Today in Labor History April 10, 1997: Exotic dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady, ratified their first-ever union contract. Thus they became the first successfully unionized sex business. (Pacers, in San Diego, had unionized a few years earlier. However, they had an open shop, allowing management to recruit new, non-union employees. Consequently, they were able to decertify the union.) Lusty Lady later became a worker-owned cooperative and a member of NoBAWC (the network of Bay Area Workers Collectives), a program initiated by the Bay Area IWW.

For a great book on the struggle to organize Lusty Lady, please see Jenny Worley’s “Neon Girls: A Stripper’s Education in Protest and Power.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #WorkerCollective #union #NOBAWC #LustyLady #books #author #writer #IWW @bookstadon

@AngryEducationWorkers

https://www.angryeducationworkers.com/bc-teachers-covered-in-the-guardian-and-what-you-can-do-to-help/

#educationworkers #organize #iww
#TEFL

Today In Labor History April 9, 1930: The IWW organized the 1700-member crew of the Leviathan, the world’s largest ship. Originally a German passenger ship, the U.S. seized it in 1917, during World War I, when it was docked in New York harbor. The U.S. subsequently used it to transport its troops to Europe. In September, 1918, the Leviathan left New Jersey, filled with men dying from Influenza. Dozens perished from the flu on the passage over.

Today In Labor History April 3, 1913: Pietro Botto, socialist mayor of Haledon, N.J., invited the Paterson silk mill strikers to assemble in front of his house. 20,000 showed up to hear speakers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Upton Sinclair, John Reed and others, who urged them to remain strong in their fight. The Patterson strike lasted from Feb. 1 until July 28, 1913. Workers were fighting for the eight-hour workday and better working conditions. Over 1800 workers were arrested during the strike, including IWW leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Five were killed. Overall, the strike was poorly organized and confined to Paterson. The IWW, the main organizer of the strike, eventually gave up.

Today In Labor History April 3, 1917: After the U.S. declared war, sailors, escorted by police, destroyed the IWW building in Kansas City. The action inspired similar attacks in Detroit, Duluth and other towns that had a large IWW presence.

#classwar #humanrights #iww #ausgov #politas

https://www.iww.org.au/

https://www.iww.org/

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/

https://asf-iwa.org.au/

Today In Labor History March 27, 1912: Start of the 8-month Northern railway strike in Canada by the IWW. Over 8,000 construction workers walked off the job at Northern Railway workcamps Wobblies picketed employment offices in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Tacoma and Minneapolis in order to block the hiring of scabs.

Fellow workers pay attention to what I'm going to mention,
For it is the fixed intention of the Workers of the World.
And I hope you'll all be ready, true-hearted, brave and steady,
To gather 'round our standard when the red flag is unfurled.

CHORUS:
Where the Fraser River flows, each fellow worker knows,
They have bullied and oppressed us, but still our union grows.
And we're going to find a way, boys, for shorter hours and better pay, boys
And we're going to win the day, boys, where the river Fraser flows.

For these gunny-sack contractors have all been dirty actors,
And they're not our benefactors, each fellow worker knows.
So we've got to stick together in fine or dirty weather,
And we will show no white feather, where the Fraser river flows.
Now the boss the law is stretching, bulls and pimps he's fetching,
And they are a fine collection, as Jesus only knows.
But why their mothers reared them, and why the devil spared them,
Are questions we can't answer, where the Fraser River flows.

(Lyrics by Joe Hill, 1912, to the tune of “Where the River Shannon Flows.”)

Today in Labor History March 24, 1919: Poet and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born. Ferlinghetti is most well-known for his book of poetry, “A Coney Island of the Mind” (1958) and for cofounding City Lights bookstore and publishing, in San Francisco. The authorities arrested him for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” because they deemed it obscene. However, a jury acquitted him in 1957. Politically, Ferlinghetti considered himself an anarchist. His politics were influenced by Anarchist poet and IWW member Kenneth Rexroth.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #IWW #beatniks #Ferlinghetti #obscenity #CityLights #publishing #poetry @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 23, 1918: 101 IWW members went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I and for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft and encourage desertion. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial virtually destroyed the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later.

Hello fellow workers, of #iww persuasion and otherwise! Here’s my latest #anticopyright image to help promote whatever strike you are organizing. If you would like me to digitally add some text or information about your workplace or efforts hit me up! Also happy to share you a print ready digital file of the image. Feel free to distribute for purposes of organizing workplace sabotage! #strike #striking #sabocat #sabotage #IndustrialWorkersoftheWorld #draweveryday

Today in Labor History March 15, 1877: Ben Fletcher, African-American IWW organizer was born on this date. Fletcher organized longshoremen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He joined the Wobblies (IWW) in 1912, became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913. By 1916, thanks in large part to Fletcher’s organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the union maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. After the 1913 strike, Fletcher traveled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color. In 1918, the state arrested him, sentencing him to ten years for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years.

Today in Labor History March 15, 1917: The U.S. Supreme Court approved the 8-hour workday under the threat of a rail strike. Philadelphia carpenters struck for the 10-hour day in 1791 and by the 1830s, it had become a general demand of workers. In 1835, Philadelphia workers organized the first general strike in North America, led by Irish coal heavers, in the struggle for a 10-hour day. However, by 1836, labor movement publications were calling for an 8-hour day. In 1864, the 8-hour day became a central demand of the Chicago labor movement. In 1867, a citywide strike for the 8-hour day shut down the city's economy for a week before falling apart. During the 1870s, eight hours became a central demand of the U.S. labor movement, with a network of 8-Hour Leagues forming across the nation.

In 1872, 100,000 workers in New York City struck and won the eight-hour day. On May 1, 1886 Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue in the first modern May Day Parade, with workers chanting, "Eight-hour day with no cut in pay." Within days, 350,000 workers went on strike nationwide for the 8-hour day. On 3 May 1886, anarchist August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers Newspaper), spoke to 6,000 workers. Afterwards, they marched to the McCormick plant in Chicago to harass scab workers. The police arrived and opened fire, killing four and wounding many more. On May 4, workers protested this police violence at a meeting in Haymarket Square. An unknown assailant hurled a bomb at the police. The authorities rounded up hundreds of labor activists and anarchists. They convicted 8 in a kangaroo court and executed four of them, including Parsons and Spies.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American currently works 8.8 hours every day. This, of course, does not include commute time which, for many Americans, can add another two or more hours a day to the time they give away for free to their bosses. Nor does it include work we take home. The scam of being a “salaried” employee is commonly exploited by bosses, who argue that we are paid based on the responsibilities completed, regardless of how long it takes to complete them.

Read my full article on Lucy Parsons, which goes deeper into the Haymarket affair and the struggle for the 8 hour day: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/

Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.

The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #breadandroses #policebrutality #union #elizabethgurleyflynn #bigbillhaywood #strike #picket #immigrants #poetry #novel #books #fiction #writer #author #uptonsinclair @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 9, 1879: Anarchist militant and IWW organizer, Carlo Tresca, was born. Tresca was an outspoken opponent of fascism in Germany and Italy, and of Soviet Communism. He was one of the main organizers of the Patterson Silk Strike. He was assassinated in 1943 by an unknown assailant, presumably a fascist or the Mafia. Some believe the Soviets killed him in retaliation for his criticism of Stalin. The most recent research suggests it was the Bonanno crime family, in response to his criticism of the mafia and Mussolini.

Today in Labor History March 9, 1911: Frank Little and other free-speech fighters were released from jail in Fresno, California, where they had been fighting for the right to speak to and organize workers on public streets. Little was a Cherokee miner and IWW union organizer. He helped organize oil workers, timber workers and migrant farm workers in California. He participated in free speech fights in Missoula, Spokane and Fresno, and helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques later used by the Civil Rights movement. He was also an anti-war activist, calling U.S. soldiers “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniforms.” 1917, he helped organize the Speculator Mine strike in Butte, Montana. Vigilantes broke into his boarding house, dragged him through the streets while tied to the back of a car, and then lynched him from a railroad trestle. Prior to Little’s assassination, Author Dashiell Hammett had been asked by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to murder him. Hammett declined.

Read my full bio of Frank Little here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #freespeech #indigenous #nativeamerican #cherokee #franklittle #civilrights #nonviolence #racism #vigilantes #lynching #author #writer #fiction #books @bookstadon

The Fellow Workers Enfields take us on a tour through the events of the Centralia tragedy, marker by marker.

https://industrialworker.org/our-trip-to-centralia/

Today in Labor History March 8, 1908: Thousands of workers in the New York needle trades (mostly women) launched a strike for higher wages, shorter hours and an end to child labor. They chose this date in commemoration of the 1857 strike. In 1910, German socialist Clara Zetkin proposed to the Second International, that March 8 be celebrated as International Women’s Day to commemorate this strike and the one in 1857.

Today in Labor History March 8, 1857: Women garment workers picketed in New York City, demanding a 10-hour workday, better working conditions, and equal rights for women. In 1910, German socialist Clara Zetkin proposed to the Second International, that March 8 be celebrated as International Women’s Day to commemorate this strike.