OCTOBER 30
1986 – Ed Meese, attorney general in the Ronald Reagan administration, urges employers to begin spying on workers “in locker rooms, parking lots, shipping and mail room areas and even the nearby taverns” to try to catch them using drugs.
1991 – The fishing boat Andrea Gail, out of Gloucester, Mass., is caught in a ferocious storm and lost at sea with her crew of six. The event inspired the book, “The Perfect Storm,” by Sebastian Junger, and a film by the same name. The city of Gloucester has lost more than 10,000 whalers and fishermen to the sea over its 350-year history.
OCTOBER 31
1829 – George Henry Evans publishes the first issue of the Working Man’s Advocate, “edited by a Mechanic” for the “useful and industrious classes” in New York City. He focused on the inequities between the “portion of society living in luxury and idleness” and those “groaning under the oppressions and miseries imposed on them.”
1891 – Tennessee sends in leased convict laborers to break a coal miners’ strike in Anderson County. The miners revolted, burned the stockades and sent the captured convicts by train back to Knoxville.
1941 – After 14 years of labor by 400 stone masons, the Mount Rushmore sculpture is completed in Keystone, S.D.
NOVEMBER 1
1835 – In the nation’s first general strike for a 10-hour day, 300 armed Irish longshoremen marched through the streets of Philadelphia calling on other workers to join them. Some 20,000 did, from clerks to bricklayers to city employees and other occupations.
1887 – Thirty-seven Black striking Louisiana sugar workers are murdered when Louisiana militia, aided by bands of “prominent citizens,” shoot unarmed workers trying to get a dollar-per-day wage. Two strike leaders are lynched.
1918 – Malbone tunnel disaster in New York City; inexperienced scab motorman crashes five-car train during strike, 97 killed, 255 injured.
1919 – Some 400,000 soft coal miners strike for higher wages and shorter hours.
1972 – United Stone & Allied Products Workers of America merge with United Steelworkers of America.
1979 – The UAW begins what was to become a successful 172-day strike against International Harvester. The union turned back company demands for weakened work rules, mandatory overtime.
NOVEMBER 2
1909 – Police arrest 150 in IWW free speech fight, Spokane, Wash.
1920 – Railroad union leader & socialist Eugene V. Debs receives nearly a million votes for president while imprisoned for opposing World War I.
1983 – President Reagan signs a bill designating a federal holiday honoring the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. to be observed on the third Monday of January.
NOVEMBER 3
1921 – Striking milk drivers dump thousands of gallons of milk on New York City streets.
2009 – Some 5,000 Philadelphia-area public transit workers begin what was to be a six-day strike centered on wages and pension benefits.
NOVEMBER 4
1879 – Populist humorist Will Rogers was born on this day near Oologah, Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). One of his many memorable quotes: “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”
1933 – Some 3,000 dairy farmers demonstrate in Neillsville, Wisc., ultimately leading to the freeing of jailed leaders of a milk strike over low prices set by large dairy plants. Tons of fresh milk were dumped on public roads, trains carrying milk were stopped, some cheese plants were bombed during the fight.
1996 – After a struggle lasting more than two years, 6,000 Steelworkers members at Bridgestone/Firestone win a settlement in which strikers displaced by scabs got their original jobs back. The fight started when management demanded that the workers accept 12-hour shifts.
NOVEMBER 5
1855 – Eugene V. Debs, Labor leader, socialist, three-time candidate for president and first president of the American Railway Union, born.
1916 – Everett, Wash., massacre – at least seven Wobblies killed, 50 wounded and an indeterminate number missing.
2007 – Some 12,000 television and movie writers begin what was to become a three-month strike against producers over demands for an increase in pay for movies and television shows released on DVD and for a bigger share of the revenue from work delivered over the Internet.
(Compiled by David Prosten, founder Union Communication Services)