‘The most anti-union president’: how Trump turned his back on US workers

This month in labour history

1-09-1946 26,000 sugar workers represented by the dockers union, start a 79-day strike affecting 33 of Hawaii's 34 plantations. [more]

1-09-1907 United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther born. “There is a direct relationship between breadbox & ballot box.” [more]

1-09-1881 William Z Foster born. Labour organizer, leader in Steel Strike of 1919. [more]

2-09-1921 Owners of the West Virginia mines bombard strikers from aircraft by throwing home-made devices filled with nails and shards of metal. Fortunately, they either missed their targets or did not explode. [more]

4-09-1894 12,000 garment workers in New York go on strike to denounce conditions in the workshops. [more]

4-09-1934 400,000 textile workers start largest strike at the time through most of the US East Coast over wage cuts and speed-ups. [more]

5-09-1917 The Palmer Raids: federal agents seize records & arrest 100s involved with the IWW, including Big Bill Haywood. [more]

9-09-1890 Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America created at a convention in Topeka, Kansas. [more]

10-09-1897 Nineteen unarmed immigrant miners are shot dead by a sheriff's posse in Lattimer, Pennsylvania. [more]

14-09-1970 The UAW calls a 9-week strike at General Motors in Detroit, secures a lowering of the retirement age from 65 to 56 as well as an increase in wages based on a sliding scale linked to inflation. [more]

16-09-2004 The Farm Labor Organizing Committee wins a collective agreement with Mt. Olive Pickle Company on farms in North Carolina after a five-year struggle. [more]

17-09-2011 Occupy Wall Street movement is launched with a march in New York City. [more]

17-09-1900 100,000 anthracite miners on strike in Pennsylvania. They are paid by weight but employers estimate that a ton can weigh between 2,400 and 4,000 pounds, not 2,000.. [more]

19-09-1981 More than 400,000 unionists march in Solidarity Day demo in Washington, DC, for sacked striking air traffic controllers. [more]

22-09-1919 A steel strike, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across US. [more]

22-09-2006 Domino's Pizza workers in Pensacola, Florida form the first union of pizza delivery drivers. [more]

23-09-1886 A coalition of Knights of Labor and trade unionists in Chicago launch the United Labor party, calling for an 8-hour day, government ownership of telegraph and telephone companies, and monetary and land reform. [more]

26-09-1903 The Old 97, a Southern Railway train officially known as the Fast Mail, derails near Danville, Va., killing engineer Joseph “Steve” Broady and ten other railroad and postal workers. Many believe Broady had been ordered to speed to make up for lost tim [more]

27-09-1875 Textile strikers in Fall River, Massachusetts, demand bread for their malnourished children. [more]

30-09-1962 Cesar Chavez, with Dolores Huerta, co-founds the National Farm Workers Association, which later was to become the United Farm Workers of America [more]