JULY 31
1970 –Members of the National Football League Players Association begin what is to be a two-day strike, their first. The issues: pay, pensions, the right to arbitration and the right to have agents.
1981 – Fifty-day baseball strike ends.
1999 – The Great Shipyard Strike of 1999 ends after Steelworkers at Newport News Shipbuilding ratify a breakthrough agreement which nearly doubles pensions, increases security, ends inequality and provides the highest wage increases in company and industry history to nearly 10,000 workers at the yard.

AUGUST 1
1917 – After organizing a strike of metal miners against the Anaconda Company, Wobbly organizer Frank Little is dragged by six masked men from his Butte, Mont., hotel room and hung from the Milwaukee Railroad trestle.
1921 – Sid Hatfield, police chief of Matewan, W. Va., a longtime supporter of the United Mine Workers union, is murdered by company goons. This soon led to the Battle of Blair Mountain, a Labor uprising also referred to as the Red Neck War.
1938 – Police in Hilo, Hawaii, open fire on 200 demonstrators supporting striking waterfront workers. The attack became known as “the Hilo Massacre.”
1944 – A 17-day, company-instigated wildcat strike in Philadelphia tries to bar eight African-American trolley operators from working.
1997 – Ten-month strike against Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel wins agreement guaranteeing defined-benefit pensions for 4,500 Steelworkers.

AUGUST 2
1918 – The first General Strike in Canadian history is held in Vancouver, organized as a one-day political protest against the killing of draft evader and labor activist Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, who had called for a general strike in the event that any worker was drafted against his will.
1939 – Hatch Act is passed, limiting political activity of executive branch employees of the federal government.

AUGUST 3
1913 – Fighting breaks out when sheriff’s deputies attempt to arrest Wobbly leader Richie “Blackie” Ford as he addressed striking field workers at the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, Calif.
1981 – Some 15,000 air traffic controllers strike. President Reagan threatens to fire any who do not return to work within 48 hours, saying they “have forfeited their jobs” if they do not. Most stay out and are fired Aug. 5.
1986 – Florence Reece dies in Knoxville, Tenn., at 86. She was a Mine Workers union activist and author of Which Side Are You On?, written after her home was ransacked by Harlan County sheriff J.H. Blair and his thugs during a 1931 strike.

AUGUST 4
1876 – The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers is formed. It partnered with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, CIO in 1935; both organizations disbanded in 1942 to form the new United Steelworkers.
1919 – An estimated 15,000 silk workers strike in Paterson, N.J., for 44-hour week.
1997 – Nearly 185,000 Teamsters begin what is to become a successful 15-day strike at United Parcel Service over excessive use of part-timers.

AUGUST 5
1931 – Using clubs, police rout 1,500 jobless men who had stormed the plant of the Fruit Growers Express Co. in Indiana Harbor, Ind., demanding jobs.
1949 – Thirteen fire fighters, including 12 smokejumpers who parachuted in to help their coworkers, die while battling a forest fire at Gates of the Mountain, Mont.
1993 – The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) took effect today. The first law signed by President Clinton, it allows many workers time off each year due to serious health conditions or to care for a family member.

AUGUST 6
1974 – Cigarmakers’ Int’l Union of America merges with Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union.
2011 – Some 45,000 CWA and IBEW-represented workers at Verizon begin what is to be a two-week strike, refusing to accept more than 100 concession demands by the telecommunications giant.

(Compiled by David Prosten, founder Union Communication Services)