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AFL-CIO proposes Workers First agenda to the new Biden administration and congress

1-01-1966 From 8:02 a.m., a public transport strike spread across New York. After 12 days, the strikers will get a 15% wage increase and other benefits. [more]

2-01-1920 Thousands of US labor activists are arrested in the 'Palmer Raids' during the first Red Scare. [more]

3-01-1917 Trial of labour organizer Tom Mooney begins in San Francisco for Preparedness Day bombing. He was framed & serves 22 years. [more]

4-01-1966 Transport Workers Union of America leader Mike Quill arrested for violating an anti-strike court injunction in 4-day old 35000-member strike. [more]

4-01-1965 Start of victorious 28-day strike by 8000 New York City social workers over better conditions for welfare recipients. [more]

6-01-1916 8,000 workers strike the Youngstown steel mills. The next day, they are joined by their families. The guards fired bullets and tear gas canisters at the crowd. 3 strikers die and 25 are injured. [more]

7-01-1892 100 dead and 150 injured in the explosion at No. 11 mine near Krebs, Oklahoma, when an untrained new hire handles dynamite. [more]

7-01-1920 Five elected members of the New York state assembly belonging to the Socialist Party are refused their seats. [more]

7-01-1939 Tom Mooney of the IWW, after 22 years in prison, is found not guilty of murder. [more]

8-01-1811 A slave revolt takes place on the Louisiana sugar plantations. 300 to 500 slaves march on New Orleans, burning the fields in the process. After 2 days, the military crushed the protest. [more]

9-01-1939 1,700 tenant farm families are blocking the Missouri highway after being evicted from their homes so landowners do not have to share government aid with them. [more]

10-01-1860 Collapse of a Pemberton factory in Lawrence, Massachussetts. 900 workers, mostly Irish, trapped in the rubble. More than 100 dead, more injured. [more]

11-01-1937 Police beat and arrest UAW members during the great sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan [more]

11-01-1912 The 'Bread and Roses' strike began in Lynn Massachusetts. The strike was begun and led by mainly immigrant women. [more]

13-01-1874 Mounted police from the NYPD violently attack a demonstration of unemployed workers in Tompkins Square Park. [more]

14-01-2003 General Electric decides to transfer $ 400 / year from the employer's share of health insurance contributions to each employee. 14,000 of them go on strike for 2 days in protest. [more]

15-01-1929 Birth of civil rights activist and labor movement supporter Martin Luther King, Jr [more]

17-01-1915 The song 'Solidarity Forever' by Ralph Chaplin is first sung, on a hunger march through Chicago organised by Lucy Parsons. [more]

22-01-1969 Black workers at the Eldon Chrysler plant in Detroit march on the autoworkers' union with a list of grievances. The workers had formed ELRUM - the Eldon Revolutionary Union Movement - and they called a strike the next day. [more]

23-01-1913 Joe Hill's song 'Mr. Block', extolling the virtues of industrial unionism, is first published in the IWW's newpaper. [more]

27-01-1850 Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, is born. [more]

29-01-1834 Federal troops are used to break a strike for the first time in America, on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal [more]

31-01-1938 12,000 pecan shellers, most of them Hispanic women, strike for higher wages and civil rights in San Antonio, Texas. [more]