CNY Solidarity Report

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February 01
The Collar Laundry Union forms in Troy, N.Y, raises earnings for female laundry workers from two dollars to 14 dollars a week - 1864

Bricklayers begin working eight-hour days - 1867

International Brotherhood of Firemen & Oilers merge with Service Employees International Union - 1995

February 02
Silk workers in Paterson, NJ strike for shorter work week with no cut in pay. Sixteen thousand participate over the course of the year - 1919

Legal secretary Iris Rivera fired for refusing to make coffee; secretaries across Chicago protest - 1977

The 170-day lockout (although management called it a strike) of 22,000 steelworkers by USX Corp. ends with a pay cut but greater job security. It was the longest work stoppage in the history of the U.S. steel industry - 1987

February 03
32,000 textile workers strike in Lawrence, Mass. for a shorter work week with no cut in pay - 1919

U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act banning child labor and establishing the 40-hour work week - 1941

February 04
“Big Bill” Haywood born in Salt Lake City, Utah, leader of Western Federation of Miners, Wobblies (IWW) founder - 1869

Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man launched the 1955 Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott and the birth of the civil rights movement, is born in Tuskeege, Ala. - 1913

Unemployment demonstrations take place in major U.S. cities - 1932

Thirty-seven thousand maritime workers on the West Coast strike for wage increases - 1937

February 05
First daily labor newspaper, “N.Y. Daily Sentinel”, begins publication - 1830

President Bill Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave Act. The law requires most employers of 50 or more workers to grant up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for a family or medical emergency - 1993

In what turns out to be a bad business decision, Circuit City fires 3,900 experienced sales people because they’re making too much in commissions. Sales plummet. Duh. - 2003

February 06
Ironworkers from six cities meet in Pittsburgh to form the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers of America. Their pay in Pittsburgh at the time: $2.75 for a nine-hour day – 1896

Philadelphia shirtwaist makers voted to accept arbitration offer and end walkout as Triangle Shirtwaist strike winds down. One year later 146 workers, mostly young girls aged 13 to 23, were to die in a devastating fire at the New York City sweatshop - 1910

Seattle General Strike begins. The city was run by a General Strike Committee for six days as tens of thousands of union members stopped work in support of 32,000 striking longshoremen - 1919

February 08
Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, first female general organizer for the American Federation of Labor, born. She was appointed to the post by AFL President Samual Gompers - 1864

Vigilantes beat IWW organizers for exercising free-speech rights, San Diego - 1912

February 09
Wobblie activist Tom Mooney convicted in bombing frame-up orchestrated by Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was pardoned and released 22 years later - 1917

Some 19,000 Boeing engineers and technical workers in Washington state and Oregon begin what is to become a 40-day strike over economic issues - 2000

February 11
Fifteen thousand rubber workers strike in Akron, Ohio, protesting speed-up - 1913

Following the end of a 44 day sit-down strike in Flint, Mich., 48,000 GM workers win first contract - celebrated annually as “White Shirt Day” - 1937

February 12
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass born into slavery near Easton, MD - 1817

U.S. railworkers strike against pay cuts - 1877

John L. Lewis, president of United Mine Workers of America and founding president of the CIO, born near Lucas, IA - 1880

February 14
Western Federation of Miners strike for 8-hour day - 1903

President Theodore Roosevelt creates the Department of Commerce and Labor. It was divided into two separate government departments ten years later - 1903

Jimmy Hoffa born in Brazil, Indiana, son of a coal miner. Disappeared July 30, 1975, declared dead seven years later – 1913

Striking workers at Detroit’s newspapers, out since the previous July, offer to return to work. The offer is accepted five days later but the newspapers vow to retain some 1,200 scabs. A court ruling the following year ordered as many as 1,100 former strikers reinstated - 1996

February 15
Susan B. Anthony, suffragist, abolitionist, labor activist, born in Adams, Mass. - 1820

February 16
Leonora O’Reilly was born in New York. The daughter of Irish immigrants, she began working in a factory at 11, joined the Knights of Labor at 16, and was a volunteer investigator of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. She was a founding member of the Woman’s Trade Union League - 1870

Diamond Mine disaster in Braidwood, Ill. The coal mine was on a marshy tract of land with no natural drainage. Snow melted and forced a collapse on the east side of the mine, killing 74 - 1883

Beginning of a 17-week general strike of 12,000 New York furriers, in which Jewish workers formed a coalition with Greek and African American workers and became the first union to win a five-day, 40-hour week - 1926

Rubber Workers begin sit-down strike at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. - 1936

American Wire Weavers Protective Association merges with United Papermakers & Paperworkers - 1959

February 17
Unions at Yale University strike in solidarity with Teaching Assistants - 1992

15 March - The Supreme Court approved the Eight-Hour Act under the threat of a national railway strike. 1917

18 March 1970 - The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Post Office Department began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, soon involving 210,000 of the nation's 750,000 postal employees. With mail service virtually paralyzed in New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, President Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military units to New York City post offices. The stand-off culminated two weeks later. 1970

25 March - The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, occupying the top three floors of a ten-story building in New York City, was consumed by fire. One hundred and forty-seven people, mostly women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions, lost their lives. Approximately 50 died as they leapt from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death as they desperately attempted to escape through stairway exits locked as a precaution against "the interruption of work". On 11 April, the company's owners were indicted for manslaughter. 1911

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Member tip

Discrimination: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is enforced by the EEOC. This law requires that women and men receive the same pay for doing “substantially similar” work. This means equal pay for the same type of job. This law does not address the big problem of “comparable worth” – when women are paid less than men for doing different jobs, but jobs requiring a comparable level of skill and experience. A particular employer may have a higher pay rate for (mostly male) plumbers than for (mostly female) secretaries, even though the two jobs require roughly similar levels of education, degrees of skill and experience, and so on.

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Steward tip

The No-Reprisal Rule

The right to engage in concerted activities includes participation in grievance activities. A steward cannot be punished or threatened with punishment because management considers his grievances to be overly frequent, petty or offensively written. Nor may management threaten a steward with adverse consequences if the steward brings a grievance to a higher step. Reprisals against stewards are unfair labor practices. An employer violates the no-reprisal rule if it:

Unfairly gives a steward a bad evaluation.
Denies a steward pay or promotion opportunities.
Segregates a steward from other employees.
Deprives a steward of overtime or other benefits.
Enforces rules more strictly against a steward than other workers.
Threatens a steward with physical harm or strikes a steward.
Overly supervises a steward.
Transfers a steward to a different job or shift.
Gives a steward a poor reference for a prospective job.

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