Illinois Chicago's immigrant workforce and employers confront new era of fear

This month in labour history

1-11-1962 Strike at New York Daily News by the Newspaper Guild precedes a larger strike at multiple newspapers [more]

1-11-1918 Scab driver crashes a NYC subway train during labour dispute: 97 die, 255 injured. [more]

1-11-1835 Philadelphia - first general strike in US history - for a 10 hour. [more]

1-11-1919 Some 400,000 soft coal miners strike for higher wages and shorter hours. [more]

1-11-1887 37 black sugar workers are killed in Louisiana when the militia and some citizens shoot at unarmed strikers demanding a salary of $ 1 a day. Two organizers are lynched. [more]

2-11-1920 SPUSA and railway workers' union leader Eugene V. Debs receives nearly one million votes for Presidency of the United States. [more]

2-11-1909 150 arrested in IWW free speech fight, Spokane, Washington [more]

3-11-1921 Striking milk truck drivers in New York City dump thousands of gallons of milk on the streets. [more]

5-11-1885 Eugene V. Debs, leading figure in the railway workers unions, the IWW and the American Socialist Party, was born. [more]

8-11-1892 20,000 workers, black and white, strike in New Orleans for union recognition and wage increases. [more]

9-11-1935 The Committee for Industrial Organization is formed, breaking away from the American Federation of Labor. [more]

10-11-1933 America's first Depression-era sit-down strike occurs at the Hormel food plant in Austin, Minnesota. [more]

11-11-1831 Slave rebellion leader Nat Turner is hanged for his role leading a slave revolt 3 months earlier in Virginia. [more]

11-11-1887 Execution of the Haymarket Martyrs for their alleged role in the bombing at a labour rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago a year earlier. [more]

12-11-1892 Workers in New Orleans win a 10 hour day and overtime pay, after a four-day general strike led by racially integrated unions [more]

13-11-1974 Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers union activist Karen Silkwood dies in suspicious car crash while driving documents to a reporter. [more]

14-11-1938 Foundation of the National Federation of Telephone Workers (later Communications Workers of America) in New Orleans. [more]

16-11-1948 In solidarity with the French miners' strike, American dockers refuse to load coal bound for France. [more]

18-11-1938 The Congress of Industrial Organisations elects John L. Lewis as its first president [more]

19-11-1915 Joe Hill, a Swedish-American organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World, is framed and executed for murder in Utah. [more]

20-11-1896 Rose Pesotta born. Anarchist labour activist & only woman on board of Intl Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). [more]

26-11-1913 Wobblies Joe Ettor Arturo Giovannitti and Joseph Caruso acquitted for murdering picket Anna LoPizzo during the Lawrence textile workers strike. [more]

27-11-1884 Anarchist A.R. Parsons addresses a Thanksgiving Day hunger march in Chicago. [more]

28-11-1908 154 coal miners die in an explosion in Marianna, Pennsylvania. Engineer and Superintendent Beeson informs newspapers that he inspected it a few minutes before the explosion and found it in perfect condition. [more]

29-11-1980 Dorothy Day, suffragist, Christian anarchist, and founder of the Catholic Worker movement, dies today in New York City aged 83. [more]

30-11-1951 Over 12,000 insurance agents strike in 35 states and Washington DC against the Prudential Insurance Company [more]

30-11-1930 Death of Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones). Considered "the most dangerous woman in America" by politicians and employers. Founding member of IWW, organized steel, railroad, textile, mine workers, and women. Crusaded against child labor. [more]