1-01-1966 At 8.02am a transport strike begins across New York City. Strikers will win a 15% pay rise, and other benefits, after 12 days. [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]

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

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

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

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