Union Busting Comes to Campus

This month in labour history

2-10-2007 Starbucks Workers Union baristas at an outlet in East Grand Rapids, Mich., organized by the Wobblies, win their grievances after the National Labor Relations Board cites the company for labor law violations, including threats against union activists. [more]

3-10-1932 The state militia is called in after 164 high school students in Kincaid, Ill., go on strike when the school board buys coal from the scab Peabody Coal Co. [more]

9-10-2003 Chicago sanitation workers end a nine-day strike, winning a 28% pay rise. [more]

9-10-1888 United Hebrew Trades founded in New York by socialist shirt-maker Morris Hillquit. [more]

10-10-1933 Pixley, CA: 18,000 cotton workers strike & ultimately win a pay raise; 4 workers killed during the strike. [more]

11-10-1873 The Miners’ National Association is formed in Youngstown, Ohio, with the goal of uniting all miners, regardless of skill or ethnic background. [more]

12-10-1898 The Battle of Virden massacre takes place in Illinois, as striking United Mine Workers fight scabs & guards. 11 killed. [more]

13-10-1934 The American Federation of Labor votes to boycott all products made in Germany in order to protest Nazi antagonism towards German unions. [more]

15-10-1914 President Woodrow Wilson signs the Clayton Antitrust Act, often referred to as "Labor’s Magna Carta,"establishing that unions are not conspiracies under the law. [more]

16-10-1859 John Brown leads anti-slavery raid on Harper's Ferry. [more]

17-10-1939 Labor activist Warren Billings is released from California's Folsom Prison. Along with Thomas J. Mooney, Billings had been pardoned for a 1916 conviction stemming from a bomb explosion during a San Francisco Preparedness Day parade. [more]

18-10-1927 IWW Colorado Mine strike; first time all coal fields are out. [more]

18-10-1648 Shoemakers & coopers in Boston form guilds, first American workers orgs, though they focus on work quality not work conditions. [more]

19-10-1980 The J.P. Stevens textile company is forced to sign its first union contract after a 17-year struggle in North Carolina and other southern states. [more]

20-10-1926 Eugene V. Debs, leading American Socialist and trade unionist, dies. [more]

21-10-1902 In the United States, a five-month strike by United Mine Workers ends. [more]

22-10-1981 The US Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Air Traffic Controllers Organization for its previous strike. [more]

22-10-1887 John Reed, the author of Ten Days That Shook the World, is born. [more]

24-10-1892 Black & white teamsters, salesmen & packers strike in New Orleans. Quickly turns into general strike for 10hr work day. [more]

25-10-2011 Workers at Bonus Car Wash in Santa Monica, CA, win a union contract for pay rises & improved benefits after a 2 year struggle. [more]

25-10-1934 Strike by 23,000 silk dye workers in Paterson, NJ. [more]

25-10-1949 Longshore workers in Hawaii win a strike for pay parity with their colleagues on the mainland. [more]

26-10-1825 After 8 years and over 1,000 dead, mostly Irish migrants, the Erie Canal is open, linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. [more]

27-10-1951 The National Negro Labor Council is formed in Cincinnati to unite black workers in the struggle for full economic, political and social equality. [more]

30-10-1986 Ed Meese, attorney general in the Ronald Reagan administration, urges employers to begin spying on workers "in locker rooms, parking lots, shipping and mail room areas and even the nearby taverns" to try to catch them using drugs. [more]

31-10-1891 Tennessee sends in leased convict laborers to break a coal miners strike in Anderson County. The miners revolted, burned the stockades, and sent the captured convicts by train back to Knoxville [more]