SEPTEMBER 25
1891 – Two African-American sharecroppers are killed during an ultimately unsuccessful cotton-pickers’ strike in Lee County, Ark. By the time the strike had been suppressed, 15 African-Americans had died and another six had been imprisoned.
SEPTEMBER 26
1903 – The Old 97, a Southern Railway train officially known as the Fast Mail, derails near Danville, Va., killing engineer Joseph “Steve” Broady and 10 other railroad and postal workers.
1908 – The first production Ford Model T leaves the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Mich. It was the first car ever manufactured on an assembly line, with interchangeable parts.
SEPTEMBER 27
1893 – The Int’l Typographical Union renews a strike against the Los Angeles Times; a boycott runs intermittently from 1896 to 1908. A local anti-Times committee in 1903 persuades William Randolph Hearst to start a rival paper, the Los Angeles Examiner.
1909 – Int’l Ladies’ Garment Workers Union begins strike against Triangle Shirtwaist Co. This would become the “Uprising of the 20,000,” resulting in 339 of 352 struck firms — but not Triangle — signing agreements with the union.
2002 – Twenty-nine west coast ports lock out 10,500 workers in response to what management says is a worker slowdown in the midst of negotiations on a new contract. The ports are closed for 10 days, reopen when President George W. Bush invokes the Taft-Hartley Act.
SEPTEMBER 28
1864 – The International Workingmen’s Association is founded in London. It was an international organization trying to unite a variety of different left-wing, socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and unions.
SEPTEMBER 29
1962 – A report by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that the average weekly take-home pay of a factory worker with three dependents is now $94.87.
2010 – Tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets of Europe, striking against government austerity measures. Workers in more than a dozen countries participate protesting job losses, retirement deferments, pension reductions and cuts to schools, hospitals and welfare services.
SEPTEMBER 30
1892 – A total of 29 strike leaders are charged with treason — plotting “to incite insurrection, rebellion and war against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania” — for daring to strike the Carnegie Steel Co. in Homestead, Pa. Jurors refuse to convict them.
1899 – Seventy-year-old Mother Jones organizes the wives of striking miners in Arnot, Pa., to descend on the mine with brooms, mops and clanging pots and pans. They frighten away the mules and their scab drivers. The miners eventually won their strike.
1915 – Railroad shopmen in 28 cities strike the Illinois Central Railroad and the Harriman lines for an eight-hour day, improved conditions and union recognition, but railroad officials obtain sweeping injunctions against them and rely on police and armed guards to protect strikebreakers.
1919 – Black farmers meet in Elaine, Ark., to establish the Progressive Farmers and Householders Union to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices. They are shot at by a group of Whites and return the fire.
1962 – Cesar Chavez, with Dolores Huerta, co-founds the National Farm Workers Association, which later was to become the United Farm Workers of America.
OCTOBER 1
1931 – The George Washington Bridge officially opens, spanning the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York. Thirteen workers died during the four-year construction project for what at the time was the longest main span in the world.
1940 – The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened as the first toll superhighway in the United States. It was built in most part by workers hired through the state’s Re-Employment offices.
1975 – Some 200 Pressmen begin what is to become a two-year strike at the Washington Post.
1994 – The National Hockey League team owners began a lockout of the players that lasted 103 days.
(Compiled by David Prosten, founder Union Communication Services)