On this day in 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged into the AFL-CIO. During the 1930s, dissatisfaction over the AFL's conservatism and its unwillingness to organize industrial workers led to the creation of the CIO in 1935 under...
This Day in Labor History
Today we celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Oakland General Strike. The Oakland general strike came out of the massive changes to the Bay Area during World War II. Hundreds.
On November 22, 1909, approximately 20,000 garment workers in New York City went on strike against the horrendous conditions of their sweatshops. This strike, known as the Uprising of the.
On November 11, 1919, the people of Centralia, Washington, a small lumber town in the southwestern part of the state, celebrated the first anniversary of Armistice Day with a parade. However, town leaders and the local American Legion post decided to turn the parade into...
On this date in 1935, the Committee for Industrial Organization (later the Congress of Industrial Organizations) was created. Ever since the failure of the Knights of Labor to organize all.
On November 5, 1916, a boat loaded with members of the Industrial Workers of the World attempted to dock in Everett, Washington. Local leaders, determined to stop the I.W.W. from.
On this date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, the leader of the movement known as Bacon's Rebellion, died of dysentery. This effectively ended the rebellion, an event that helped entrench slavery as the labor system of the American South. The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown...
On September 17, 1989, 98 miners and one minister conducted a peaceful takeover of the Pittston Moss 3 Coal Preparation Plant. The Pittston strike was one of the most brutal.
We sometimes don't immediately think of the history of slavery as labor history, but of course, it's absolutely fundamental to any understanding of labor history in the American South (and.
On July 14, 1877, the Great Railroad Strike began in Martinsburg, West Virginia. After the Civil War, industrialists engaged in an enormous rail building program. Much of this was funded through shaky and corrupt means, leading to the Panic of 1873. When the bubble burst...
The summer of 1917 was tense in the United States. The entrance of the nation into World War I that spring seemed to place the entire nation on edge. Progressivism,.
This occasional series will highlight moments in American labor and working-class history writ large, including the history of American radicalism and the history of slavery, which too often takes a.