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April 01
United Mine Workers of America win 8 hour day - 1898

Strike of cotton mill workers begins in Gastonia, NC.  During the strike, police raided the strikers’ tent colony; the chief of police was killed.  The strike leaders were framed for murder and convicted, but later freed - 1929

400,000 members of the United Mine Workers strike for higher wages and employer contributions to the union’s health and welfare fund. President Truman seizes the mines - 1946

40,000 textile workers strike in cotton and rayon mills of six southern states, seeing higher pay, sickness and accident insurance, and pensions - 1951

Longest newspaper strike in U.S. history, 114 days, ends in New York City - 1963

Major league baseball players begin what is to become a 13-day strike, ending when owners agreed to increase pension fund payments and to add salary arbitration to the collective bargaining agreement - 1972

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters merge with Brotherhood of Railway, Airline & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & station Employees - 1978

Eleven-day strike by 34,000 New York City transit workers begins, halts bus and subway service in all five boroughs before strikers return to work with a 17 percent raise over two years plus a cost-of-living adjustment - 1980

United Cement, Lime & Gypsum Workers Int’l Union merges with Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers - 1984

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1989

Federal minimum wage rises to $3.80 per hour - 1990

The United Mine Workers of America dedicates the John L. Lewis Mining and Labor Museum at Lewis’ boyhood home in Lucas, Iowa - 1990

April 03
UAW Local 833 strikes the Kohler bathroom fixtures company in Kohler, WI. The strike ends six years later after Kohler is found guilty of refusing to bargain, agrees to reinstate 1,400 strikers and pay them $4.5 million in back pay and pension credits - 1954

April 04
Unemployed riot in Union Square, NYC - 1914

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, where he has been supporting a sanitation workers’ strike.  In the wake of this tragedy, riots break out in many cities, including Washington, DC - 1968

Some 1,700 United Mine Workers members in Virginia and West Virginia beat back concessions demanded by Pittston Coal Co. - 1989

April 05
Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, was blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face - 1956

14,000 teachers strike Hawaii schools, colleges - 2001

April 06
The first slave revolt in the U.S. occurs at a slave market in New York City’s Wall Street area. Twenty-one blacks were executed for killing nine whites. The city responded by strengthening its slave codes - 1712

Birth of Rose Schneiderman, organizer of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union – 1882

April 07
Prohibition ends - 1933

National Labor Relations Board attorney tells ILWU members to “lie down like good dogs,” Juneau, Alaska - 1947

Some 300,000 members of the National Federation of Telephone Workers, soon to become CWA, strike AT&T and the Bell System. Within five weeks all but two of the 39 federation unions had won new contracts - 1947

15,000 union janitors strike, Los Angeles - 2000

April 08
128 convict miners, leased to a coal company under the state’s shameful convict lease system, are killed in an explosion at the Banner coal mine outside Birmingham, Ala. The miners were mostly African-Americans jailed for minor offenses - 1911

President Harry S. Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize the nation’s steel mills to avert a strike. The Supreme Court ruled the act illegal on June 2 - 1952

April 10
Birth date of Frances Perkins, named Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet-level office - 1880

Birth of Dolores Huerta, a co-founder, with Cesar Chavez, of the United Farm Workers - 1930

Tens of thousands of immigrants demonstrate in 100 U.S. cities in a national day of action billed as a campaign for immigrants’ dignity. Some 200,000 gathered in Washington, D.C. - 2006

April 11
Ford Motor Company signs first contract with United Auto Workers - 1941

Jackie Robinson, first black ballplayer hired by a major league team, plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbetts Field - 1947

Police in Austin, Minn. tear-gas Hormel striking meatpacking workers. Seventeen strikers are arrested on felony riot charges - 1986

Some 25,000 marchers in Watsonville, Calif. show support for United Farm Workers organizing campaign among strawberry workers, others - 1997

April 12
An early union of steel workers, the United Sons of Vulcan, is formed in Pittsburgh - 1858

Birth of Florence Reece, active in Harlan County, Ky. coal strikes and author of famed labor song “Which Side Are You On?” - 1900

April 13
International Hod Carriers & Building Laborers’ Union (today’s Laborers’ Int’l Union) is founded, as 25 delegates from 23 Local Unions in 17 cities—representing 8,186 Laborers—meet in Washington DC - 1903

Labor leader and Socialist Party founder Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned for opposing American entry into World War I.  While in jail he ran for president, received 1 million votes - 1919

April 14
More than 100 Mexican and Filipino farm workers are arrested for union activities, Imperial Valley, Calif. Eight were convicted of “criminal syndicalism” - 1930

John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” published - 1939

April 15
A. Philip Randolph, civil rights leader and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, born in Crescent City, Fla. - 1889

IWW union Agricultural Workers Organization formed in Kansas City, Mo. - 1915

Teacher unionists gather at the City Club on Plymouth Court in Chicago to form a new national union: the American Federation of Teachers – 1916

Start of ultimately successful six-day strike across New England by what has been described as the first women-led American union, the Telephone Operators Department of IBEW - 1919

Transport Workers Union founded – 1934

April 16
Employers lock out 25,000 New York City garment workers in a dispute over hiring practices. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union calls a general strike; after 14 weeks, 60,000 strikers win union recognition and the contractual right to strike - 1916

500 workers in Texas City, Texas die in a huge oil refinery explosion and fire - 1947

An estimated 20,000 global justice activists blockade Washington, D.C. meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund - 2000

April 17
The Supreme Court holds that a maximum hours law for New York bakery workers is unconstitutional under the due process clause of the 14th amendment - 1905

April 18
West Virginia coal miners strike, defend selves against National Guard - 1912

April 19
An American domestic terrorist’s bomb destroys the Oklahoma City federal building, killing 168 people, including dozens of federal employees - 1995

April 20
10,000 demonstrators celebrate textile workers’ win of a 10-percent pay hike and grievance committees after a one-month strike, Lowell, Mass. - 1912

Ludlow massacre:  Colorado state militia, using machine guns and fire, kill about 20 people—including 11 children—at a tent city set up by striking coal miners - 1914

United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther is shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins - 1948

National Association of Post Office Mail Handlers, Watchmen, Messengers & Group Leaders merge with Laborers - 1968

April 27

The first strike for the 10-hour work-day occurred by carpenters in Boston – 1825

29 April

When their demand that only union men be employed was refused, members of the Western Federation of Miners dynamited the $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Company at Wardner, Idaho, destroying it completely. President McKinley responded by sending in black soldiers from Brownsville, Texas with orders to round up thousands of miners and confine them in specially built "bullpens." - 1899