’ll also hear Bill Hood and The Gram Partisans debut their original song "Lenkurt Electric: Turning the Tide".
- Chris Garlock, host
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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This week, in an encore of a show we first aired on July 10, 2022, labor history takes a deep dive into "True Crime" `. Billy Gohl was called "The Ghoul of Grays Harbor" in the early 20th Century when he was accused of being the murderer who dumped several bodies into the canals around Aberdeen in Washington State. Was he one of America's first serial killers? Or was he just another in a long line of labor activists framed by the bosses? Find out when Working to Live in Southwest Washington podcast hosts Shannon and Harold talk with Aaron Goings, author of “The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor & Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest”.
Music for today's show: Hellbound Glory Streets of Aberdeen the ballad of Billy Gohl, by Leon Virgil Bowers.
On Labor History in 2:00: the year was 1918. That was the day machinist John Connolly was fired from General Electric’s sprawling River Works in West Lynn, Massachusetts.
Got a 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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Contrary to the common belief that white activists were purged from the Black freedom movement in the mid-1960 and 1970s, Black-led organizations in Detroit – including the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Workers—actually called on white activists to organize within their own white networks to support Black self-determination in education, policing, employment, and labor unions, according to Dr. Say Burgin, author of Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit. Today’s show comes to us from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast; hear what really happened and why it matters today.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1947; that was the day the despised Taft-Hartley Act became law.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Kansas City native Thomas Frank talks with the Heartland Labor Forum radio show about his new book about American populism, the long trail of elites who hate it, why pundits called Donald Trump a populist and why he’s nothing of the kind.
Harvey J. Kaye on The Fight for The Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and The Greatest Generation Truly Great, from Empathy Media Lab.
And on Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells us about Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
Today’s music includes two songs from the great MrBettsClass videos, Populist Party – a parody of Taylor Swift's "Style" – and New Deal – a parody of Bruno Mars "Uptown Funk."
This show originally aired on January 24, 2021.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Chris visits the restored home of Kate Mullany, one of the least-known – and most interesting -- labor leaders in American history. Learn more here and check out the Don’t Iron While the Strike is Hot! musical here.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Labor leader Helen Marot was born to a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Today’s show is excerpted from “Pride on the Line: The UAW and Queer-Labor Solidarity after Stonewall” by Jamie McQuaid, part of the Our Daily Work Our Daily Lives Brown Bag series from Michigan State University. The talk took place in September 2022 and this originally aired on LHT on 10/30/22.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Wall Street Lays an Egg.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Joe McCartin, Ben Blake and Julie Greene remember the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police opened fire on striking steelworkers at Republic Steel in South Chicago, killing ten and wounding more than 160.
Patrick Dixon interviews Tom Sito on the 1941 strike by animators against Walt Disney. Sito, a well-known American animator (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lion King, Shrek and many more), animation historian and teacher, is the author of “Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson.”
And in this week’s Labor History Object of the Week we take a look at a United Farm Worker banner commemorating the 1965 strike against grape growers in California. The banner is part of the exhibit “For Liberty, Justice, And Equality: Unions Making History In America” at the George Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park campus.
Plus we’ve got music by Joe Glazer, the Eureka's, Willie Sordill and Joan Baez.
Originally released May 27, 2018
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A mural celebrating Ben Fletcher – “The Black Wobbly” – was unveiled in Philadelphia on May 18; check out our audio postcard.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Remembering C.L.R. James
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Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Before last Friday, to know about the 1938 crab pickers strike in Crisfield, Maryland, you had to know about it. This is the story of so many worker struggles in this country; hard-fought fights that unlike other battles – the Civil War, for example – have virtually no monuments or plaques, no visitor centers. But now, on Crisfield Highway, Maryland Route 413, there’s an official state historical marker that commemorates the 1938 strike by 600 crab pickers, mostly Black women. On today’s show we bring you an audio postcard from the marker’s unveiling.
Next Saturday, May 18, there will be another unveiling, this one in Philadelphia, of a new mural celebrating Ben Fletcher, one of the most influential working-class unionists, revolutionaries, and organizers in all of U.S. history. We talk with historian Peter Cole, author of Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly, whose work inspired the mural.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The first day of the 1894 Pullman Strike. Other links:Hurricane Hazel demonstrates her world-record crab-picking skills
1938 Crab Pickers Strike photos
May 18 Ben Fletcher Mural Dedication
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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In 1946, as part of a strike-ending agreement negotiated between the Department of the Interior and the United Mine Workers of America, photographer Russell Lee went into coal communities located in remote areas across the United States, documenting miners in 13 states.
Photographs from this federal project have rarely been studied or exhibited—until now. "Power & Light: Russell Lee's Coal Survey" is on view now at the National Archives here in Washington, DC. On Friday, I toured the exhibit with photojournalist Earl Dotter, known as the “American Worker’s Poet Laureate,” and sat down with him afterwards to get his thoughts and reflections.
Later in the show, the R.J. Phillips Band pays tribute to another great social photographer, Jacob Riis, born on May 3, 1849.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Battle of Harlan.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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To call the April 19 vote by Volkswagen AG workers in Tennessee to unionize historic may be a bit of an understatement. Not only was it the first foreign-owned auto plant in the South to organize, the vote was a mind-blowing 2,628-985, or 73% in favor. The win by the United Auto Workers came after decades of losses as plant after plant opened across the South.
On today’s show, Dr. Stephen Silvia explains how foreign automotive companies whose workers had strong unions in their home countries followed an American playbook to stifle organizing efforts in the United States.
Silvia is a professor in the School of International Service at American University and author of The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.
He talked with Dan Golodner on the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: OSHA goes into effect.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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Abolitionist John Brown is mistaken for a Black Lives Matter activist in Gene Bruskin’s latest labor musical, and a tour guide keeps Black worker history alive.
Excerpted from the Labor Heritage Power Hour radio show.Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike is one of the three most important in U.S. history, yet it’s largely unknown; why?
Plus: CBTU president Terry Melvin on why the AFL-CIO’s Gompers Room was renamed the Solidarity Room.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Debs goes to prison.
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On the 35th anniversary of the Pittston Coal strike, we revisit our 2019 interview with Richard Trumka about the historic strike.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Upper Big Branch mine disaster.
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Labor historian Joe McCartin on the labor connection to National Rifle Association v. Vullo.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Remembering ILWU leader Harry Bridges.
Read more: New York's Coercion of Private Companies to Blacklist the NRA Has a Long and Dark History
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Today’s show comes to us from Re:Work, a woman-led radio show and podcast from the UCLA Labor Center, spotlighting the voices of workers, immigrants, and people of color.
“Changing Lives, Changing L.A.” is a play created from transcripts from the UNITE HERE Local 11 Oral History Project and originally performed before a live audience at Loyola Marymount University and UCLA. Portrayed by professional actors, four members of Local 11 share their stories of becoming leaders in their union,
and fighting for a better life while helping transform Los Angeles.
These are important voices to hear, especially this year.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1972. That was the day the Equal Rights Amendment passed the Senate and moved to the states for ratification.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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From On The Line, the story of Diana Kilmury, the bold and fearless truck driver who took on both sexist attitudes on the job and a corrupt union.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Big Bill Haywood Talks General Strike.
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Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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The Power at Work podcast’s Joseph Brant reveals the winners of their Labor Oscars, all of which are classics of the genre.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Slovak Strike.
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David Corn, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for Mother Jones, brings us “A Story of Mother Jones (the Labor Organizer) That’s Relevant a Century Later”.
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The history of Women's History Month, and Women in the U.S. Labor Movement, a special report from the Work Stoppage podcast, plus “We Were There” by Bev Grant and the New York City Labor Chorus, and, on Labor History in Two, the year was 1990; that was the day 9,300 workers walked out at Greyhound bus lines.
NOTE: Bev Grant and the DC Labor Chorus perform “We Were There” on Tuesday, March 12 at the Takoma Busboys and Poets; tickets are free but you must RSVP here.
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Ben Fletcher was one of the most important black labor leaders in American history. Yet he’s almost entirely unknown. In today’s show, from the Working Class History podcast, and in honor of Black History Month, we learn about this little-known dock worker and labor organizer, who helped organize thousands of workers on the Philadelphia docks into the most powerful multiracial union in the country. (Originally released 7/23/23)
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Jeff Barnes was born and raised in Tazewell, Virginia, in the heart of coal country. He lives, writes, and practices law in Richmond. His novel “Mingo”, published in 2021, was inspired by his childhood fascination with the 1919 Matewan Massacre, which occurred during the bitter, brutal Coal Mine Wars and the stories his father told of growing up in Pocahontas, Virginia in the 1920’s with friends who were first generation Americans of Hungarian and Italian descent. Last month Jeff gave a talk on Mingo, Matewan and the Coal Wars of West Virginia to the Virginia chapter of the Labor and Employment Relations Association; today’s show features an excerpt from that talk.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1936. That was the day more rubber workers sat down in Akron, Ohio.
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The Valley Labor Report reports.
Today’s labor history: Striking Hollywood writers return to work.
Today’s labor quote: Bill Fletcher Jr.
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Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network
Art Shields covered it all, as a reporter for the Daily Worker on the front lines in Spain, as a labor journalist, and organizer himself.
He covered many key events for the left including the defense of Sacco & Vanzetti, the Battle of Blair Mountain, the organizing drives in Harlan County, the sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, and many more.
Art believed that strong unions were one of the best defenses against fascism, and covered the defense of those trade union leaders under attack during McCarthyism.
Today’s show is an excerpt from a talk last month presented by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives; you’ll find the whole talk here.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1926; on this day, labor leader Benjamin Gold began what became a general strike of all furriers in New York City.
photo: Art Shields, right, interviewing young people for an article in the Daily Worker in 1949. | Daily Worker / People’s World Archives | Tamiment Library
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David Byrne called him "the Diego Rivera of Pittsburgh." The Steel Workers’Solidarity Works podcast talks with two of their union’s members who are dedicating their time and expertise to saving the historic murals of Croatian painter and immigrant Maxo Vanka, which cover the walls of the St. Nicholas Croatian Church in Pittsburgh, and which depict themes of social justice, immigration and the heartbreak of love, loss and war.
On this week’s Labor History in 2:00: the year was 1908. That was the day the U. S. Supreme Court ruled on the Lowe vs. Lawler case, also known as the Danbury Hatters case.
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Last October, Union Dues podcast host Simon Sapper took LHT’s Chris Garlock on a labor history walk in London; our November 5 episode covers our visit to the site of the factory where the 1888 Matchgirls Strike took place. Simon took us to several other nearby sites that illustrated the way workers lived -- and struggled – in those days; most of the actual places are now long gone, but one of them, the grave of striker Eliza Martin, still exists, though as you’ll hear, it's not easy to find. (Check out the Matchgirls Memorial Trust for more information, including their work to erect a statue for the matchgirls).
Plus: Musician, poet, humanitarian and activist Pete Seeger died ten years ago, on January 27, 2014; the R.J. Phillips Band’s Joe DeFilippo sent us a musical tribute.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1908. That was the day the United States Supreme Court ruled that bans on “yellow-dog” contracts were unconstitutional.
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Original airdate January 16, 2022
On December 11, 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.
The speech is not long, just 30 minutes, but it’s tremendously historic, both in its content and its timing. In this speech, King connected the civil rights movement and labor movement, calling them “the two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country.” King encouraged the AFL-CIO to "help erase all vestiges of racial discrimination in American life, including labor unions," as well as to provide financial support to the civil rights movement.
Until recently this speech only existed on a reel of tape in the Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park, but for the 2022 AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference the AFL-CIO and the Archives digitized the speech and gave us permission to bring it to you here on Labor History Today. Labor historian Joe McCartin tells us how had King come to be there, the context for his quiet but powerful challenge to the American labor movement, and what that speech says to us now, 61 years later.
Our other story today is the perfect follow-up to Dr. King’s speech; it’s about the fight by DC trash collector Marvin Fleming and his union, AFSCME, against job discrimination in the 1960’s.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Give Us Our Daily Bread (1898) and Standing Against Wage Theft (1915).
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.
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SEE ALSO:
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech to AFL-CIO
Exploring Dr. King’s Radical Legacy
Trumka in Memphis: We’re Reaching for that Mountaintop
This week's music: Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round (The Roots); Everybody's Got A Right To Live: Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick & Jimmy Collier and The Soul Chance; Woke up this morning (The Freedom Singers).
Labor historian Julie Greene on why Woody Guthrie’s 1943 New Year’s resolutions still resonate today.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1968; that was the day Johnny Cash played Folsom Prison.
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Back in the day of publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, newsboys were essential players in the circulation pipeline, cheap labor that made the highly competitive industry profitable. The newsboy became an America cultural trope or archetype, a focus of rags-to-riches fiction, the target of pity and social welfare activism, a smiling stereotype, an exemplar of hard work, and an incarnation of urban poverty. "Please Buy My Last Paper, I Want to Go Home”: Portrayal of Newsboys and Newsgirls in 19th and 20th Century Music" is a talkgiven last Fall by Joshua Duchan from Wayne State University’s Music Department and Eric Freedman from the Michigan State University School of Journalism. The talk was part of MSU’s Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives brown bag series, organized by John Beck. Today’s show features highlights from that talk, and adds in a number of the songs they reference.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: renowned Illinois poet Carl Sandburg wrote about workers in Gary, Indiana and farmers around Omaha, Nebraska; he wrote about railroad workers and steel workers.
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Labor Heritage Power Hour co-host Elise Bryant talks with two young activists --Pride@Work’s Jarel Sanders and the A. Philip Randolph Institute’s Denicia Montford Williams -- about the new film “Rustin”, which tells the story of charismatic gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Musicians fight back.
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From the Gilded Age to the 1920s, employers and allies used terrorism to control workplaces and communities. Our colleagues at the Heartland Labor Forum radio show talk to Chad Pearson, author of Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen & Employers
to find out how terrorism disempowered the working class and its unions.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: AFL leaders jailed for boycotting; Wal-Mart pays up for wage theft.
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In our first segment, Woody Guthrie Center Director Cady Shaw on the story behind Woody Guthrie’s song "1913 Massacre". Check out the video here.
Then, Central Oregonizing, Radical Songbook podcast host Michael Funke’s brief history of unions at sawmills in Bend, Oregon from 1916 to 2000. Check out the video here.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1951; that was the day New York City was struck by the Great Bagel Famine.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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Melbourne’s Solidarity Breakfast podcast talks to Alex Ettling, co-editor ofKnocking The Top Off: A People's History of Alcohol in Australia.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor.
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All Who Labor podcast host Anna Nowalk speaks with Georgetown University’s Brother Ken Homan about the distance between what we say we believe and how those values are lived out, particularly as it relates to the Jesuits. The conversation stretches from topics further in the past, such as slavery, to more current labor activism at universities.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1833. That was the day that the Oberlin Collegiate Institute was founded in north central Ohio. Today, it's known as Oberlin College. The college was the project of two Presbyterian ministers, John J. Seifert and Philo Stewart.
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"In Ludlow, the workers were killed by bullets and kerosene; here they died from poverty. The names are illuminated at night. People are claiming the memorial. They're leaving items, artifacts, relics, coins, stones, gifts for the dead, telling them that we see them."
The average age of the people in the pine boxes was 23 years old; half of them were children under 12. 70 percent were from Ireland. On today’s show we travel to the Evergreen Cemetery in Leadville, Colorado; where on September 16th a new memorial was unveiled commemorating the 1,100 unmarked graves of Irish workers and their families who fled the famine in their homeland to toil deep in the Colorado copper mines and who died penniless in the Promised Land.
Today's show comes to us from the Labor Exchange radio show, Colorado's only labor focused radio show on KGNU Community Radio (88.5 FM / 1390 AM)
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Newspaper Printers Quit!
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Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art walks us through the BMA’s brand-new exhibit, Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA, which explores the importance of women artists many of whom are unknown today, yet who captured the human faces of industrial and domestic labor and its inherent racial, gendered, and class inequities while they used their art to support important reforms led by the era’s growing communist and socialist movements. From the Labor Heritage Power Hour radio show, which airs Thursdays at 1p ET on WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC.Singer-songwriter Si Kahn finds poetry in the many names for the third shift, that overnight work period that is the bane of existence for so many.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1936; that was the day that workers at the General Motors plant in Atlanta, Georgia participated in a sit down strike.
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Artwork: Harlem Dancers, by Elizabeth Olds
Yesterday, the IWW -- the Industrial Workers of the World -- hosted a dedication ceremony for a new monument in Centralia, Washington. The Centralia Tragedy, also known as the Centralia Conspiracy and the Armistice Day Riot, was a violent and bloody incident that occurred in Centralia on November 11, 1919, during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day. The conflict between the American Legion and the IWW members resulted in six deaths, others being wounded, multiple prison terms, and an ongoing and especially bitter dispute over the motivations and events that precipitated the conflict. Both Centralia and the neighboring town of Chehalis had a large number of World War I veterans, with robust chapters of the Legion and many IWW members, some of whom were also war veterans. “For almost 100 years the Legion Statue, the Sentinel, has told one side of the story,” says the IWW. “It states that the four Legion members depicted were ‘slain while on peaceful parade’. The IWW memorial counters that narrative with the statement that the IWW victims were ‘Defending Their Union Hall’”
Today’s show, which comes to us from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, also concerns the IWW. Ahmed White explains how American industrialists and government officials used violence and legal maneuverings to stultify the IWW and to silence its members in the early twentieth century. White teaches labor and criminal law at University of Colorado Boulder and is the author of Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers, which received the International Labor History Association Book of the Year Award in 2022.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1916; that was the day when what came to be known as the Everett Massacre took place in Washington State.
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LHT’s Chris Garlock tours the East London site of the 1888 Matchgirls Strike with Union Dues podcast host Simon Sapper.
On this week’s Labor History in 2:00: Birth of populist Will Rogers.
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The summer blockbuster “Oppenheimer” generated a lot of interest in the history of how nuclear weapons were developed in the United States, but the film leaves out an important part of this history: the sacrifice made by tens of thousands of workers in the production of our country’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
Excerpted from the Heartland Labor Forum radio show.
To learn more about eligibility for benefits from the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act or to start a claim, click here or call toll-free 866-888-3322.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The 1948 Donora Smog.
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A talk with the writer, producer and director of Triangle: Scenes from a Prosecution, a new one-act dramatization of the criminal trial of the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory following the 1911 fire that took 146 lives in New York City. Plus, music and poetry by Bev Grant and Joe Glazer.
The new Triangle Fire Memorial was unveiled and dedicated on October 11.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1983. That was the day that musician Merle Travis died.
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In 1953 the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) established a set of ten guiding principles at its’ tenth biennial convention in San Francisco. This manifesto represents a fascinating historical document, a snapshot in time but also a roadmap, a statement of aspiration calling upon union members to look beyond internal conflicts derived from factionalism, prejudice, even tradition.
On today’s show, drawn from The Docker Podcast, Zack Pattin (ILWU Local 23) and Myka Dubay (ILWU Local 5 and ILWU International Executive Board) discuss their workshop at this year’s Young Workers Conference, “Weapons of the Boss: Racism and Anti-Trans Discrimination” and Zack walks us through the origins and context of the ILWU’s Ten Guiding Principles.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Labor’s Magna Carta.
Music: The Workers Song Community Project | The Longest Johns
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Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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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.edu
Click 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.
Original airdate October 24, 2021.
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This week, labor history takes a deep dive into "True Crime" territory. Billy Gohl was called "The Ghoul of Grays Harbor" in the early 20th Century when he was accused of being the murderer who dumped several bodies into the canals around Aberdeen in Washington State. Was he one of America's first serial killers? Or was he just another in a long line of labor activists framed by the bosses? Find out when Working to Live in Southwest Washington podcast hosts Shannon and Harold talk with Aaron Goings, author of “The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor & Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest”.
On Labor History in 2:00: the year was 1918. That was the day machinist John Connolly was fired from General Electric’s sprawling River Works in West Lynn, Massachusetts.
Originally aired 7/10/2022. Got a 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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Two years beforethe pro-labor musical revue “Pins & Needles” became a big Broadway hit in 1937, “Parade”, another musical featuring pro-labor songs flopped after just 40 performances and the Theatre Guild -- which did so well with “Pins & Needles” just a few years later -- lost $100,000 dollars. In today’s edition of Labor History Today, we bring you the fascinating prelude to the success of “Pins & Needles”, starting with workers social clubs in Europe and in the United States, and the Worker’s Theatre Movement. Michigan State University College of Music Professor Maria Cristina Fava’s talk, originally given in October 2012, was part of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" Brown Bag series sponsored by the Michigan State University School of Human Resources and Labor Relations and the MSU Museum. The series is organized by MSU professor John Beck. For Fava’s in-depth discussion of “Pins & Needles”, check out this edition of Labor History Today.
This week’s show originally aired on Nov. 30, 2022. Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Irish immigrants, who toiled in the silver mines of Leadville, Colorado, in the late 1800s are largely forgotten. Many died penniless, buried in paupers’ graves. But now a Colorado professor has dug up their stories and their struggles. The Heartland Labor Forum brings us a report on the Irish Immigrant Miners’ Memorial. Then, Remember our Struggle with Ariana Blockmon, who covers the 1916 Springfield (MO) Streetcar Strike.
UPDATE: On Sept. 16th, 2023, at 10:00 am, the Leadville Irish Memorial will be unveiled in Leadville's Evergreen Cemetery. Details here.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Rufino Contreras (1979).
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.
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This week's music: Working Man by The Dubliners; Sprinkle Coal Dust On My Grave by Orville J. Jenks (UMWA); Working Man by The Men Of The Deeps.
The story of how a popular labor song was lost, and then found. From The Labor Exchange, Colorado's only labor focused radio show, airing on KGNU Community Radio, Mondays at 6:00 PM Mountain Time.
Questions, comments, and 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.
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Part 1 of our 2018 interview with Jeremy Brecher, the historian, documentary filmmaker, activist, and author of books on labor and social movements, including the classic book Strike!
Plus: Patrick Dixon talks with history professor Sarah Rose about the Americans with Disabilities Act and the complex history of disability and work.
Jordan Biscardo, communications director at the Seafarers Union, tells us about the 1946 general strike that shut down the U.S. maritime industry.
And our labor history Object of the Week is the cover of the September 1949 edition of The American Federationist, depicting the first Labor Day march.
Originally posted 9/3/2018.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 the Labor Heritage Foudnation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Engineered by Chris Garlock.
Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, from Union Communication Services https://unionist.com/
This week's music: There is Power in a Union by The Street Dogs
The story of Cleophas Williams, the first African American president of Local 10 of the ILWU, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Thanks to WBAI’s Building Bridges radio show, where a longer version of this originally appeared.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Packers.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Filmmaker Yale Strom ("American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs") remembers WEVD, the Chicago radio station named for labor leader Eugene Victor Debs; Dan Duncan celebrates the founding of the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department; Saul Schniderman marks the anniversary of the publication of the IWW’s "Little Red Song Book," and Ben Blake’s labor history Object of the Week. This show was originally released August 12, 2018.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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The story of how the International Woodworkers of America Archive began, was almost lost, and continues to preserve the records of what was once British Columbia's largest and most powerful union. Today’s report comes from On the Line: Stories of BC Workers.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Singing a union tune.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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From 1935 to 1943 the Federal Art Project -- a project of the Works Progress Administration, or WPA-- employed some 10,000 artists and craft workers, helping them survive the Great Depression.
The artists created hundreds of thousands of visual arts: paintings, murals, prints, posters, and renderings. Many of them survive to this day, but you have to know where to look for them. That’s why LHT host Chris Garlock found himself on Telegraph Hill yesterday, during a visit to San Francisco, meeting up with Harvey Smith, who leads tours of local WPA sites. Find out more at LivingNewDeal.org
Coit Tower is home to a stunning collection of murals that have recently been restored; Chris had seen them many years ago and had been struck by the depictions of workers and bosses that managed to be simultaneously beautiful and politically powerful and arranged to meet up with Harvey so he could shed some light on their creation and meaning.
Harvey does a terrific job describing the art, but we’ve also got a great album of photos of the murals posted on the Labor Heritage Foundation’s Facebook page.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1917; that was the day IWW leader Frank Little was buried in Butte, Montana.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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 Chris Garlock for the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Coit Tower mural photos by Lisa Garlock.
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The Death In The West podcast re-opens the case of Frank Little, a union organizer whose brutal unsolved murder shocked the nation during the tumultuous summer of 1917. Features Frank Little, a brand-new song from the R.J. Phillips Band.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1970. That was the day the United Farm Workers, led by Cesar Chavez, signed their first union contract in California.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Ben Fletcher was one of the most important black labor leaders in American history. Yet he’s almost entirely unknown. In today’s show, from the Working Class History podcast, we learn about this little-known dock worker and labor organizer, who helped organize thousands of workers on the Philadelphia docks into the most powerful multiracial union in the country.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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On July 17, 1944, two ammunition ships exploded at Port Chicago, Calif., killing 322, including 202 African-Americans assigned by the Navy to handle explosives. It was the worst home-front disaster of World War II. The resulting refusal of 258 African-Americans to return to the dangerous work underpinned the trial and conviction of 50 of the men in what is called the Port Chicago Mutiny.
Today, the disaster and its aftermath are memorialized at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, one of a small number of National Park sites that commemorate death and dying on the job. In October 2021, as part of "Monumental Labor," a three-part online series that explored the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and National Historic Landmarks, a distinguished panel discussed “Tragedy and Resistance at Port Chicago Naval Magazine.” The "Monumental Labor" series was organized by Labor History Today contributor Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman. Thanks also to the National Park Service, and to the National Park and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, which helped make the series possible.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Ida B. Wells and Bloody Thursday.
Questions, comments or suggestions welcome, 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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon & Chris Garlock.
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Among those turning out to support the strike by Hollywood writers -- now in its 10th week-- have been members of the Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839); back in March, the animators staged a “solidarity walk” around Walt Disney Studios in Burbank with dozens of the studio’s animation production workers protesting Disney’s refusal to voluntarily recognize its unionization efforts. Those who know their Hollywood labor history will have recognized the echoes of another Hollywood strike, the 1941 walkout by hundreds of animators at Walt Disney Studios. On today’s show, animation historian Jake Friedman joins us to discuss his book The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Squeegee Strike.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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University of Colorado law professor Ahmed White discusses his new book on the Industrial Workers of the World, “Under The Iron Heel – The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers.” Today’s show is the first of a 3-part interview with White on Labor Exchange, Colorado's only labor-focused radio show, airing Mondays at 6:00 PM Mountain Time on KGNU Community Radio in Boulder, Colorado.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1998. If you were trying to drive to work on that Tuesday morning in mid-town Manhattan you were probably late. Forty thousand construction workers took to the streets in a massive protest.
Questions, comments, or suggestions welcome; 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.
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They had banners demanding "We want to go to school and not the mines!" and held rallies each night in a new town. This was the famous "March of the Mill Children" in June, 1903, led by Mother Jones, from Kensington, Philadelphia, to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Summer White House in Oyster Bay, New York. The Labor Jawn podcast reports.
Harry Belafonte was not only an acclaimed actor and singer but an important fighter against racism and militarism. Work Week Radio’s Steve Zeltzer talks with Clarence Thomas, retired Secretary Treasurer of Local 10 of the ILWU, which had a longstanding connection to1 Belafonte.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1971; at 12:51 am Battalion 12 Chief Leo Najarian of Los Angeles heard that there had been a tunnel explosion.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Ten thousand workers cross the color line to shut down the largest tobacco manufacturing plant in the South and win a union. From the “NC Labor History Revealed” podcast, with music from the Love Songs from the Liberation Wars labor jazz opera.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1903. Mary Harris -- better known as “Mother” Jones -- held a rally in Philadelphia, The March of the Mill Children.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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A chat with Owen Smith, who’s directing “Don’t Iron While the Strike is Hot!”Saturday, June 17 at the Cohoes Music Hall in Cohoes, New York; the musical tells the story of the 1864 Troy Collar Laundry Union Strike. The Kate Mullany National Historic Site opened on June 10; Mullany organized the Troy Collar Laundry Union, the nation's first all-female union.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The day Consumers Power Company employees near Flint, Michigan shut off generators and turbines at the Zilwaukee power plant.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Pod Extra: Bill Fletcher Jr. on Resisting Tyranny Through a 21st Century Labor Movement at the 12th annual conference of the Labor Research and Action Network.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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The Worker’s Mic talks with Writers Guild supporters at a Chicago rally.
Today’s labor quote: The Labor Party.
Today’s labor history: Autoworkers stage general strike in Lansing.
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Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.
Labor journalist David Elsila remembers the 1963 March for Freedom in Detroit, Michigan, "the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation's history" up to that date, featuring Martin Luther King’s first draft of his “I Have a Dream” speech, written at Solidarity House, the United Auto Workers headquarters in Detroit. NOTE: The Michigan Labor History Society will host a commemoration of the March on Wednesday, June 7 at the UAW Local 22 Union Hall, 4300 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, MI. On this week’s Labor History in Two: International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union founded.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka spoke passionately about the key role of labor arts in the labor movement at the Great Labor Arts Exchange in 2009; he died in 2021 but we’ll hear his voice again on today’s show (the 40th gathering of GLAE will take place June 15 through 18 at the Maritime Conference Center and Hotel, in Linthicum Heights, Maryland).
On this week’s Labor History in Two: 50,000 striking rubber workers end their 5-day walkout in Akron, Ohio.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Greg Mitchell and Lyn Goldfarb discuss their new film Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried, whichexplores a largely forgotten episode in labor--and media—history.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1937. That was the day that workers at the Jones and Laughlin plant in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania voted in the first ever union election in the United States’ steel industry under the National Labor Relations Board.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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On this week's show (originally posted 5/13/2018): Labor historian Joe McCartin discusses the 1938 U.S. Supreme Court’s Mackay decision, which permits the permanent replacement of striking workers; Joe says this obscure decision was in fact a “ticking time bomb” that would go off to devastating effect more than 40 years later, when Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981, giving employers across the country a green light for union-busting.
PLUS: Joe Hower on how Jerry Wurf built AFSCME into one of the most powerful unions in America, Lane Windham on the first union of public library workers, and Saul Schniderman and David Fernandez on the Matewan Massacre. Chris Bangert-Drowns even manages to sneak in baseball’s first labor strike, when the 1912 Detroit Tigers refused to play after team leader Ty Cobb was suspended.
Plus music from Brooklyn Cablevision workers – and CWA members -- Jaywalk, Grim and Shatoya Thomas-Flemmings, and the immortal Hazel Dickens.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Produced/hosted by Chris Garlock, with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and how she uses histories in her work. From the Working History podcast, produced by the Southern Labor Studies Association.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Putting America Back to Work.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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First published in 1981, Working Class Giant: The Life of William Z. Foster is the classic biography of the radical American labor organizer and Communist politician. A new edition includes a foreword by today’s guest, union activist and organizer Chris Townsend, who talks about how Foster’s life and legacy
continues to inspire a new generation of workers.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Coxey’s Army Marches on the Nation’s Capitol (1894), and the day that updated National Labor Relations Board rules regarding the formation of new unions went into effect (2012).
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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(Originally released on April 18, 2021)Brockman Sewell’s original dramatic performance based on the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado, which occurred 119 years ago on April 20, 1914.
Labor History Today contributor Saul Schniderman with his tribute to labor and protest singer Anne Feeney.
On today’s Labor History in 2: We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years
To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by Chris Garlock and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns.
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Dr. Carol Quirke, Professor of History at SUNY-Old Westbury, on "Bitter Kisses for Labor: Mass Consumer Capitalism and the Hershey Chocolate Sit-down Strike, 1937," part of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" Brown Bag series sponsored by the MSU School of Human Resources and Labor Relations. Quirke tracks the use of photography to present unions and strikes as violent and un-American, and describes how Hershey management fought off the attempt at unionization. PLUS: More Perfect Union’s "Hershey Prison" 2022 report on brutal working conditions at a Hershey factory.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Another Day in the Class War.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Labor history in song, fromthe“Coal Miners’ Balladeer,” performed live at the April 1, 2023 “Annual Commemoration of the History of Working People” put on by the Pennsylvania Labor History Society and The Battle of Homestead Foundation in Windber, Pennsylvania.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1937. That was the day sparring between Henry Ford and John L. Lewis spilled over into the press.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Yesterday I drove a few hours west through howling wind and driving rain to the little town of Windber, Pennsylvania; a couple miles from Johnstown. The Pennsylvania Labor History Society and The Battle of Homestead Foundation were holding their “Annual Commemoration of the History of Working People” and despite the rough weather the basement hall at the Slovak Educational Club soon filled up with folks eager to hear a daylong program that included commemorating the United Mine Workers 1922-23 Windber strike for union recognition, discussions on “Women in Coal and Steel” and “John Brophy and Labor Education”. As folks sipped their hot coffee and munched on donuts, “Coal Miners’ Balladeer” Tom Breiding regaled them with labor songs.
- Chris Garlock
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1937. That was the day workers sat down at the Hershey chocolate plant in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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History standards in Virginia are updated every seven years. The new proposed standards put forth by Governor Glenn Youngkin and his Virginia Department of Education would remove the American labor movement; the state’s labor movement is fighting back, and last week on the Your Rights At Work radio show, we talked with the Virginia Education Association’s Shane Riddle and Brian Peyton from Teamsters 322.
In our second segment, Labor History Today producers Mel Smith and Patrick Dixon get a hands-on feel for labor history when they visit the George Meany Memorial Archives at the University of Maryland College Park, where Ben Blake and Alan Wierdak showed off a collection of construction hardhats and talk about how such physical artifacts provide an entry point -- as well as a key to understanding -- labor history.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Gompers embraces anti-immigrant legislation.
Be sure to stick around at the end of the show for a special bonus; a song by the R.J. Phillips Band which recalls the events of the Columbia Eagle incident in 1970,
when two merchant seamen staged a strike – at sea it’s called a mutiny -- against the war in Vietnam.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Originally broadcast March 17, 2019On this week’s show: Robyn Leigh Muncy, whose article “The Strange Career of ‘the Working Class’ in US Political Culture Since the 1950s” was published in the December issue of "Labor: Studies in Working Class History." Professor Muncy is Director of the Honors Program in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Plus, in this week’s “Cool things from the George Meany Labor Archives,” Alan, Chloe and Ben discover something unexpected in their “Miscellaneous” folder for the 1912 Lawrence textile strike.
Interviews by Chris Garlock, Patrick Dixon and Allan Wierdak.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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The AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer – and former steel worker – tells the Battle of Homestead Foundation “We have to tell the truth about labor history, the good, and the bad, and the ugly.” Plus: Pete Seeger sings The Homestead Strike Song.On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1912. The Lawrence textile workers strike had worn on for over a month. More than 20,000 workers had walked off the job…
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Today’s show celebrates Women’s History Month and comes to us from Re:Work, the podcast from the UCLA Labor Center that for the last decade has elevated stories of work to humanize and break down economic and racial justice issues. It's produced by Veena Hampapur and Saba Waheed.Their latest episode is “The Tractor Princess” and it draws on excerpts from an oral history interview with Antoinette Yvonne DeOcampo-Lechtenberg, which is a part of a community archive and research initiative called Watsonville is in the Heart, which highlights the stories of Filipino families from the greater Pajaro Valley region in California.On this week’s Labor History in Two: This was the day President Franklin Roosevelt named Frances Perkins Secretary of Labor.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Two more stories for Black History Month: From former auto worker Jonathan Melrod, the fascinating story of David Fagen, who joined the U.S. Army to escape Jim Crow discrimination, and was sent to the Philippines, where not only did he and his fellow Black soldiers suffer from endemic racism in the military, but found that they were fighting on the wrong side of the U.S. war of Philippine conquest.
Then, Labor History Today correspondent Alan Wierdak talks with Caleb Smith, a PhD student at Tulane about an important Title 7 discrimination lawsuit involving Harris Parson, a Black Korean War vet who went to work at Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical in Bogalusa, Louisiana. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Remembering E.D. Nixon.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome; to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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(Originally aired February 17, 2019)On this week’s show: William P. Jones on “The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History Of Civil Rights,” plus a 1961 memo to George Meany about the Freedom Rides, and a confidential “report on union racial progress.” Interviews by Chris Garlock and Alan Wierdak.
Sweet Honey In The Rock - Eye On The Prize"CORE: Freedom Ride," 1961Questions, 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 & engineered by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon.
She started as a young domestic worker in apartheid South Africa, became General Secretary of the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union and was the first president of the International Domestic Workers Federation; Myrtle Witbooi – who died on January 16 – in her own voice and remembered by the Solidarity Center’s Alexis De Simone. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
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(Originally aired October 13, 2019) Jody Allen, Assistant Professor of History at the College of William and Mary and Director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation. Jody discusses William and Mary's slaveholding past and the genesis, research, and ongoing community outreach of The Lemon Project with Working History podcast host Beth English. Plus: SEIU 32BJ’s Maria Naranjo on the origins of "chingchinas" -- soda can noisemakers -- during the Justice for Janitors campaigns of the mid-Eighties.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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On the America Works podcast, West African immigrant Komla Ewu tells oral historian John McKerley about how he left a prestigious but unprofitable teaching career in his native Togo to pursue the American dream.On this week’s Labor History in Two: President Jackson sets a union-busting precedent & Anna LoPizzo is murdered by police during the Bread and Roses strike.
Send your labor history questions, comments, or suggestions to us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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Today’s show covers a lot of ground, from legendary labor leader Bill Lucy’s memories of Dr. King and the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to Shubert Sebree’s memories of Gene Debs, founder of the powerful American Railway Union and three-time Socialist candidate for President of the United States. Bill Lucy has some inspiring advice for those who are carrying on Dr. King’s fight for justice, especially younger activists, and Shubert Sebree reveals a gentler side to Debs, as fierce a labor leader as we’ve ever known. On this week’s Labor History in Two: the founding of the United Mine Workers, Knights of Labor founder Terrance Powderly, and the 1959 Knox Coal flood disaster.Music: The Ballad of Eugene Victor Debs; Joe Glazer.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Often cast as villains in the Northwest's environmental battles, timber workers have a connection to the forest that goes far beyond jobs and economic issues, argues Steven C. Beda his new book Strong Winds and Widow Makers: Workers, Nature and Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country. In a discussion with the Labor Radio Podcast Network this week, Beda talked about how life experiences like hunting, fishing, foraging, and hiking imbued timber country with meanings and values that nurtured a deep sense of place in workers, their families, and their communities. This sense of place in turn shaped ideas about protection that sometimes clashed with the views of environmentalists--or the desires of employers.Music: Strong Winds and Widow Makers - Buzz MartinBread and Roses – The R.J. Phillips Band (includes video commemorating the Bread and Roses Strike, which began on January 11, 1912)Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome; 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.
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Professor of African American History and Culture Bernard Demczuk on how Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, was known as “Maryland’s Mississippi” because of pervasive racial oppression and discrimination, about the civil rights and labor organizing that began in Cambridge, Maryland, and how that town became the site of the longest period of martial law within the United States since 1877, and how that that history carries on today in movements like Black Lives Matter. Music: Cambridge Town, by the R.J. Phillips Band.Read more about Gloria Richardson here.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: One of the largest slave revolts in American history.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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The success of the Flint Sit-Down Strike that began on December 30, 1936 was far from assured at the time; GM management fought the union bitterly, and then, as now, there were workers who didn’t support the union. In “’No Labor Dictators for Us’: Anti-Union Workers During the Flint Sit-Down Strikes” -- a forthcoming article in the Michigan Historical Review -- Dr. Gregory Wood takes a closer look at the influence of anti-union workers and the General Motors-supported Flint Alliance both during and after the strike. He discussed his research on Tales from the Reuther Library, the excellent labor history podcast from the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.On this week’s Labor History in Two: The misunderstood Emancipation Proclamation, and Transit Workers Push Back.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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I don't love economic exploitation, but I do love Christmas and Christmas movies. They work to sell me stuff and ideology, but they also critique commercialism and exploitation. See what subversive messages you can find in a holiday classic; I triple dog dare you. Kathy M. Newman joins Labor Goes to the Movies hosts Elise Bryant and Chris Garlock to explore A Working-Class Christmas Story Christmas, from the Working-Class Perspectives blog. Kathy’s an associate professor of literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University, where she writes about radio, television, and contemporary media. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Debs Released; Real Gift Was His Message.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Argentina plays France today in the 2022 World Cup final. The U.S. team bowed out on December 3 when they went down 3-1 to the Netherlands. But soccer, it turns out, has a long history in the United States, thanks to its popularity among immigrant workers from European countries.From 1927 to 1935, the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) established the Labor Sport Union, a coalition of worker athletic clubs, primarily located in the urban Northeast and Midwest. The CPUSA’s 1925 sport manifesto emphasized that sports should be used as a medium for class struggle and even to create “proletarian fighting units against militarism and fascism.”One of their successful sporting accomplishments was the Workers’ Soccer Association, or WSA, which organized leagues in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. This communist soccer league played two seasons per year and competed for city, regional, and national championships. On today’s show, history professor Gabe Logan recounts the history of the Workers’ Soccer Association and explains an overlooked aspect of U.S. soccer that intersected political ideology, labor, and athletics.On this week’s Labor History in Two: No Justice, No Bagels!
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Julia Reichert, dubbed “Documentarian of the Working Class” by The New York Times, died of cancer on December 1. 9 to 5 co-founder Karen Nussbaum interviewed Julia in 2020 after her film American Factory won an Oscar; Part 1 ran in our April 26, 2020 episode. This week, we’re re-running Part 2. Reichert made documentary films for 50 years and was known as “a godmother of the American independent film movement.” Karen and Julia start out talking about the classic labor film Union Maids and the strong connection of that film – made nearly fifty years ago – to Reichert’s most recent film, 9to5: The Story of a Movement, co-directed with Steven Bognar, who also co-directed American Factory. The interview ends with the wonderful back story of Julia’s call at the 2020 Academy Awards for workers of the world to unite.On this week’s Labor History in Two: Founding of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Professor and labor historian Chad Pearson traces “the continuity of thuggery” by bosses in his new book “Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century”. Pearson recently talked with fellow Texan Gene Lantz on Workers Beat, a weekly radio show on KNON Radio in Dallas, Texas.On this week’s Labor History in Two: Organizing to end slavery.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
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Two years before the pro-labor musical revue “Pins & Needles” became a big Broadway hit in 1937, “Parade”, another musical featuring pro-labor songs, flopped after just 40 performances and the Theatre Guild -- which did so well with “Pins & Needles” just a few years later -- lost $100,000 dollars.
In today’s brief bonus edition of Labor History Today, we bring you the fascinating prelude to the success of “Pins & Needles”, starting with workers social clubs in Europe and in the United States, and the Worker’s Theatre Movement. Michigan State University College of Music Professor Maria Cristina Fava’s talk, originally given in October 2012, was part of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" Brown Bag series sponsored by the Michigan State University School of Human Resources and Labor Relations and the MSU Museum. The series is organized by MSU professor John Beck. For Fava’s in-depth discussion of “Pins & Needles”, check out last Sunday’s edition of Labor History Today.
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Eighty five years ago today, the pro-labor musical revue “Pins & Needles” opened on Broadway with a cast of members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. “Pins & Needles” became a big hit, with over a thousand performances. It was performed at the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, and was revived on Broadway in 1978 and in London in 2010.
On today’s show, Michigan State University College of Music Professor Maria Cristina Fava explains the relationship of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Theatre Guild in the production of "Pins and Needles". Fava describes how the production evolved from a variety show with a cast of unionized garment workers in their off time to the cast giving up their jobs to become full time actors with the success of the show. She provides reviews by theater critics and describes how the cast navigated the politics of the day. Fava’s talk. originally given in October 2012, was part of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" Brown Bag series sponsored by the Michigan State University School of Human Resources and Labor Relations and the MSU Museum. The series is organized by MSU professor John Beck.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Death Trap in Newark.
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Music historian Saijaleena Rantanen discusses songs by and about Finnish immigrant working-class women alongside musical samples from working-class women of Finnish background in early 20th century North America. The presentation was part of the 2022 FinnFest USA, and the FinnFest music series is co-hosted by the Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Thanks also to John Beck and the Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives lunchtime series at Michigan State University.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Scab.
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November 5 was the 167th anniversary of the birth of Eugene Victor Debs - labor leader, socialist, three-time candidate for president and the first president of the American Railway Union, which staged some of the biggest strikes in American labor history. Today Bernie Sanders and the late great Anne Feeney are among those who celebrate Debs’ life and work. They come to us courtesy of a terrific show, The Radical Songbook Podcast. It’s hosted by Michael Funke, who’s got 15 years of radio experience and 35 years’ experience as an editor for alternative and union publications. Michael’s a former union steward and a former organizer for Jobs with Justice. His love of music dates back to when he heard Fats Domino on a nickel jukebox in 1955.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Resilient worker coalitions are often found at the intersection of labor and race. On today’s show, from the NC Labor History Revealed podcast, we’ll hear about how North Carolinians formed multi-racial coalitions to fight racism inside and outside the workplace, and how farmworkers leveraged such coalitions to overcome racist inadequacies in federal labor law to secure the largest union contract in North Carolina history.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Fight for Equality and Honest Abe’s Stand for Labor.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
Music: Tobacco Blues - Bluesland with The Cold Sweat Horns
Today’s show is excerpted from an online talk last month: “Pride on the Line: The UAW and Queer-Labor Solidarity after Stonewall” by Jamie McQuaid, part of the Our Daily Work Our Daily Lives Brown Bag series from Michigan State University.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Wall Street Lays an Egg.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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On March 8, 2021, protesting dangerous working conditions and staffing ratios, over 700 nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Massachusetts hit the picket line for what would become the longest nurses’ strike in the state’s history. This is their story. Today’s show is excerpted from an hourlong video by Gino Canella for TRNN, The Real News Network. These interviews with St. Vincent nurses comprise a ripped-from-the-headlines oral history of a ferocious labor battle that carries lessons for workers everywhere.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The cause and effect of unskilled temps.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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The legal and civil rights legacy of George W. Crockett Jr., from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast. Peter Hammer describes the life and legacy of Crockett, a Black lawyer who fought racism and defended constitutional rights in landmark cases from the 1940s through the 1960s. Hammer is an A. Alfred Taubman Endowed Chair in the Wayne State University Law School and director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights.
Labor History Today is produced by the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Today’s show edited by Patrick Dixon and engineered by Chris Garlock.
Patrick Dixon talks with James Benton about the emergence of sharecropping as a compromise between former slaves – freedmen – and landowners, and sharecroppers subsequent struggles for rights and power. Benton is the Director of the Race and Economic Empowerment Project at the The Kalmanovitz Initiative at Georgetown University. For our Labor History Object of the week, Ben Blake at the Meany Labor Archives pulls out a collection of buttons from the Solidarnosc union movement in Poland.
NOTE: This podcast originally aired on October 7, 2018. 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. Engineered by Chris Garlock.
Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, by David Prosten.
This week's music: Sharecropper's Blues, featuring Charlie Barnet with Kay Starr on vocals.
From the Working Class History podcast, acclaimed author, poet and Professor of Children’s Literature Michael Rosen talks about his anthology, Workers’ Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britain, which gathers together short stories from the labor and socialist press between 1880 and 1920. The Working Class History podcast is put out by an international collective of worker-activists whose social media and podcast project uncovers our collective history of fighting for a better world and promotes it to educate and inspire a new generation of activists.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: A shot of opportunity; the IWW organizes Starbucks.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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“Steel City: 1980-2004” is a new exhibit at the El Pueblo History Museum covering the historic steel strike in Pueblo, Colorado. From the Labor Exchange, a podcast put out by the Colorado AFL-CIO, host Robert Lindgren talks to History Colorado’s Zach Werkowitch about the exhibit, which chronicles a defining period in Pueblo’s history as steelworkers and their families fought for labor rights and held their community together during often desperate times.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: A Large Pepperoni Pizza and a Union.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are 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.
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Labor historian Erik Loomis (A History of America in Ten Strikes) talks with The Rick Smith Show about how the issues that brought rail workers to the brink of a major strike this week trace back to a long history of abuse by railroad bosses, and a tradition of militance by the men and women who work on the nation’s railroads. Plus, historical perspective on the tentative rail agreement from The American Prospect Editor At Large Harold Meyerson.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the 1934 textile strike and the 1947 Harvester strike.
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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
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On November 1, 1948, smog produced by the southwestern Pennsylvanian steel industry poisoned the air in the Monongahela Valley town of Donora, killing more than 22 people and sickening thousands more. On today’s show, Louise Milone a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Georgia Department of History explores the response of the US Steel Corporation, employees, and Donora residents; and she explains how the United Steelworkers of America pushed for an investigation and improved environmental and health and safety regulations following the disaster. The story comes to us from Tales from the Reuther Library, a podcast focusing on stories on labor history, Detroit, and Wayne State University.
Also on today’s show, from Labor History in 2:00: The Lattimer Massacre; Chicago Teachers Say, Enough!
Got a 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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North Carolina’s low union density today belies its rich history of worker organizing since the birth of the American labor movement in the 1800s, but this new podcast by North Carolina’s labor union federation aims to bring that history to light.
Also on today’s show, from Labor History in 2:00: Reconstruction Crumbles In Mississippi, and The Peekskill Riots.
Got a 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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A month before the August 1919 steel strike in Homestead, Pennsylvania, Mother Jones was arrested for addressing a large crowd on Eighth Avenue. And on August 26, 1919, Mine Workers organizer Fannie Sellins and miner Joseph Starzeleski were murdered by coal company guards on a picket line in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania. You’ll hear their stories today from Charlie's Monday Marker, hosted by Dr. Charles McCollester and produced by the Battle of Homestead Foundation. Charlie’s Monday Marker delves into the fascinating stories behind the more than 60 historical markers listed in "Labor History Sites in the Pittsburgh Region", a book authored by Dr. McCollester and Howard Scott in 2016 and published by Allegheny County Labor Council.
Also on today’s show, from Labor History in 2:00: The 1934 Filipino Lettuce Workers Strike, and The Man You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, But Should Have.
Got a 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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Today’s episode originally ran on August 4, 2019.
Labor lawyer Matt Fusco on Scabby, the giant inflatable union protest rat, which faced extermination at the hands of the Trump labor board. Gregory Wood, author of “Clearing the Air: The Rise and Fall of Smoking in the Workplace,” and a special LHT remix of the labor classic “Which Side Are You On?”
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 & engineered by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon.
Today's episode originally ran on August 12, 2018.
This week's labor history: Yale Strom remembers WEVD, the Chicago radio station named for labor leader Eugene Victor Debs; Dan Duncan celebrates the founding of the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department; Saul Schniderman marks the anniversary of the publication of the IWW’s "Little Red Song Book," which is where all our music this week comes from; and Ben Blake’s labor history Object of the Week is a collection of posters, including one from the height of the Cold War showing an AFL-CIO map of forced labor gulags in the Soviet Union.
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. Engineered by Chris Garlock.
Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, from Union Communication Services.
This week's music: Hold The Fort-Pete Seeger; Dump The Bosses Off Your Back-Anne Feeney; We Will Sing One Song - John Paul Wright; One Big Industrial Union-May Day Chorus of Asheville, performing at Firestorm Cafe on April 30th, 2011; The Preacher And The Slave-Mischief Brew.
An oral history of a ferocious labor battle that became the longest nurses' strike in Massachusetts state history. It happened in 2021. Today’s show comes to us from The Real News Network; if you enjoy this report, please help TRNN continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following them and making a small donation.
Got a 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 Washington Navy ship yard strike of 1835 begins, the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike ends, and in 1970, the United Farm Workers signed their first union contract in California.
Thanks to The Heartland Labor Forum and Labor History in 2:00.
Got a 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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Hundreds of Senate cafeteria workers and their supporters rallied – and 17 were arrested – this week in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, demanding justice and a contract. We remember the 78-day strike by government cafeteria workers in the frigid winter of 1948 that included battles on the picket line between the AFL and the CIO and between President Harry Truman and Congress.
On Labor History in 2:00: The Great Railroad Strike reaches Louisville.
Got a 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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Originally released February 27, 2022
On July 17, 1944, a group of sailors and civilians were loading ships with ammunition and bombs at Port Chicago, a naval magazine and barracks in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tragically, the ships blew up in a massive explosion that instantly killed 320 workers and injured hundreds more. Most of the dead were African Americans, since racial segregation consigned Black soldiers and sailors to manual labor and service, including the dangerous work of transporting munitions. When the surviving workers were ordered back on the job without any additional safety measures or training, 50 refused to return. The resisters, dubbed the “Port Chicago 50,” were found guilty of disobedience of a lawful order and mutiny and received lengthy sentences and dishonorable discharges. Today, the disaster and its aftermath are memorialized at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, one of a small number of National Park sites that commemorate death and dying on the job. Last October, as part of "Monumental Labor," a three-part online series that explored the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and National Historic Landmarks, a distinguished panel discussed “Tragedy and Resistance at Port Chicago Naval Magazine.” Dr. Albert Broussard, Professor of History at Texas A&M University, Tom Leatherman, former Superintendent at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, and Dr. Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, discussed African American labor in the West, the memorial’s role in shaping the memory of the Port Chicago disaster, and how the event should inform commonly-told histories of “America’s Greatest War.” The "Monumental Labor" series was organized by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman. Dr. Mahoney has contributed to Labor History Today before, and we appreciate her help bringing this discussion to the podcast as Black History Month wraps up. Thanks also to the National Park Service, and to the National Park and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, which helped make the series possible. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down (1937), and Criminalization of the Sit-Down (1939).
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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
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This week, labor history takes a deep dive into "True Crime" territory. Billy Gohl was called "The Ghoul of Grays Harbor" in the early 20th Century when he was accused of being the murderer who dumped several bodies into the canals around Aberdeen in Washington State. Was he one of America's first serial killers? Or was he just another in a long line of labor activists framed by the bosses? Find out when Working to Live in Southwest Washington podcast hosts Shannon and Harold talk with Aaron Goings, author of “The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor & Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest”. Music for today's show: Hellbound Glory Streets of Aberdeen the ballad of Billy Gohl, by Leon Virgil Bowers.
On Labor History in 2:00: the year was 1918. That was the day machinist John Connolly was fired from General Electric’s sprawling River Works in West Lynn, Massachusetts.
Got a 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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On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in the United States nearly 50 years ago. The decision sent shock waves across the country and through the American labor movement, which recognizes that reproductive rights are a worker issue, affecting millions of working women and their families. Labor historian Joe McCartin argues that “for most of its history, the court's just been a disaster for workers” and on today’s show, McCartin explores that history, warning that “We're not going to see a better Supreme Court…without a movement, without something happening in the streets, without a struggle.”
On Labor History in 2:00: the day that American folklorist Archie Green was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and the day known as the East St. Louis Race Riot.
Got a 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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Dr. Lane Windham moderates a discussion with Dr. Rosemary Feurer and Josephine Ong, M.A. examining the ongoing struggle to create new memorials to labor organizer Mother Jones and the history of worker organizing that led to the construction of memorials to Filipino Revolutionary leader Apolinario Mabini within War in the Pacific National Historical Park. They also explore connections between marking labor's past and contemporary organizing campaigns. Co-sponsored with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University and Women Innovating Labor Leadership (WILL) Empower. Excerpted from a longer program presented in December 2021 as part of the Monumental Labor series exploring the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and affiliated sites through their representation in monuments and memorials. The series was organized by NPS Mellon Humanities Fellows Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman, and was made possible by the National Park Foundation with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
On Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1894; that was the day the American railway union led by Eugene V Debs voted to support the boycott of Chicago's Pullman palace cars...the year was 1934; that was the day 1400 workers at the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company launched a four day strike.
Got a 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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This week we find labor history at the recent AFL-CIO convention and the Labor Notes conference.
LHT host Chris Garlock and producer Patrick Dixon were at both events and were thrilled to meet so many Labor History Today listeners; please be sure to share Labor History Today with someone you think would enjoy it; that’s how we keep this history alive and how we build the audience for the show. Thank you!
At the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia last week, producers Patrick Dixon and Mel Smith caught up with the Meany Archives’ Ben Blake and Alan Wierdak who were there with a special exhibit about Philadelphia’s labor history.
Then, at the Labor Notes conference in Chicago last weekend, host Chris Garlock talked to Julia Berkowitz, from the Illinois Labor History Society, a name many of you will have heard in the credits for Rick Smith’s Labor History in 2:00 segments, here on Labor History Today.
On Labor History in 2:00: Juneteenth (1865) and The Women’s Day Massacre (1937).
Got a 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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Highlights from the June 11 tribute at the AFL-CIO Convention to Richard L. Trumka, the fiery Mine Workers president who led his union to victory in the historic 1989 Pittston strike, and went on to lead the AFL-CIO, serving as president from 2009 until his untimely death on August 5, 2021.
On Labor History in 2:00: “Team Owners Attack Free Agency”.
Got a 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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From the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, Dr. Krysta Ryzewski explains how historical archaeology digs at famous Detroit locales – including the Little Harry speakeasy, the Blue Bird Inn, and the Grande Ballroom – have clarified how underrepresented communities of Detroit experienced and responded to the Great Migration, changing economic forces, and a shifting political and social landscape in the 20th century. Ryzweski is an associate professor and chair of the Anthropology Department at Wayne State University, and author of Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary Places.
On Labor History in 2:00: “The Big One”; GM workers in Flint, Michigan walk off the job in 1998.
Got a 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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(Originally released May 27, 2018)
Labor historians Joe McCartin, Ben Blake and Julie Greene remember the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police opened fire on striking steelworkers at Republic Steel in South Chicago, killing ten and wounding more than 160.
Patrick Dixon interviews Tom Sito on the 1941 strike by animators against Walt Disney. Sito, a well-known American animator (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lion King, Shrek and many more), animation historian and teacher, is the author of “Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson.”
And in this week’s Labor History Object of the Week we take a look at a United Farm Worker banner commemorating the 1965 strike against grape growers in California. The banner is part of the exhibit “For Liberty, Justice, And Equality: Unions Making History In America” at the George Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park campus.
Plus we’ve got music by Joe Glazer, the Eureka's, Willie Sordill and Joan Baez.
Union City Radio's Chris Garlock hosts.
Joe McCartin is professor of history at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Julie Greene is a historian of United States labor, immigration, and empire; she teaches at the University of Maryland. She is the author of The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (Penguin Press, 2009). Benjamin Blake works at the University of Maryland, where he’s a labor archivist at the George Meany Labor Archives. 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. Engineered by Chris Garlock.
Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, from Union Communication Services unionist.com/
This week's music: Memorial Day Massacre - Joe Glazer 2006 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings / 1975 Collector Records
Union Thru and Thru -- the Eureka's Rob Mitchell and Ken Walther (c) Walther Music
Talking U.F.W. · Willie Sordill What Now People?, Vol. 2 ℗ 2004 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings / 1977 Paredon Records
No nos moveran - JOAN BAEZ
Featuring archival audio interviews and labour songs of the time, our show this week examines the forced labour relief camps the Federal Government of Canada set up in response to the so-called "Dirty Thirties" or "Great Depression." The show comes from On the Line: Stories of BC Workers, a terrific labor history podcast put out by the BC Labour Heritage Centre.
On Labor History in 2:00: The 1934 “Battle of Deputies’ Run,” and Chicago’s first teachers’ strike, in 1969.
Got a 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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On the brand-new Ironworkers Rising podcast, hosts Anna Woodbury and Ron Gray talk with Rich Rowe and Charlie McCollester, iron workers who got bitten by the labor history bug. Drawing on Rich and Charlie’s extensive experience and knowledge as educators, historians and activists, they discuss historical events such as the Haymarket Square Massacre, the Homestead Strike and more.
On Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1942. The labor movement lost one of its prolific voices. T Bone Slim was born Matti Valentinpoika Huhta in Ashtabula Ohio.
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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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
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)
Today’s show comes to us from Labor’s Untold Stories, hosted by Marty Horning. As Women’s History Month continues, Marty honors some of the women, both past and present, who have helped build – and who are now leading – the American labor movement. And there’s plenty of good music, too. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Remembering Susan B. Anthony.
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 (Janne Lærkedahl); Which Side are You On? (The Freedom Singers); Fannie Sellins (Anne Feeney); Emma Goldman (Adam East & Kris Deelane); The Rebel Girl Joe Glazer.
Women's History Month is celebrated in March in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, corresponding with International Women's Day on March 8. On this week’s show, the Ballot Blocked podcast focuses on the role of Irish American women in the suffrage movement. Many of these women were already veteran organizers. They had led strikes and fought for labor unions in cities across the country. They had also campaigned for land reform in Ireland and for Irish independence. Dr. Tara McCarthy, a professor of history at Central Michigan University and the author of Respectability and Reform: Irish American Women’s Activism, 1880-1920, reflects on the activist history of Irish American women, and how this set them apart from many other suffragists. Ballot Blocked is produced and hosted by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney. Dr. Sylvea Hollis conducted research and interviews and helped plan the podcast. Drew Himmelstein is the producer and editor. Music is by Podington Bear. The project was made possible through the National Park Service in part through a grant from the National Park Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Also on today’s show, the Heartland Labor Forum’s Judy Ancel tells us about Sarah Lloyd Green -- suffragette, feminist and fiery labor organizer, whose story, like so many women’s, has been all but forgotten.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Francis Perkins named Secretary of Labor (1933).
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 this week by Mel Smith, produced by Chris Garlock.
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Additional music clips from: Sufferin' Till Suffrage, Etta James; Women's Suffrage movement, Schoolhouse Rock.
On July 17, 1944, a group of sailors and civilians were loading ships with ammunition and bombs at Port Chicago, a naval magazine and barracks in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tragically, the ships blew up in a massive explosion that instantly killed 320 workers and injured hundreds more. Most of the dead were African Americans, since racial segregation consigned Black soldiers and sailors to manual labor and service, including the dangerous work of transporting munitions. When the surviving workers were ordered back on the job without any additional safety measures or training, 50 refused to return. The resisters, dubbed the “Port Chicago 50,” were found guilty of disobedience of a lawful order and mutiny and received lengthy sentences and dishonorable discharges. Today, the disaster and its aftermath are memorialized at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, one of a small number of National Park sites that commemorate death and dying on the job. Last October, as part of "Monumental Labor," a three-part online series that explored the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and National Historic Landmarks, a distinguished panel discussed “Tragedy and Resistance at Port Chicago Naval Magazine.” Dr. Albert Broussard, Professor of History at Texas A&M University, Tom Leatherman, former Superintendent at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, and Dr. Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, discussed African American labor in the West, the memorial’s role in shaping the memory of the Port Chicago disaster, and how the event should inform commonly-told histories of “America’s Greatest War.” The "Monumental Labor" series was organized by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman. Dr. Mahoney has contributed to Labor History Today before, and we appreciate her help bringing this discussion to the podcast as Black History Month wraps up. Thanks also to the National Park Service, and to the National Park and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, which helped make the series possible. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down (1937), and Criminalization of the Sit-Down (1939).
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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
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For 150 years, Richmond's place in history has been as "the capital of the Confederacy." But this label hides a much richer and more complex history. On today’s show, we hear from Peter Rachleff, Co-Executive Director of the East Side Freedom Library, a retired professor of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and author of "Black Labor in Richmond, 1865 -1890," as he reveals part of that hidden history, that of Black and White workers in the second half of the 19th century. Note: Excerpted from Rachleff’s Feb. 2, 2022 talk for The Virginia Worker; click here for the complete talk.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Yale Grad Students Strike (2/17/1992).
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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory @virginia_worker
Irish immigrants, who toiled in the silver mines of Leadville, Colorado, in the late 1800s are largely forgotten. Many died penniless, buried in paupers’ graves. But now a Colorado professor has dug up their stories and their struggles. The Heartland Labor Forum brings us a report on the Irish Immigrant Miners’ Memorial. Then, Remember Our Struggle with HLF's Ariana Blockmon, who covers the 1916 Springfield (MO) Streetcar Strike.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The sacrifice of Rufino Contreras (1979).
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.
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This week's music: Working Man by The Dubliners; Sprinkle Coal Dust On My Grave by Orville J. Jenks (UMWA); Working Man by The Men Of The Deeps.
LHT producers Patrick Dixon and Mel Smith head to the Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park to check out a special exhibit put together to amplify the momentum of the current wave of labor strikes. In the second half of the show, Dr. Eleanor Mahoney, host of the Ballot Blocked podcast, explores the strong historical connection between voting rights and labor rights; in this episode, we learn about the barriers to voting faced by Mexican American women and workers in the years after World War II.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Philly Garment Workers Win (1910); Seattle General Strike (1919).
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.
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This week's music: City Workers Strike Song, by Dave Rovics; a song he wrote for members of the District Council of Trade Unions in Portland, Oregon, who are set to go out on strike on February 10th if they don’t get a better offer from the city.
Mario Cervantes, a skilled factory worker -- and proud union member -- who makes the tools that make the planes for Boeing aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, kicks off the new season of America Works, the podcast series from the Library of Congress that features the voices of contemporary workers from throughout the United States talking about their lives, their workplaces, and their on-the-job experiences. Also this week, Saul Schniderman brings us the touching true story of Rex, the Mine Pony, saved by the coal miners who he helped save from a mine collapse (subscribe here to Friday’s Labor Folklore). Bonus track: commemorating the 25 years since the last pit pony left the final deep coal mine in Northumberland, England. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Saul Alinsky (1908); Chicago Gravediggers End 43-day Strike (1992); A Day for Remembering (2011).
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.
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This week's music: Pit Pony's Tale, by Gordon Carter from his album Diary of a Coaltown, available on Bandcamp.
On the 18th of January, 1977, Egypt erupted into a huge popular uprising against the government's removal of food subsidies. For two days, hundreds of thousands of people across the country were variously involved in strikes, riots, occupations, looting, and sabotage. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat described it as “the uprising of thieves”; the Egyptian people called it by a different name: The Bread Intifada. Our report on the uprising, the decade of worker-student militancy leading up to it, and its relevance today comes to us from the Working Class History podcast.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: If Poison Doesn’t Work, Try Briggs! (1933) & More Labor Than They Planned (1936).
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.
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This week's music: Sheikh Imam’s Build Your Palaces; performed by Fadi Al Naji.
On December 11, 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. The speech is not long, just 30 minutes, but it’s tremendously historic, both in its content and its timing. In this speech, King connected the civil rights movement and labor movement, calling them “the two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country.” King encouraged the AFL-CIO to "help erase all vestiges of racial discrimination in American life, including labor unions," as well as to provide financial support to the civil rights movement. Until recently this speech only existed on a reel of tape in the Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park, but for this year’s AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference (Jan. 16-17 online) the AFL-CIO and the Archives digitized the speech and gave us permission to bring it to you here on Labor History Today. Labor historian Joe McCartin tells us how had King come to be there, the context for his quiet but powerful challenge to the American labor movement, and what that speech says to us now, 61 years later. Our other story today is the perfect follow-up to Dr. King’s speech; it’s about the fight by DC trash collector Marvin Fleming and his union, AFSCME, against job discrimination in the 1960’s. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Give Us Our Daily Bread (1898) and Standing Against Wage Theft (1915).
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.
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SEE ALSO: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech to AFL-CIO Exploring Dr. King’s Radical Legacy Trumka in Memphis: We’re Reaching for that Mountaintop
This week's music: Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round (The Roots); Everybody's Got A Right To Live: Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick & Jimmy Collier and The Soul Chance; Woke up this morning (The Freedom Singers).
On this week’s show, one day in 1969, a working woman by the name of Zelda D’Aprano took her lunch break, and proceeded to chain herself to the front door of a busy building in Melbourne, Australia in a protest that caused a sensation. What was Zelda protesting about? We find out from our friends Down Under at the On The Job podcast. On this week’s Labor History in Two: the 1922 Chicago building trades split; in 1939, Missouri farmers and their families begin a highway sit in; and in 2003, do national security concerns outweigh the right of workers to form a union?
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.
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This week's music: Lola Wright sings the Equal Pay song; #LeaveAt343-Growing Up Gracefully.
On this week’s show, Kipp Dawson, a woman coal miner active in the women miners' movement of the 1970s, '80s and '90s, on women's empowerment and recent labor history. Kim comes to us from the Willamette Wake Up Labor Report, which airs on KMUZ in Salem, Oregon.
Then, the DC Labor Chorus on Billionaires in Space and, on this week’s Labor History in Two: industrial unionists hold a secret meeting in Chicago.
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.
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This week's music: We Were There, Billionaires in Space and Nancy on the Med-Surge floor, all from the DC Labor Chorus’ 2021 Holiday Concert.
On this week’s show, the history of one of labor’s most well-known songs, “Which Side Are You On?” from Labor’s Untold Stories, a brand-new labor history radio show, hosted by Marty Horning every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. CST on Riverwest Radio, WXRW in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and available on Soundcloud). The show takes listeners on a journey through the rich history of labor’s struggles for a better world for all, using narratives, songs, and interviews and we’re very pleased to welcome Marty and his show to the growing family of labor history radio shows and podcasts. On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1914. That was the day garment workers gathered in New York City to found the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
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.
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This week's music: Which Side Are You On? REMIX - Rebel Diaz ft. Dead Prez and Rakaa Iriscience, plus versions by Florence Reese, Pete Seeger and The Dropkick Murphys.
This week’s show explores the question of how “Striketober” and “The Great Resignation” happened simultaneously. Union organizing and strikes surged this Fall while millions of workers quit their jobs. Labor historian Gabriel Winant spoke about “Putting the current labor upheaval in historical context” at a December 10 labor history discussion hosted by the East Side Freedom Library in St Paul, Minnesota. Winant is the author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Manufacturing and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America and his latest essay, Strike Wave, was published in the British journal New Left Review in late November. Winant’s historical perspective seems especially useful as we look ahead to a new year and a rejuvenated labor movement, and we’ve included an inspiring report on local organizing in St Paul bookstores: these are the sparks that are firing the tinder of worker discontent across the country.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1945. That was the day workers ended their ninety-nine-day strike against the Ford Motor Company in Windsor, Ontario.
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: Take This Job and Shove It: Moonshine Bandits, Dead Kennedys, Canibus With Biz Markie.
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In the late 1970s, San Jose city employees were frustrated with flat wages and pay inequities for women workers. They believed that job categories dominated by women were undervalued and underpaid, and they proved it through a multi-year campaign for pay equity led by AFSCME Local 101/Municipal Employees Federation, AFSCME Council 57. Their efforts went a long way towards closing pay gaps, but it wouldn’t have happened without a strike in 1981. AFSCME secretary-treasurer Elissa McBride brings us the story of the first pay equity strike in U.S. history.
In December of 1954, Boston meatpackers in CIO Local 11 were just over a month into a strike against the Colonial Provision Company. That strike went on to make history, continuing for 14 months, the longest in Massachusetts history. Interracial cooperation was also a hallmark of the struggle by the Boston meatpackers, who were also redbaited and had their union decertified. The story of how these workers fought back – and won – is still inspiring and has lessons for today’s battles.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1947. That was the day that the United Mine Workers leader, John L. Lewis wrote the AFL stating “We disaffiliate.”
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.
Our story of the Boston meatpacker strike came from the film Glory Days: Boston Colonial Packinghouse Workers Recall the Strike of 1954 – 55, produced and directed by Cynthia McKeown, released in 1988; remastered in 2019. Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, compiled by David Prosten.
This week's music: 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton (plus a funk cover by Love Raptor) and Celebration by Kool and the Gang, both top hits in 1981, the year of the pay equity strike.
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.
“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.edu Click 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.
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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.
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John Alexander recounts the circumstances leading up to the gun battle between mine guards for the Chicago-Virden Coal Company and coal miners – members of the United Mine Workers of America -- who were locked out of their jobs.
And, on Labor History in 2:00, the year was 1933; that was the day that forty armed cotton growers shot at a group of striking workers in the small town of Pixley, California.
Music for today’s show by Bucky Halker and The Complete Unknowns. Special thanks to James Goltz for the Battle of Virden report; check out his Jase Media Service Podcast for more labor history episodes.
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 @MineWorkers
(Originally released 10/7/2018) Patrick Dixon talks with James Benton about the emergence of sharecropping as a compromise between former slaves – freedmen – and landowners, and sharecroppers subsequent struggles for rights and power. For our Labor History Object of the week, Ben Blake at the Meany Labor Archives pulls out a collection of buttons from the Solidarnosc union movement in Poland.
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. Engineered by Chris Garlock.
This week's music: Sharecropper's Blues, featuring Charlie Barnet with Kay Starr on vocals.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA #unions #sharecroppers #jamesBenton #solidarnosc #poland
In May of 1888, women and teenage girls working at the Bryant & May match factory in London went out on strike. Few Americans will have heard of the Matchgirls’ strike, but it was a landmark victory in working-class history. On today’s show, Union Dues podcast host Simon Sapper explores the legacy of the Matchgirls' strike on union organizing, safe working conditions, a collective voice and women's emancipation and Simon finds a "golden thread" linking then to now.
And, on Labor History in 2:00, the year was 1786. Daniel Shays led a group of farmers and an armed uprising. They were angry about taxes levied by the state of Massachusetts.
Audio on today’s show includes the trailer for The Matchgirls, book and lyrics by Bill Owen, music by Tony Russell, performed at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, in London in July 2012.
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.
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Former AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka on the critical role labor arts play in “supporting our fights for economic and social justice.” He spoke at the 31st annual Great Labor Arts Exchange in 2013, organized by the Labor Heritage Foundation.
And, on Labor History in 2:00, the year was 1981; more than 400,000 union members marched in Labor Day's first Solidarity Day demonstration in Washington, D.C. Plus: an excerpt from "Solidarity Day, 1981”, an 11-minute film produced by the AFL-CIO. Music for today’s show by The ULiNERS and Joe Uehlein. Special thanks to Ellis Boal and Saul Schniderman for the recording of Trumka; subscribe to Saul’s Friday’s Labor Folklore newsletter here.
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.
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This post has been updated: the 31st GLAE took place in 2013, not 2017.
On today’s show, Labor Day weekend marked the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain. Empathy Media Lab’s Evan Papp traveled to West Virginia to march in those historic footsteps, to bear witness to battles that some would like us to forget, and he brings us the sounds of history past and present.
From the On The Line: Stories of BC Workers podcast, we bring you their story from September 1938, when the International Ladies Garment Workers Union brought their theatrical musical hit “Pins and Needles” to Vancouver, British Columbia, where it played to glowing reviews.
And, on Labor History in 2:00, the year was 1934. That was the day Rhode Island governor Theodore Green demanded that federal troops be sent to crush a textile strike in his state.
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.
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On today’s show, we remember actor Ed Asner, best known for his role as a tough newspaperman on the Lou Grant show during the 1970s and early 1980s. He was also an ardent unionist, serving two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Ed once said “You’re either a union or you’re not; you either go on strike for issues and know what you’re striking for or you don’t.” Ed talked with Judy Ancel on the Heartland Labor Forum radio show back in 2013.
This Labor Day weekend marks the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, which was part of the West Virginia Mine Wars, in which miners and their families laid down a foundation to fight for every worker’s labor rights. From Empathy Media Lab, we bring you David Rovics’ audio essay about the battle that was the largest armed insurrection in the U.S. since the Civil War.
And, on Labor History in 2:00, the year was 1882. That was the day that the first labor day celebration and parade took place in New York City. PLUS: Bakery strikes in Cool Things from the Meany Archives.
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.
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Thousands took to the streets of Washington DC yesterday to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This year the focus was voting rights, with a new generation of activists denouncing voter suppression and demanding fair access to the vote for all, insisting that the vision Martin Luther King expressed in his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 be deferred no longer.
On today’s show, our 2019 interview with professor William P. Jones, vice president of the Labor and Working Class History Association, and author of “The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights.”
And, on Labor History in 2:00, Defense Industry Workers Strike on Eve of World War Two.
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.
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Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two anarchists accused of murder and tried unfairly, were executed on August 23, 1927 in Boston, Massachusetts. The case became an international cause and sparked demonstrations and strikes throughout the world; on today’s show (originally posted April 29, 2018), Patrick Dixon talks with historian Kevin Boyle, who’s studied the case extensively. Also this week, journalist and historian Edward McClelland recounts the gripping details of the historic Flint sit-down strike. He spoke with the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast about what we can learn today from the strikers’ successful fight in 1936 and 1937 for shared prosperity. McClelland is author of Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Built the Middle Class. And, on Labor History in 2:00, Breaking the Glass Ceiling, the story of Joyce Miller.
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.
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AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka, who died August 5, returned to federation headquarters yesterday for the last time, giving the public the opportunity to pay its respects to the labor legend. Labor History Today pays our respects today with Part 2 of our 2019 interview with Trumka, in which he talks with labor historian Joe McCartin about the current state – and the future -- of the American labor movement. Plus, Mark Potashnick on Jim Pohle, the founder of the American Union of Pizza Delivery Drivers, class action law suits, and the app-based revolution in food delivery services.
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.
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Rich Trumka died this week, of a heart attack at the age of 72. He led the AFL-CIO for 12 years, and before that, the United Mine Workers.
Trumka, who devoted his life to working people, was a relentless champion of workers’ rights, workplace safety, worker-centered trade, democracy and so much more. He was also a devoted father, grandfather, husband, brother, coach, colleague and friend. And he loved labor history.
Two years ago, he sat down with labor historian Joe McCartin for a conversation for this podcast on the 30th anniversary of the Pittston strike.
Trumka’s schedule was always jammed – as Joe said on the Your Rights At Work radio show last Thursday, he couldn’t help thinking that probably contributed to the stress on Trumka’s body that killed him – but once miked up and settled down with in a little room at the AFL-CIO, Rich was totally relaxed, as if he had all the time in the world.
We’re replaying Part 1 of that interview on today’s show, which focuses on the Pittston strike; here’s a link to Part 2, in which Trumka discusses the current state – and the future -- of the American labor movement.
One last thing: on Saturday, August 14, between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Eastern Time, Richard Trumka’s family is giving the public the opportunity to pay its respects to the labor legend who passed away on August 5. Rich is making one last trip to the House of Labor, a place and an idea that he loved so much. All safety protocols will be strictly enforced, including mask requirements and social distancing. The AFL-CIO is located at 815 Black Lives Matter Plaza (16th St. NW), Washington, D.C.
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.
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In 1970, a strike by school workers in Keokuk, Iowa sent shockwaves through the state and jump-started a movement for collective bargaining rights for Iowa’s public-sector workers. Our story of this explosive event in a little industrial town on the Mississippi River comes to us from the Speaking of Work podcast, which goes back to the 1950s and 1960s to explore the roots of the Keokuk strike. Episodes 2 and 3 are available now! Music this week by Matthew Grimm.
And on this week’s Labor History in 2:00… The year was 1934. That was the day National Guard troops in Minneapolis raided Teamsters local 574 headquarters.
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.
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June is Indigenous History Month in Canada, and this year, the country has been rocked by the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children who attended residential school over the decades. Today we bring you a report from the always excellent podcast On the Line: Stories of BC Workers, which takes note of Indigenous History month with a different aspect of British Columbia's Indigenous history: one that is not tragic, and not very well known. They examine the contribution of Indigenous workers to the port of Vancouver, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, largely through the voices of those who worked the waterfront - and it's a union story, too. In 1906, the independent Lumber Handlers Union was established as local 526 of the Industrial Workers of the World – or I.W.W. -- with most of the 50 or 60 members being Indigenous. This is their story.
This week we’ve also got an interesting story that reminds us that labor history is all around us and can pop up in some pretty unusual places. This one started with an odd photograph that sent me down some interesting – and unexpected – paths, from a long-forgotten strike to a racist TV show.
And on this week’s Labor History in 2:00… The year was 1944. That was the day Local 212 UAW workers at Briggs returned to work.
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.
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MORE LINKS Milwaukee Public Library Remember When… NAACP Bulletin
For decades, rumors have circulated about a strike in space. The story goes that in 1973, the three astronauts on the Skylab 4 mission took an unplanned day off to protest ground controls management style, and the job action resulted in improved working conditions. It's a great story, but according to crew member Ed Gibson, that's not exactly what happened. Reporter Meagan Day says the real story is still a testament to the potential of strikes — or even just the threat of strikes — to shift the balance of power in the workplace. She wrote about it in Jacobin last month and brings us her report today. MULTIVERSE composed & produced by SutheeComposer. And on this week’s Labor History in 2:00… The year was 1969. That was the day hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina won union recognition.
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.
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THE MURALS is a play dramatizing the ongoing conflict over the George Washington High School murals painted by WPA artist Victor Arnautoff in 1936. The play premieres online at the LaborFest Saturday, July 17 – click here for free tickets – and LHT producer Patrick Dixon chats with playwright Howard Pflanzer about the debate and the issues. The Meany Labor Archive’s Alan Wierdak and Mieko Palazzo explore the Fascinating and Complicated Legacy of Bayard Rustin.
And on this week’s Labor History in 2:00… The year was 1968. That was the day that the American Indian Movement began at a meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Produced by Chris Garlock; editing by Patrick Dixon. 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 @sf_laborfest
Labor cartoonists Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki, the 2021 Joe Hill Award winners, were joined at this year’s Great Labor Arts Exchange -- hosted by the Labor Heritage Foundation -- by musicians Steve Jones and Ysaye Barnwell, the 2020 winners. Today’s labor history: Duluth strikers killed. Today's quote: The New York Times.
@wpfwdc #1u #unions #LaborRadioPod @AFLCIO @LaborHeritage1 @ymbarnwell
Supported by our friends at Union Plus; founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.
On July 2, 1978, fire fighters in Memphis went out on strike, one of several groups of fire fighters across the country who struck that year. On today’s show – which originally aired on the IAFF Podcast, from the International Association of Fire Fighters – two Memphis fire fighters tell the story of the conditions that led up to the strike, the obstacles they faced on the job and how fire fighters in Memphis reached their boiling point and walked off the job not once but twice in the summer of 1978.
And on this week’s Labor History in 2:00…The year was 1930. That was the day some 1300 labor radicals and Communist Party supporters assembled in Chicago to establish The National Unemployed Council.
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.
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Marvel Cooke, a groundbreaking Black woman journalist who reported on labor in the 1940s and organized a union with the Newspaper Guild in the 1930s, is one of countless storytellers nearly forgotten by history because they were too radical. Lewis Raven Wallace brings us this report from The View from Somewhere: A Podcast About Journalism With A Purpose, which features stories of marginalized and oppressed people who have shaped journalism in the U.S. The podcast focuses on the troubled history of “objectivity” and how it has been used to gatekeep and exclude people of color, queer and trans people, and people organizing for their labor rights and communities.
Also this week: In June of 1990, hundreds of striking janitors and supporters peacefully demonstrated in Century City, Los Angeles. Police in riot gear attacked, injuring hundreds of people. The violent encounter -- which became known as The Battle of Century City -- would mark a turning point in the janitors' fight for justice. Check out the video here.
On this week’s Labor History in 2:00: Milwaukee transit workers join the ‘34 strike wave.
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.
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NOTE: This show was originally released on June 28, 2020
“The origin of the word strike goes back to the port of London in 1768, when dock workers and sailors struck. When sailors stop work, they take down the sails of their ship and that's called, nautically, striking your sail. And that term becomes the de facto word for all work stoppages.” Peter Cole, professor of history at Western Illinois University and author of two books on dockworkers, Wobblies on the Waterfront and Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area, talks with Ben Blake and Alan Wierdak about the historic Juneteenth strike by dockworkers this year, and the long history of dockworker activism.
Plus, Arlo Guthrie sings “The Ballad of Harry Bridges” and Elise Bryant reads “Ready To Kill,” Carl Sandburg’s poem about who should be memorialized in our statues.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Alan Wierdak (George Meany Archives) produced the Peter Cole interview. 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.
Links: The Most Radical Union in the U.S. Is Shutting Down the Ports on Juneteenth (In These Times, June 16, 2020) Your Rights At Work radio show (WPFW 89.3FM) Labor Heritage Foundation Arlo Guthrie: The Ballad of Harry Bridges
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NOTE: This show was originally released on June 10, 2018.
Union City's Chris Garlock hosts, with Joe McCartin, Julie Greene and Ben Blake.
This week's labor history: Joe, Ben and Julie discuss Eugene Debs, railroad union leader and socialist. He founded the American Railway Union on June 13, 1893, and on June 16, 1918, Debs spoke out on the relationship between capitalism and war; 10 days later he was arrested and eventually sentenced to 10 years in jail. PLUS: Patrick Dixon interviews Mark Dudzic on the founding of the Labor Party in the U.S. and this week’s Labor History Object of the Week is an AFL-CIO letter boycotting Nazi Germany, part of the exhibit “For Liberty, Justice, And Equality: Unions Making History In America” at the George Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park campus.
This week’s labor music is “Uncle Sam Goddamn” by Brother Ali. Check out his video here: youtu.be/46l236O7Iv8
Joe McCartin is professor of history at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Julie Greene is a historian of United States labor, immigration, and empire; she teaches at the University of Maryland. She is the author of The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (Penguin Press, 2009). Ben Blake works at the University of Maryland, where he’s a labor archivist at the George Meany Labor Archives. 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. Engineered by Chris Garlock. Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, from Union Communication Services unionist.com/
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NOTE: This show was originally released on June 14, 2020.
“We're sick and tired of being left out. We're sick and tired of not being heard. And we're sick and tired of our communities, where we live and work, are not being heard.” That’s Ken Rigmaiden, president of the Painters union. Our Cool Things at the Meany Archive team caught up with him last Monday when the Painters joined the Black Lives Matters protests in downtown Washington, DC…
“I'll be frank with you, I've watched police behavior and reform and policies over time. It's been sort of a surprising, shocking that many of the police departments have sort of reverted to tactics, you know, that mirrored or that represented how police operated before African American mayors and before African-Americans became police chiefs and police commissioners.” W. Marvin Dulaney, emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas Arlington and the author of Black Police in America talks with LHT’s Patrick Dixon about the history of black police in America. “Just the fact that they've devoted so much space to trying to explain how we got here I think sort of validates the idea that you really need to understand the past to understand what's happening in the present.” Archivist Megan Courtney talks about the 1968 Kerner Commission Report with Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English in their podcast Tales from the Reuther Archive…
That’s all on this week’s Labor History Today, along with a song from the R.J. Phillips Band recorded three years ago for the families who have lost loved ones as a result of police brutality. And, on Labor History in 2, we hear about a miner shot dead trying to organize.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Patrick Dixon produced and edited the W. Marvin Dulaney interview; Alan Wierdak produces Cool Things from the Meany Archives. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @ILLaborHistory @RickSmithShow @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @GoIUPAT
Links: Tales from the Reuther Archive
Labor History in 2
Irish historian John Dorney discussed the 1913 Dublin Lock-out at a recent meeting of the NoVA Labor Book Club. The Dublin lock-out was a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers which took place in Ireland's capital city of Dublin. Often viewed as the most significant industrial dispute in Irish history, the dispute lasted from August 26, 1913 to January 18, 1914. The central issue was the workers' right to unionize. Dorney – whose father led the Irish Teachers' Union for 25 years -- is the author of "The Civil War in Dublin" and "Peace After the Final Battle - The Story of the Irish Revolution." Music: 1913 Lockout by musicians Don Baker & Gerry Hendrick On today’s Labor History in 2: The year was 1937. That was the day known as among the darkest days for Labor, the Memorial Day Massacre.
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
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Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
On May 19, 1920, a deadly shootout took place in Matewan, West Virginia between striking union miners and coal company agents; Record West Virginia launched their show last year with a retelling of this famous battle. And just two years earlier, a general strike took place in Kansas City, sparked by solidarity between black and white women workers. The Heartland Labor Forum’s Judy Ancel brings us the story of this important but little-known moment in labor history. On today’s Labor History in 2: The year was 1934. That was the day the Lucas County Sheriff ordered an attack on thousands of Electric Auto-Lite strikers and Unemployed League supporters, touching off the six-day Battle of Toledo.
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
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Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
This year marks the 95th anniversary of the 1926 textile strike in Passaic, New Jersey, when some 15,000 unskilled wool workers -- mostly immigrants and half of them women -- struck for more than a year for higher wages and better conditions. We talk about the strike and its relevance to today’s struggles with Jacob Zumoff, author of The Red Thread, the first comprehensive study of this historic strike.
This Friday, the biennial conference of LAWCHA – The Labor And Working Class History Association – kicks off. It’s being held online, making it available to labor history fans around the world. The theme this year is “Workers on the Front Lines”; LHT’s Patrick Dixon gets a preview from conference co-chair Peter Cole.
On today’s Labor History in 2: The year was 1934. That was the day Minneapolis Teamsters walked off the job.
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
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Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Kathy Newman tries to figure out why this 200-year-old genre is suddenly so popular, and Drunk History’s version of the 1886 Haymarket Riot. On today’s Labor History in 2: The Historic ‘34 West Coast Maritime Strike Begins.
Thanks to the Working Class Perspectives blog, Comedy Central’s Drunk History show and The Haymarket Squares.
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @ILLaborHistory @RickSmithShow #LaborHistory @_kathymnewman
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
"So many people have been unwilling to say the word strike, but say it with me: Strike, strike, strike!" AFA president Sara Nelson’s inspirational keynote at the April 6 symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jeremy Brecher’s classic labor history book “Strike!”
On today’s Labor History in 2: Our Thing is DRUM!
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
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Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
April 28 is a National Day of Mourning, or Workers Memorial Day, observed in over 100 countries around the world. From the On the Line: Stories of BC Workers podcast, we bring you the story of Bea Zucco, a third generation pioneer from Grand Forks, British Columbia and a miner's wife. Ordinary in so many ways, and yet absolutely extraordinary in her determination to see justice prevail and secure a pension for her silicosis-stricken husband. On today’s Labor History in 2: UAW Mobilizes Against Taft-Hartley
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @ILLaborHistory @RickSmithShow #LaborHistory @BC_LHC
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Brockman Sewell’s original dramatic performance based on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado, which occurred 117 years ago on April 20. Labor History Today contributor Saul Schniderman with his tribute to labor and protest singer Anne Feeney. On today’s Labor History in 2: We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns.
LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @ILLaborHistory @RickSmithShow #LaborHistory
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Sara Nelson and Alvin Finkel explore the differences and similarities between the labor movements in Canada and the United States. On today’s Labor History in 2: Terrorists Try to Silence Workers. PLUS: Three songs about the 1913 Saskatchewan coal miners’ strike.
For more on the U.S. - Canadian Labor History Collaborative, email Ken Germanson at kagermanson@wisconsinlaborhistory.org.
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
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Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Who built the Suez Canal? Lesbians, gays and miners build solidarity in the UK…the work of hair styling…Plus, the real story behind Gandhi’s labor quote. And, on today’s Labor History in 2: the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. PLUS: Two songs celebrating the birth of United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez.
Remember Our Struggle comes to us from the Heartland Labor Forum radio show.
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod @ILLaborHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @Heartland_Labor @librarycongress @GeorgetownKILWP
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
In May, 1970, construction workers in downtown Manhattan beat up young men and women who were protesting against the Vietnam War, which was killing working-class soldiers who had been drafted into the war. Hard hat workers and hippies, who might seem natural allies against nearby Wall Street, were instead pitted against each other. Today we talk with David Paul Kuhn; in his book The Hardhat Riot, he tells the story of when the white working class first turned against liberalism, siding with the party of big business and paving the way for presidencies from Reagan to Trump. And, on today’s Labor History in 2: Police Attack UE Amid the ‘46 Strike Wave. PLUS: Two songs commemorating the 110th anniversary of The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod @ILLaborHistory #History #Conservatism #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Tanya Hutchins, from the Machinist’s union, is American labor organizer Lucy Parsons in an excerpt from We Were There, which will be performed this Wednesday night, March 24 at 7p EST when the Coalition of Labor Union Women celebrates its 47th anniversary with a free online performance of this play, which features inspiring women leaders from the past through the present. Library of Congress Archive Processing Technician Melissa Capozio Jones explores the story behind Pins and Needles, the only Broadway-hit musical revue ever produced by a labor union with a cast of union members singing about unions. Labor History Today producer Patrick Dixon talks with author Mark Torres about his forthcoming book “Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood.” And, on today’s Labor History in 2: Truman Signs Loyalty Order.
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod @ILLaborHistory @CLUWNational @librarycongress
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Almost a hundred years ago, the United States was focused on undocumented immigrants coming across the border. Except it was the Canadian border and these illegal immigrants were from Europe. Dr. Ashley Johnson Bavery explores Bootlegged Aliens in our excerpt from the Tales from the Reuther podcast. I want to see my name and upper case letters. No little alphabet will do. Cause though I'm a secretary, I'm an uppercase person too…Confidential Administrative Assistant Janine Hightower performs UPPER CASE WOMAN, introduced by Coalition of Labor Union Women president Elise Bryant. The movie "Salt of the Earth" opened on this date in 1954. It’s now recognized as one of the greatest American movies ever made but at the time it was banned across the country. Find out how this drama about a strike led by Mexican-American and Anglo zinc miners in New Mexico became one of the first movies to advance the feminist social and political point of view. And, on today’s Labor History in 2: The day British socialist illustrator Walter Crane died…
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod @ILLaborHistory @ReutherLibrary @CLUWNational
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Historian Joe William Trotter, Jr. traces black workers’ complicated journey from the transatlantic slave trade through the American Century to the demise of the industrial order in the 21st century. Joe Trotter is Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University; he discussed his book Workers on Arrival last month at an East Side Freedom Library History Book Club virtual event co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Department of History, the Ramsey County Historical Society, and the Labor and Working-class History Association. The talk was moderated by William Jones, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. On today’s Labor History in 2: Work Faster! Work Faster!
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod @ILLaborHistory @ESFLibrary
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock; social media guru: Harold Phillips
The Gravy podcast explores how, from Punchin' the Dough to Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia, music has long included songs about labor. On Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts talks with labor icon William A. Lucy, whose more than fifty-year career included working on the sanitation workers campaign that brought Martin Luther King to Memphis in 1968. And, on today’s Labor History in 2:00: Fighting for Equal Pay
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Gravy is a production of the Southern Foodways Alliance. The episode included in this week's LHT was produced by Matt Pearl and derives from a presentation originally shared at the 2019 Southern Foodways Symposium on Food and Labor. Visit southernfoodways.org for more helpings of Gravy.
LaborRadioPod @southfoodways @BlackWorkTalk @ILLaborHistory
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Peter Cole on “Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly”; the second edition of his book about one of the greatest heroes of the American working class has just been released. We’ll also talk with Dr. Laura Warren Hill about her brand-new book “Strike the Hammer: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, New York, 1940-1970,” which comes out next month.
Peter Cole is Professor of History at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois; Laura Warren Hill is Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies, Bloomfield College in Bloomfield, New Jersey.
We talked with them both on the Your Rights At Work radio show, which airs Thursdays from 1-2pm on WPFW 89.3FM in Washington DC.
PLUS: On Labor History in 2:00: The Elusive Eight Hour WorkDay.
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns.
LaborRadioPod @ILLaborHistory @dclabor @ProfPeterCole @mohojolo
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Today’s show is from On the Line: Stories of BC Workers, the podcast from the Labour Heritage Centre in British Columbia. One hundred years ago on Valentine's Day, 1921, a group of courageous public school teachers in New Westminster, British Columbia -- -- most of them young women -- defiantly took a stand…PLUS: On Labor History in 2:00: Kansas City Laundresses Walk Off the Job.
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod @BC_LHC @ILLaborHistory @dclabor
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Today’s show is from the Labor Radio Podcast Weekly, where this week, labor news and labor history came together… We lost two giants of the labor movement this week, former AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and labor folksinger and activist Anne Feeney; on today’s show, we remember them both. In our first segment, on this week’s Your Rights At Work radio show (WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC), Stephen Lerner, Marilyn Sneiderman, Harold Meyerson and Joe McCartin talked with hosts Chris Garlock and Ed Smith about Sweeney’s legacy as a visionary labor leader. Stephen and Marilyn both worked closely with Sweeney, Harold covered him as a journalist and Joe, as our resident labor historian, provides the historical context for Sweeney’s life and work in the movement. Click here for Sweeney tributes. On that same show, Coalition of Labor Union Women president Elise Bryant told us about the free online screening by the DC Labor FilmFest of the new documentary, 9to5: The Story of A Movement, coming up this Tuesday at 7pm Eastern Standard Time. The brand-new film captures the real-life fight that inspired a hit by Dolly Parton and changed the American workplace. Get your free tickets here. Elise also shared her memories of Anne Feeney, the labor folksinger and activist who died on Wednesday, and in our second segment, we’ve got an excerpt from the interview the We Do The Work radio show did with Anne recently. In a bonus track that was not on the Labor Radio Podcast Weekly show, Anne Feeney and George Mann talk about the role of music in the great wave of union organizing during the late 1930s. We conclude with a medley of a few of Anne Feeney’s songs. You can find and order Anne’s music here. PLUS: On Labor History in 2:00: Strike at Cripple Creek
Produced/edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
LaborRadioPod @aflcio @annefeeney
Edited/produced by Chris Garlock; social media guru: Harold Phillips
Conor Casey, Labor Archivist at the University of Washington Labor Archives, talks about the life and work of Anna Louise Strong, a 20th-century American journalist, activist, and supporter of the labor movement with Mike Dumovich on the We Do The Work radio show. Steelworker Mike Stout, author of The Homestead Steel Mill: The Final 10 Years, takes a deep dive into the history of unions and their struggles at the mill on a recent edition of the Heartland Labor Forum radio show. Why don't people know U.S. labor history? When we do know labor history, we tend to romanticize it and oversimplify it. Where did labor go wrong and what can we learn from the past? Historian Max Krochmal unpacks these questions in a wide-ranging discussion with Gene Lantz on the Workers Beat radio show. And, on Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells us about the day New Orleans Fired 7,000 Teachers. Music: Nothing Moves But The Tide by The Fuse, courtesy of the University of Washington's Seattle General Strike Project.
Produced by Chris Garlock, edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Kansas City native Thomas Frank talks with the Heartland Labor Forum radio show about his new book about American populism, the long trail of elites who hate it, why pundits called Donald Trump a populist and why he’s nothing of the kind.
Harvey J. Kaye on The Fight for The Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and The Greatest Generation Truly Great, in an excerpt from Empathy Media Lab.
And on Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells us about Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
Today’s music includes two songs from the great MrBettsClass videos, Populist Party – a parody of Taylor Swift's "Style" – and New Deal – a parody of Bruno Mars "Uptown Funk."
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
The new film Stand! -- described as Norma Rae meets Hamilton – is set during the 1919 general strike in Winnipeg, Canada, and features an immigrant Romeo and Juliet battling for love and a better life during a time of social upheaval not unlike our own. Producer and composer Danny Schur talks about it with the New York State AFL-CIO’s podcast Union Strong. Catch a free screening of Stand! by the DC Labor FilmFest this Tuesday night, January 19, 7p EST, when Labor History Today host Chris Garlock will be doing a live Q&A after the film with Danny Schur, director Robert Adetuyi and actor Gregg Henry. RSVP here. In Part 2 of her online talk Skyscraper Labor and the Places of Labor Protest for The Skyscraper Museum last November, architectural historian Joanna Merwood-Salisbury turns to Union Square in New York City and the movement to improve working conditions for garment industry workers in New York’s commercial lofts in the early twentieth century. And on Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells us about Standing Against Wage Theft more than a century ago. Today’s music includes the title track of the musical Stand! sung by Lisa Bell.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 60 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
You’ll find more Labor History in 2:00 here.
This week, the story of the 1912 Vancouver Island Coal Strike -- the most protracted, violent and hard-fought strike in British Columbia's long labour history -- from the On The Line podcast. In Part 1 of her online talk for The Skyscraper Museum last November, architectural historian Joanna Merwood-Salisbury traces labor protests in the construction industry in Chicago in the 1880s and examines the formation of unions uniting trades-based groups with ethnic organizations, as well as the public spaces of their protest movements. And on Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells us about The Rise of Settlement Houses. Today’s music includes My Song for the Miner, by Fred White, from a great video by filmmaker Junie Boudreau, dedicated to Canadian miners from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and across Canada. Plus, Which Side Are You On, by George Mann. Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 60 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
You’ll find more Labor History in 2:00 here.
Happy New Year from the LHT team! 2020 was certainly a historic year, and here on the Labor History Today podcast the past and present kept colliding in interesting and unusual ways. Back in August, Quincy Mills, Professor of History at the University of Maryland in College Park talked with us about black barbers, the evolution of their trade, and its political meaning as a skilled form of labor. The show also featured poet Martin Espada reading his poem "Castles for the Laborers and Ballgames on the Radio," written for his friend, historian Howard Zinn. Here’s our show from August 30, 2020, updated with today’s Labor History in 2, "The Power of Folded Arms and Marching Feet."
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 60 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
One of the earliest strikes in the first years of the first industrial revolution in America. Shoemaking was one of the most lucrative trades in Philadelphia during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Shoemakers – known as cordwainers at the time -- were among the first to organize into journeyman societies in the United States. In 1805, cordwainers went on strike over wages and their changing workplace. Northampton Community College Professor of History Patrick Grubbs chronicled the Cordwainers strike of 1805 and explained what came of it on America’s Work Force Union Podcast earlier this month. On this week’s Labor History in 2:00, Musicians Fight Back: When it came time to sign union cards, the symphony opposed the election claiming the musicians were independent contractors. We wrap up this week’s show with Barry Rabin’s song about a little-known 1982 strike…Little girls and boys almost didn't get their toys, the year the elves went out on strike.
Produced by Chris Garlock, edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, nearly 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns.
LaborRadioPod @AWFUnionPodcast @GeorgetownKILWP
As the nation’s labor federation celebrates a significant anniversary, we hear the voices of AFL president George Meany and CIO president Walter Reuther at the 1955 founding convention of the AFL-CIO, and labor historian Joe McCartin looks at the federation’s past, present and future. And, on this week’s Labor History in 2:00, The Union is DISSOLVED!
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, nearly 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
With 95% of DC’s hotel and restaurant workers out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we look back at the history of cafeteria workers’ struggle for a union at the Library of Congress and how singer and activist Paul Robeson supported their 1948 strike.
Former AFSCME organizer and DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts tells how a showdown with New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller over the right of state workers to organize led to her being jailed for two weeks in December, 1968.
The Heartland Labor Forum talks with Mark Bradley, author of Blood Runs Coal, about the brutal 1968 murder of Jock Yablonski and his family by United Mineworkers president Tony Boyle, and how it inspired a surge in union democracy.
And, on this week’s Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells us about The Beginning of the End of Apartheid.
Music: Joe Hill and Old Man River, by Paul Robeson; The Jablonski Murder, by Hazel Dickens.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, nearly 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Every business was shut down. People gathered on street corners and started directing traffic. They made a rule: restaurants were going to close, bars could stay open if they didn't serve hard liquor. They put the jukebox out on the street and people were actually dancing on the streets.
Dancing in the streets during a shutdown? That seems impossible in our current pandemic, but seventy-four years ago, there was indeed a spirit of rejoicing and solidarity in the city of Oakland, California when 100,000 workers walked off their jobs in the last general strike this country has seen. We’re devoting our entire show this week to remembering the 1946 Oakland General Strike, as Work Week’s Steve Zeltzer interviews labor historian and researcher Gifford Hartford, who talks about how the strike happened and why it’s still relevant today.
On this week’s Labor History in 2:00, Breaking Through the Racial Divide; Rick Smith tells us about the founding of the Colored National Labor Union. Music: General Strike by Moe Shinola, a musician and former cab driver who lives in Kansas City, Missouri.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, nearly 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
When Hasbro, the makers of Monopoly, recently posted bumper third quarter sales figures LHT's Patrick Dixon started to wonder about the political and historical implications of this new wave of pandemic-induced popularity for the most capitalist of all games. On today’s show, Patrick discusses Monopoly and Class Struggle, a once-popular Marxist alternative board game, with Keith Plocek, Professor of Professional Practice at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. On America Works, an ongoing podcast series from the Library of Congress, Joyce Vegar, a dedicated home health care worker from Coos County, Oregon, talks about her pride and pleasure as well as her challenges in helping her clients remain in their own homes and communities. Vegar is one of more than 40 home health care workers interviewed by University of Oregon researchers for the “Taking Care” OFP collection. This moving episode highlights the enormous and often unheralded contributions made by workers in this under-documented profession. And, on this week’s Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells us about The Fight for $15 and a Union.
Music: Fight for 15 Official Video: Fight for it, with A.D, Arsonisto, Brittany & LV-Produced by KORE. Chicago's fast food and retail workers tell their stories of everyday struggles. Their voices tell us all why we need to Fight for 15!
Produced and edited by Chris Garlock; additional editing by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, nearly 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
From 1980 to 1995, during a time of significantly declining membership in most other American labor unions, the Service Employees International Union – SEIU -- nearly doubled its membership. Dr. Timothy Minchin explains why, in this excerpt from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast. The Columbine Mine Massacre, which took place on November 21, 1927, was an important moment in the Colorado Mine Wars. Bob Rossi, who hosts a monthly labor segment on the Willamette Wake Up show on KMUZ in Salem, Oregon, discusses miners' organizing efforts. Plus: On this week’s Labor History in 2:00, Rick Smith tells the story of the 1909 Uprising of the 20,000.
Produced and edited by Chris Garlock; additional editing by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, nearly 80 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
The UnionDues podcast takes a trip down the River Thames, finding struggles and strikes, insurrection and inspiration. "But take away the Tudor palaces, Shakespeare’s plays, Handel’s Water Music, great paintings from Turner to Monet and look instead at The Great Rebellion of 1381, 1450’s Battle of London Bridge, The Nore Sands mutiny of 1797, 1889’s Dock Strike for a minimum wage of 6 old pence a day – the dockers’ tanner. The history of the Thames is often the history of our trade union movement." And, on this week’s Labor History in 2: Striking against privatization in Alberta, Canada.
Produced and edited by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Click here to order Working River - Songs and Music of the Thames
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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
The Democrats may have won the 2020 presidential election with historic victories in southern states ranging from Georgia to Arizona, but have they created the kind of interracial labor coalition required to win the ongoing economic and ideological battles that did not end on election day? Historian Max Krochmal, author of “Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era” sees a lot of unfulfilled potential to bring young social movement organizations into the mainstream of American politics. Plus: Dorothy Day is born.
Contributors: Labor History in 2.
Produced by Chris Garlock, edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Author and historian Peter Rachleff and longtime labor educator and organizer Bill Fletcher Jr. explore labor’s connections to Richmond’s Robert E. Lee statue. PLus: A union-made Halloween.
Contributors: Race Capitol podcast; Labor History in 2.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
How a little newspaper started labour journalism in Canada. The 1931 Fraser Mills Strike. And “Through Rain, Sleet, Snow and Terrorism.”
Contributors: Radio Labour; On the Line: Stories of BC Workers; Labor History in 2.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Saul Schniderman remembers musician activist Elaine Purkey. Justice Denied: David Gariff on “Ben Shahn and the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti.” From the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, “When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism.” And, on this week’s Labor History in 2: Paul Robeson, “The Voice of an Era.” Produced and edited by Chris Garlock and Evan Papp. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Former Teamster activist Joe Allen on “A Rank-And-File History of UPS.” Folklorist Bucky Halker interviews iron workers Sharon Sisson and her husband Richard for the America Works podcast. And, on this week’s Labor History in 2: Born into Privilege, But… Plus: “Which Side Are You On?” off George Mann’s brand-new CD "The CoronaVirus Sessions"; click here to get your copy!
Produced and edited by Chris Garlock and Evan Papp. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
KU historian David Roediger talks with The Heartland Labor Forum radio show about his new book, The Sinking Middle Class. The Forum also pays homage to the most iconic woman leader in labor history; labor historian Rosemary Feurer on the life and legacy of Mother Jones. And, on this week’s Labor History in 2, A Chain Reaction of Human Misery. Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Sociologist Alex Wood on the history of the relationship between bosses and workers and how that’s playing out in the age of COVID-19. On Labor History in 2: The Wreck of The Old ‘97.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70+ shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton connects a historic slave escape attempt with today’s fight for DC statehood; AFGE’s Black Labor Week explores “Black History, Race and Racism in America,” and on Labor History in 2: The Fight for Equality in 1830.
Music: Troubled Waters, written by Joe DeFilippo and performed by the R.J. Phillips Band, a group of Baltimore musicians.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
Peter Rachleff on the history and significance of Labor Day on the Union Yes Iowa podcast; anthropologist Paul Shackel remembers the 1897 Lattimer Massacre; from the Library of Congress’s brand-new America Works podcast, Greg Vaught, the singing gold mine worker from Elko, Nevada. Plus, Pete Seeger remembers textile mill striker Ella Mae Wiggins, and on Labor History in 2: The Making of a National Treasure.
Produced and edited 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
First aired in 1950, Boomer Jones, produced by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, was the first radio program of its kind ever attempted by a union and told the story of the old time "Boomers" – as IAM union organizers were called -- who helped build one of the largest industrial trade unions in American history. Major roles were played by three of the top Hollywood stars of the time, William Holden, Marie McDonald, and Brian Donlevy, who all donated their time and talent. For the 70th anniversary re-broadcast on WCPT in Chicago, the IAM’s Tanya Hutchins interviewed retiree Charlie McAuliffe, who brings both a historic and modern-day perspective.
LHT is 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 60 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
“Learn Yourself” is part of “We Do The Work,” airing weekly on Skagit Valley Community Radio KSVR. Today we hear about LELO, formerly known as the Northwest Labor and Employment Law Office, and founded in Seattle, Washington in 1972 when Black, Asian and Latino workers came together to work for racial and economic justice. Ismael García Colón discusses his new book, “Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire,” about Puerto Rican migrant farmworkers and their labor experiences in the post-World War II United States, on the Working History podcast. Plus we preview the re-broadcast of the IAM’s 1950 “Boomer Jones” radio show and on this week’s Labor History in 2: Jane Addams is born.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, nearly 70 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
EMTs, nurses, bus drivers, and supermarket clerks; they're all what are now known as essential workers. But by about June of this year, a lot of people were starting to argue that barbers provided an essential service that they had lived too long without. Quincy Mills, Professor of History at the University of Maryland in College Park, talks about black barbers, the evolution of their trade, and its political meaning as a skilled form of labor. Plus: poet Martin Espada reads his poem "Castles for the Laborers and Ballgames on the Radio," written for his friend, historian Howard Zinn. This week’s Labor History in 2: The Amistad.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 60 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
"There's an inscription on the monument by one of the martyrs who was hung, it says 'The day will come, when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.'” On today’s show, Saul Schniderman takes us on a road trip to discover the markers, memorials and monuments commemorating the history and heritage of America's workers. Saul directs the Inventory of American Labor Landmarks, a project of the Labor Heritage Foundation.
Plus this week’s Labor History in 2: Breaking the Glass Ceiling.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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.
The Saul Schniderman interview originally aired on the Heartland Labor Forum. You’ll find more Labor History in 2:00 here.
Labor History Today producers Patrick Dixon and Alan Wierdak explore the labor history and class struggle lurking not too far beneath the surface of Fred's New Job, an episode from the third season of The Flintstones that originally aired in February 1963. Empathy Media Lab host Evan Papp visits the hallowed ground in Detroit where the labor battle known as the Ford Hunger March and Massacre took place. Plus this week’s Labor History in 2:00: Singing a Union Tune.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. You’ll find more Labor History in 2:00 here.
Shubert Sebree remembers Eugene Debs. Professor Laura McEnaney, author of Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago, on the fate of labor's complex New Deal coalition and connecting the essential workers of the 1940s with those fighting today’s war against the pandemic. Plus Joe Glazer and The Ballad of Eugene Victor Debs, and this week’s Labor History in 2:00: Workers Pay the Price for Bad Management
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. Thanks to Saul Schniderman for sharing the Shubert Sebree interview. Saul has a great newsletter called Friday’s Labor Folklore; you can subscribe here or email him at fridaysfolklore@gmail.com. You’ll find more Labor History in 2:00 here.
Why did so many working-class Americans desert the traditional news media in the 1990s in favor of Fox News, talk radio and Christian broadcasting? It's a complicated question, but Christopher Martin thinks he knows why. Heartland Labor Forum host Judy Ancel talks about media coverage of labor with Martin, author of No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class.
Plus Florence Reece and Rebel Diaz ask Which Side Are You On? and this week’s Labor History in 2.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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. A longer version of the Christopher Martin interview first aired on the Heartland Labor Forum radio show. You’ll find more Labor History in 2:00 here.
Professor Peter Rachleff on the Robert E. Lee memorial and the history of the Knights of Labor in Richmond, Virginia, where Black and White workers united against both Democrats and Republicans who supported capitalism. Plus a tribute to the late John Lewis, a special moment in labor history from the Machinist’s union, Cesar Chavez talks boycott, and this week’s Labor History in 2.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Evan Papp and Alan Wierdak. 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.
A longer version of the Rachleff interview first aired on WorkWeek Radio.
As Black Lives Matter protests continue to spread across the country this summer, we delve into the Labor History Today archives for stories of mass uprisings from our past. In this show, originally released on July 15, 2018, labor historian Joe McCartin discusses the 1934 San Francisco Longshoremen's strike -- which spread into a four-day general strike -- and the Great Steel Strike of 1959. Then, Donna Haverty-Stacke tells us about the 1934 Minneapolis truckers strike. And union convention badges are the Labor History Object of the Week, as Ben Blake takes another deep dive into the George Meany Labor Archives.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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.
Wayne State history PhD candidate, archivist, and former Reuther Library staff member Allie Penn talks with Tales from the Reuther Library podcast host Dan Golodner about the Housewives League of Detroit. Plus, Labor History in 2 tells the story of Oscar Neebe, one of eight men convicted of inciting violence at a workers rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago in 1886. And, from our own archives, the former union building right in downtown DC that you’ve probably passed many times without realizing the key role it played in American labor history.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. 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.
This year’s contest winners include People’s Music Networks’ Executive Director Ben Grosscup and Paul McKenna for the Julie McCall Best Parody; Songwriter Inez West from the NYC Labor Chorus for the Bread and Roses Best Labor/Social Justice Poem; Steve Jones, Music Director of the DC Labor Chorus for the Joe Glazer Best Union Song; NYC artist and activist Dilson Hernandez, for the John Fromer String Buster Ballad; and first timer and youngest winner of the contest ever, JustLove, for the Talkin’ Union Spoken Word. “These last two young winners are our hope that the labor and social justice movement is once again on the rise!”
Also this week, Joe Glazer’s recording of "Solidarity Forever" from the Songs of Work and Freedom album, and the Cool Things from the Meany Archives gang brings us the July 4th, 1964, issue of the AFL CIO news, which featured the signing of the Civil Rights Act, and Ben and Allen tie that into the ongoing protests for social justice that we see in the streets today.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Alan Wierdak produced the Meany Archives segment. 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.
Links: 2020 Great Labor Arts Exchange videos Labor Heritage Foundation George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archive
“The origins of the word strike goes back to the port of London in 1768, when dock workers and sailors struck. When sailors stop work, they take down the sails of their ship and that's called, nautically, striking your sail. And that term becomes the de facto word for all work stoppages.” Peter Cole, professor of history at Western Illinois University and author of two books on dockworkers, Wobblies on the Waterfront and Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area, talks with Ben Blake and Alan Wierdak about the historic Juneteenth strike by dockworkers this year, and the long history of dockworker activism.
Plus, Arlo Guthrie sings “The Ballad of Harry Bridges” and Elise Bryant reads “Ready To Kill,” Carl Sandburg’s poem about who should be memorialized in our statues.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Alan Wierdak (George Meany Archives) produced the Peter Cole interview. 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.
Links: The Most Radical Union in the U.S. Is Shutting Down the Ports on Juneteenth (In These Times, June 16, 2020) Your Rights At Work radio show (WPFW 89.3FM) Labor Heritage Foundation Arlo Guthrie: The Ballad of Harry Bridges
“You're 36% more likely if you're LGBTQ to have either lost your job or had your hours reduced since COVID-19 hit and for black queer folks, that's over 40% more likely.”Pride At Work Executive Director Jerame Davis and activist and author (“Steel Closets” and “Semi Queer”) Anne Balay on last week’s historic Supreme Court ruling banning workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. “The MCS -- the Marine Cooks and Stewards union -- had this turn of phrase that said ‘For solidarity, no red baiting, no race baiting and no queen baiting.” Wayne State history PhD candidate James McQuaid, on the gradual awareness and acceptance of queer workers in the twentieth century.
Plus, a celebration of The Power of Unity on the anniversary of the founding of the steelworkers union.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Patrick Dixon edited the Jerame Davis interview from the June 18 Your Rights At Work WPFW radio show; the James McQuaid interview is excerpted from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast. 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.
Links: Your Rights At Work (WPFW 89.3FM) Tales from the Reuther Archive
“We're sick and tired of being left out. We're sick and tired of not being heard. And we're sick and tired of our communities, where we live and work, are not being heard.”That’s Ken Rigmaiden, president of the Painters union. Our Cool Things at the Meany Archive team caught up with him last Monday when the Painters joined the Black Lives Matters protests in downtown Washington, DC…“I'll be frank with you, I've watched police behavior and reform and policies over time. It's been sort of a surprising, shocking that many of the police departments have sort of reverted to tactics, you know, that mirrored or that represented how police operated before African American mayors and before African-Americans became police chiefs and police commissioners.” W. Marvin Dulaney, emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas Arlington and the author of Black Police in America talks with LHT’s Patrick Dixon about the history of black police in America.
“Just the fact that they've devoted so much space to trying to explain how we got here I think sort of validates the idea that you really need to understand the past to understand what's happening in the present.” Archivist Megan Courtney talks about the 1968 Kerner Commission Report with Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English in their podcast Tales from the Reuther Archive…
That’s all on this week’s Labor History Today, along with a song from the R.J. Phillips Band recorded three years ago for the families who have lost loved ones as a result of police brutality. And, on Labor History in 2, we hear about a miner shot dead trying to organize.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Patrick Dixon produced and edited the W. Marvin Dulaney interview; Alan Wierdak produces Cool Things from the Meany Archives. 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.
Links: Tales from the Reuther Archive
Labor History in 2
“The first thing that (AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka) let me know was nobody was hurt, no protesters or no AFL-CIO people were hurt, which to me showed his priority of taking care of people first and the building secondary. And he later made public statements to that effect. You know, we can clean up the building, but what's important is to support the movement for racial justice and equality.”Just a block from The White House, AFL-CIO headquarters have been right in the middle of the DC protests against the murder of George Floyd and police brutality. Ben Blake of the Meany Labor Archives reports from the scene.
“102 years ago this June Debs stepped onto a stage in Canton, Ohio and gave a soul-stirring speech against American intervention in world war one. Even though he knew he would be arrested for speaking out against the war.”On this week’s show, we preview 'Debs In Canton,' an original radioplay that airs later this week at the HEAR Now Festival…“On July six, 1892, about 300 Pinkertons landed right over there. They killed seven strikers here that day. You're standing on sacred ground here for the labor movement in Western PA. We were founded through these very bloody struggles and the Battle of Homestead is something that has always had a big impact on me.”What’s the connection between the 1892 Battle of Homestead memorial, the Henry K. Frick Car Museum, and Carnegie Mellon University? Labor reporter Mike Elk takes us on a very unauthorized tour this week.
“There was no considerable working class movement until 1967 because of the existence of the dictatorship and its suppression. But after 1967 despite the coercion, the workers struggle took a new turn.” Jessica Pauzek has been thinking a lot about what it means to be part of a global community and how our actions in one part of the world are impacted by and impact others far away. This week she brings us the voices of exiled Iranian workers.
That’s all coming up in this week’s Labor History Today, plus, on Labor History in 2, we remember the strike at Loray Mills…“The year was 1929. That was the day that police chief Orville Aderholt was shot and killed at a camp of striking textile workers in Gastonia, North Carolina.”
Produced by Chris Garlock. Evan Papp of the Empathy Media Lab produced the Homestead Strike piece; find out more about their great work at empathymedialab.com. Alan Wierdak produces Cool Things from the Meany Archives. 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.
Links: NATF Playhouse: Debs In Canton
Learn from the Homestead Strike with labor reporter Mike Elk of Paydayreport.com
FWWCP Digital Collection
Labor History in 2
“On Tuesday, May 22nd the picketers took the offensive and succeeded in driving both the police and the deputies from the market and the area around the union's headquarters.”Political scientist and historian Michael Munk connects what’s going on in Minneapolis today as workers and the community react to the killing of Michael Floyd with the general strike that took place there in 1934… “It's one of the great mysteries of human history, about when people rise up and why they don't rise up much more frequently than they do given the kinds of indignities and abuses and exploitation that have been the lot of most working people in American history.”Steve Fraser, author of the new book “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History”… “Vast impregnable and immovable barricades of automobiles were set up, blocking all the main arteries into the Ford fortress.”With the AFL-CIO planning car caravans around the country this Wednesday to demand swift action on the pending Heroes bill in Congress to help American workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Meany Archives' Ben Blake reveals that the labor movement has used this technique effectively in the past. “I worked in this quarry 21 years. I was head derrick man. See that shack on the other side? I operated from there awhile. I worked all through here. It's one of the biggest quarries on the hill. There’s still a lot of good stone left in there. All kinds of good stone…”The latest episode of the “En Masse” podcast takes us inside the New England quarries nearly a century ago, when workers blasted, dug and pried out the stone that built many of the buildings that still stand today in our towns and cities. Plus we celebrate the life of Rosie the Riveter on Labor History in 2.
Produced by Chris Garlock with editing by Patrick Dixon; 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.
Links: Minneapolis general strike of 1934 Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History Steve Fraser on "Your Rights At Work" on WPFW 89.3FM AFL-CIO // Workers First Caravan (DC) En Masse Episode 6: "Poor Devil" Labor History in 2
"This period of time in the Thirties struck me as a period of great innovation and resilience that women organized around the need to provide certain services. And I see that happening in my community today around the pandemic."Emily Twarog, author of “Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth Century America.” Her study of how women used institutions built on patriarchy and consumer capitalism to cultivate a political voice resonates strongly today in the midst of both the COVID-19 pandemic and an election year. Joyce McCawley talked with Twarog on the Heartland Labor Forum, the labor radio show airing weekly in Kansas City on KKFI. Plus: Ben Grosscup with a new version of “We Just Come to Work Here” and Joe Glazer on the Memorial Day Massacre.
Produced by Chris Garlock with editing by Patrick Dixon; 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.
Links: “Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth Century America.” Heartland Labor Forum"We Just Come to Work Here," by Harry Stamper; new lyrics by Paul McKenna and Ben Grosscup May 2020; performed by Ben Grosscup.
Labor historian, activist and writer Toni Gilpin, author of the new book “The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland.” This rich history details the bitter, deep-rooted conflict between industrial behemoth International Harvester and the uniquely radical Farm Equipment Workers union. The Long Deep Grudge makes clear that class warfare has been, and remains, integral to the American experience, providing up-close-and-personal and long-view perspectives from both sides of the battle lines. PLUS: David Fernandez-Barrial, Saul Schniderman and Hazel Dickens on the Matewan Massacre.
Produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; to contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Jeremy Brecher's “Strike for Your Life!”; Peter Rachleff and labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis; plus a preview of Debs In Canton. “The current situation has led us to reconsider the Minneapolis teamster strikes of 1934; their dramatic story shows that the labor movement is strongest when unions boldly organized workers on the job and in the community around a shared vision of fairness and justice.” Peter Rachleff, co-director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, on how “Lessons from labor history can inform our labor movement during the COVID-19 crisis.” “As a labor historian, the closest thing I can think of to the spread of coronavirus strikes is the epidemic of sitdown strikes to spread across the country in the mid-1930s.” Historian and writer Jeremy Brecher, from “Strike for Your Life!” Also this week, we preview Debs In Canton, a new audio/radio drama from the filmmakers of American Socialist: The Life And Times Of Eugene Victor Debs.
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.
Jack Kelly, author of "The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America,” and Part 2 of our interview with Oscar-winning director Julia Reichert.
I'll tell you what I was thinking about when we wrote it; I was thinking about the Wobblies. Director Julia Reichert's call at the Oscars earlier this year for “workers of the world to unite” went viral; she and Steven Bognar won for their film American Factory, and we’ve got the second part of her interview with 9 to 5 founder Karen Nussbaum.
The Pullman strike was a solidarity strike. they were striking in sympathy with the Pullman workers and that idea of people pulling together I think you're seeing now.
At the peak of the Gilded Age a conflict in one of America’s largest factories exploded into the most extensive and threatening labor uprising in American history. Jack Kelly's "The Edge of Anarchy” tells the dramatic story of this historic event, transporting the reader from the fabulous White City of the 1893 World’s Fair to the nation’s industrial heartland, where unprecedented hard times are brewing rage across the continent.
In the summer of 1894, more than half a million desperate railroad workers went on strike. Riots broke out in Chicago and other major cities. The nation’s commerce ground to a halt—famine threatened isolated towns. The U.S. Attorney General declared the country to be on “the ragged edge of anarchy.”
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.
Hundreds of Thousands Expected to Attend 2020 Virtual May Day Rally in Nation’s Capital; Live coverage by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash
May Day started in the U.S. in 1886 as a nationwide general strike by mostly immigrant workers for the 8-hour day. While celebrated throughout the rest of the world, it had become less prominent in the U.S. until recently with the revived protests by immigrant workers. But every year there is more reason for the working class to protest. And this year we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic where the plutocrats are more willing than ever to put their profits ahead of the very lives of workers, who are taking to the streets -- appropriately socially distancing of course -- wearing brightly colored masks and now heading to the Nation’s Capital under banners declaring "We Are The Workers of the World" & "We Have Nothing to Lose But Our Chains & A World To Win," "We are the 99% and Will Reopen the Economy, Putting People Before Profits."
Partial list of speakers at today’s rally:
John L Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) and a driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers; Genora Dollinger, leader of the Women's Auxiliary of the Women's Strike Brigade during the Sit-Down Strikes of 1936-1937 at General Motors Corporation in Flint; A. Phillip Randolph, labor unionist, civil rights activist and socialist politician, who organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Paul Robeson, the eloquent and highly charismatic actor and one of the most treasured names in song, who was a staunch Cold War-era advocate for human rights; Dolores Huerta, labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW); Lisa Tiger, a member of the Muscogee Nation who comes from a family of acclaimed Native American artists, including her father, Jerome Tiger, and grew up surrounded by Native American Art; plus the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eugene Victor Debs, Huey Long, and a cast of tens of thousands that is WE THE PEOPLE, building bridges from the militancy of the past to inspire the workers of today!
This special May Day edition of Labor History Today is produced by Building Bridges' Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash.
Oscar-winning director Julia Reichert, interviewed by 9 to 5 founder Karen Nussbaum; the AFL-CIO’s Damon Silvers, on how the Montgomery Ward CEO was busted for unionbusting; Saul Schniderman celebrates May Day and Mother Jones’ birthday. "Mother Mends" by The R.J. Phillips Band.
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.
Michele Fazio on “The Crime of the Century: Remembering Sacco and Vanzetti 100 Years Later”; Michael Honey on “What Happened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream of Economic Justice?” Plus Saul Schniderman on Ida Mae Stull, the nation’s first woman coal miner.
Produced by Chris Garlock; Michele Fazio recorded and mixed by Daniel Ouimet.
If you’d like to contribute by reading a labor history item, just shoot us a note at 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.
On this week’s show, labor historians Dorothy Sue Cobble and Michael Merrill talk with the NoVA Coalition to Repeal Right to Work about how workers engaged in mass uprisings and organizing during previous historical crises. Plus American Prospect Editor at Large Harold Meyerson, on The Return of the Breadline and retired nurse and novelist Tim Sheard visits a New York City hospital during the pandemic.
On this week’s show, organizer and union rep John Barry on “Coronavirus ‘essential workers’ have rights too;” ethnographer Candacy Taylor on "Beauty Shop Culture and the Labor of Hairdressing" and Tales from the Reuther Library podcast host Dan Goldner celebrates Frances Perkins’ birthday.