Trump Is Hellbent on Crushing Federal Unions, But They’re Still Kicking

This month in labour history

1-12-1946 130,000 Oakland, USA workers go on general strike. [more]

1-12-1955 Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott. [more]

2-12-2022 President Biden and Congress employ the Railway Labor Act to force 100,000 railroad workers to accept the government's tentative agreement and prevent workers from striking. [more]

3-12-1866 The 10-hour day comes after a strike in the textiles industry in Fall River, Massachusetts. [more]

3-12-1946 Department store salespeople and demonstrators in Oakland, California call a general strike. [more]

4-12-1970 Cesar Chavez sentenced to 20 days in jail for not calling off United Farm Workers boycott of lettuce grower Bud Antle Inc. [more]

5-12-1955 The two main union federations in the USA merge to form the AFL-CIO, electing George Meany as president, [more]

6-12-1907 The worst mining disaster in American history occurs when an explosion in a Monongah mine in West Virginia kills 361 miners. [more]

7-12-1896 In Chicago, 11 activists found the National Union of Steam Engineers of America; the forerunner of International Union of Operating Engineers. [more]

8-12-1886 The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is founded by 26 craft unions. Samuel Gompers is elected president. [more]

8-12-1882 Birthday of Thomas Joseph "Tom" Mooney was an American political activist and labor leader, who was convicted with Warren K. Billings of the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916. [more]

8-12-2001 230 jailed teachers in Middletown Township, NJ, ordered freed after agreement to end 9day strike & enter mediation. [more]

8-12-1916 Bernice Fisher born. US civil rights activist, union organizer, original founder of Congress of Racial Equality. [more]

11-12-1951 A build-up of coal dust causes an explosion at the New Orient mine in West Frankfort, Illinois. 159 dead. 10 days earlier, new extraction techniques had been approved by state authorities. [more]

14-12-1995 Boeing machinists in the US win a pay rise and an imporved health plan after a 69 day strike. [more]

14-12-1852 American Socialist Daniel De Leon born. Trade union organiser, journalist and Marxist theoretician who died in 1914. [more]

15-12-1941 8 days after the Pearl Harbor attack, the AFL pledged not to organise any strikes in factories linked to national defence for the duration of World War II. [more]

15-12-1921 The Kansas National Guard is ordered to quell a protest by women, the "Army of the Amazons" going from mine to mine to dissuade non-strikers from taking their spouses' jobs in the Pittsburgh mines. [more]

16-12-1951 The Bagel Bakers' Union observes a strike of good faith in 34 factories in New York demanding better health and safety conditions and sick leave. [more]

16-12-1977 Eight cashiers at a bank in Willmar, Minnesota, start first strike against a bank for equal pay. They earned half the salaries of their male colleagues. [more]

19-12-1983 Greyhound bus strike ends when members of Amalgamated Transit Union ratify a contract that slashes wages & benefits by 15% [more]

19-12-1907 A group of 239 coal miners die during a mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania. [more]

20-12-1906 Arrival of the first group of 15 Filipino farm workers recruited by the Sugar Planters Association. By 1932, there will be more than 100,000 Filipinos working in Hawaii's plantations. [more]

20-12-2005 Thousands of New York public transport workers are going into what they think is a 48-hour strike. Declared illegal, union is fined $ 2.5 million and the president receives 10 days in prison. [more]

21-12-1916 Emma Tenayuca, Mexican-American labour leader, is born. [more]

21-12-1919 Emma Goldman is deported to Russia as part of a post-war crackdown on union and left-wing activists. [more]

23-12-1908 AFL officers are found in contempt of court for urging a labor boycott of Buck's Stove and Range Co. in St Louis. [more]

24-12-1913 Seventy three striking miners and their families die in a stampede at the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan, after an unknown man enters shouting 'Fire!' [more]

25-12-1910 Bomb destroys part of the Llewellyn Ironworks in Los Angeles where a bitter strike is ongoing. [more]

25-12-1904 Philip Vera Cruz, labour leader & activist in Asian American civil rights movement, is born. Co-founder of United Farm Workers' Union. [more]

26-12-1877 First national convention of the Socialist Labor Party, the first Marxist party founded in the USA. [more]

27-12-1943 President Roosevelt seizes railroads to avoid a national strike. [more]

28-12-1936 Workers occupy General Motors' body plant in Fisher, Cleveland, in an effort to win recognition of their union by GM. [more]

29-12-2006 More than 15,000 United Steel Workers members at 16 Goodyear Tire & Rubber plants end an 86-day strike, ratify three-year contract. [more]

30-12-1936 The most famous of the Depression-era "sit down" strikes in the US begins at GM's Fisher Body plant in Flint, Michigan. [more]

30-12-1899 In the back room of Behrens’ cigar shop in Sedalia, Missiouri, US, 33 railroad clerks form Local Lodge Number 1 of the Order of the Railroad Clerks of America. [more]

31-12-1969 Rank-and-file UMWA activist Jock Yablonski is murdered along with his family by hitmen acting on the orders of union president. [more]