Does space have a labor history? The answer is yes. On December 28, 1973, the crew of Skylab went on a one-day strike to protest their working conditions and the pressure NASA placed on them to catch up on their experiments after one of them...
This Day in Labor History
On December 22, 1988, the Brazilian rubber worker, union leader, and environmental activist Chico Mendes was murdered by a rancher named Darcy Alves who wished to clear the Amazon rainforest.
On December 10, 1789, Moses Brown, a Rhode Island businessman, hired Samuel Slater to build an English-style factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. This began the Industrial Revolution in the United.
On December 4, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered federal troops to the gold mining town of Goldfield, Nevada to bust a strike of workers affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World and Western Federation of Miners. This event shows both the potential of the...
On November 30, 1932, the American Federation of Labor endorsed federal unemployment insurance. This was a remarkable shift for the AFL, which had long opposed any sort of government programs.
On November 26, 1910, a factory building in Newark, New Jersey caught on fire, killing 25 textile workers. This should have been a call to arms for workplace safety reform,.
On October 15, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, finally providing a path forward for some of the Cold War's most exploited workers, Navajo uranium miners, as well as other Americans, primarily Native Americans and Mormon farmers, who had been...
On September 28, 1874, the U.S. military defeated the Comanche in Palo Duro Canyon, south of modern Amarillo, Texas, largely by stealing their horse herds. This forced the Comanche to.
On September 19, 1977, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company shut down its operations, laying off approximately 4100 workers. This event, which became known as Black Monday, was emblematic of.
On September 11, 1851, African-Americans and abolitionist whites in Christiana, Pennsylvania engaged in violent resistance against a posse of slave catchers riding up from Maryland to retrieve fugitive slaves in the town. The so-called Christiana Riot demonstrated the growing division in the nation over the...
On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, DC. This famous event is of course most often remembered for Martin Luther King's.
On August 20, 1866, the National Labor Union, the first labor union federation in U.S. history, demanded Congress implement a national 8-hour day. It led to a partial and fleeting.