MAY 29
1941 – Animators working for Walt Disney begin what was to become a successful five-week strike for recognition of their union, the Screen Cartoonists’ Guild.
1946 – A contract between the United Mine Workers and the U.S. government establishes one of the nation’s first union medical and pension plans, the multi-employer UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund.
1996 – The United Farm Workers of America reaches agreement with Bruce Church Inc. on a contract for 450 lettuce harvesters, ending a 17-year-long boycott.
2009 – UAW members at General Motors accept major contract concessions in return for 17.5 percent stake in the financially struggling company.

MAY 30
1937 – In what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre, police open fire on striking steelworkers at Republic Steel in South Chicago, killing 10 and wounding more than 160.
2002 – The Ground Zero cleanup at the site of the World Trade Center is completed three months ahead of schedule due to the heroic efforts of more than 3,000 building tradesmen and women who had worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for the previous eight months.

MAY 31
1943 – Some 25,000 white autoworkers walk off the job at a Detroit Packard Motor Car Co. plant, heavily involved in wartime production, when three Black workers are promoted to work on a previously all-white assembly line. The Black workers were relocated and the whites returned.

1997 – Rose Will Monroe, popularly known as Rosie the Riveter, dies in Clarksville, Ind.  During WWII she helped bring women into the labor force.

JUNE 1
1898 – Congress passes the Erdman Act, providing for voluntary mediation or arbitration of railroad disputes and prohibiting contracts that discriminate against union labor or release employers from legal liability for on-the-job injuries.
1903 – Nearly 3,500 immigrant miners begin Clifton-Morenci, Ariz., copper strike.
1916 – Some 12,500 longshoremen strike the Pacific coast, from San Diego to Bellingham, Wash. Demands included a closed shop and a wage increase to 55 cents an hour for handling general cargo.
1922 – As many as 60,000 railroad shopmen strike to protest cuts in wages.

JUNE 2
1786 – Twenty-six journeymen printers in Philadelphia stage the trade’s first strike in America over wages: a cut in their $6 weekly pay.
1924 – A constitutional amendment declaring that “Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under 18 years of age” was approved by the Senate today, following the lead of the House five weeks earlier. But only 28 state legislatures ever ratified the amendment – the last three in 1937 – so it has never taken effect.
1952 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President Harry Truman acted illegally when he ordered the Army to seize the nation’s steel mills to avert a strike.

JUNE 3
1900 – Int’l Ladies Garment Workers Union founded.

JUNE 4
1912 – Massachusetts becomes the first state to establish a minimum wage.
1947 – The House of Representatives approves the Taft-Hartley Act. The legislation allows the president of the United States to intervene in labor disputes. President Truman vetoed the law but was overridden by Congress.
1975 – Gov. Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law in the U.S. giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights. The legislation came after years of effort by the United Farm Workers union.

(Compiled by David Prosten, founder of Union Communication Services)