American Bloody Labor History - Never Forget
Last edited Tue Oct 20, 2015, 12:34 AM - Edit history (2)
American Bloody Labor History - Never ForgetCWA Local 1103
Posted On: Nov 06, 2010 (11:35:19)
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American Labor History is penned with bloody ink. Even considering Labor’s crowning political/legislative achievement: the 1935 the National Labor Relations Act (wagner act) we still battle to this very Labor Day to hold on to our decent wages and benefits. Today employers do not point guns at us or beat us in the streets, today Corporate America uses its billions of dollars of profits from the work of our backs to influence the political process to undermine our livelihood.
This Labor Day take a moment to look back on our bloody history, and know we must be ever diligent everyday to fight for our rights – on the Picket Line, on the Shop Floor and at the Ballot Box. Vote for CWA endorsed candidates, protect our jobs for the future and never go back to our bloody past.
1800 – Strikers found guilty of conspiracy by acting collectively to raise wages. (Commonweath v Pullis)
1850 – Militia turn on railroad strikers in Portge NY. 2 strikers killed many injured
1870 - Tompkins Square Riot NYC, Mounted police charge unemployed men, women and children demonstrating in park beating them with Billy clubs
Battle of Viaduct - The Great Railroad Strike was a general strike to protest cut in wages in which federal troops were called in 30 workers were killed during the protest.
1885 – Ten Coal mining activists are hung in Pennsylvania (Molly Maguires)
1886 – Great Southwest Railroad Strike pinkerton detectives called in to beat strikers. Missouri and Texas bring in State Militia.
1887 – Louisiana Militia shot down 35 unarmed black sugar workers striking for a dollar a day wage.
1892 – Homestead strike pinkerton guards open fire on Carnegie Mill Steel strikers in Pennsylvania
1894 Pullman General Strike 14,000 federal troops called out. 34 American Railway Union members were shot and killed.
1896 – Leadville Colorado state militia sent out to put down the mine strike
1897 – Lattimer Massacre, Luzem county sheriff’s posse kills 9 strikers for refusing to disperse in coalmine strike.
1900 – Anthracite coalmine strike 14 killed by scabherders
1903 – Mary Harris “Mother Jones” leads child workers to demand 55 hour work week.
1904 - Colorado militia kills 6 strikers at Dunnville mine
1911 – Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, 147 workers mostly women die working in sweatshop conditions with bolted doors.
1913 – New Orleans, 3 maritime workers shot when striking against United Fruit Company
1914 Ludlow Massacre, state militia attacks Union tent camp with machine guns and sets afire killing 19 including children.
1915 – Joe Hill union organizer is hung on trumped up charges in Salt Lake City
1916 – Everett Washington, Everett mills hires strike breakers to beat picketers on docks while local police refuse to intervene.
1917 – Bisbee Deportation, 1185 workers are deported by Arizona Sheriff in manure laden train cars to the New Mexico desert for union activity.
1919- Fannie Sellins United Mine Worker organizer is gunned down in Brackenridge Pennsylvania
Wesley Everest IWW organizer lynched in Centralia Washington.
1920 – Battle of Matewan, Detectives hired by mining company enter into gun battle with striking miners.
1922- Herrin Massacre, 36 killed during coalmine strike.
1923 – Maritime Strike, San Pedro California IWW Union Hall raided and demolished
1927- IWW coal miners massacred while marching for work conditions in company town of Serene Colorado
1929 – Loray Mill Strike, National Guard called out in North Carolina to end strike
1930 – Imperial Valley California, 100 farm workers arrested for unionizing activities they were convicted of “Criminal Syndicalism”
1931 – Harlan County Kentucky, Striking miners are attacked by armed men.
1932 – Dearborn Michigan, local police kill striking workers at the Ford plant.
1933 – Pixley California, Strikebreakers kill 4 workers in the cotton pickers strike
1934- Toledo Ohio, National Guardsmen open fire killing 2 and wounding 200 strikers.
1937- River Rouge Michigan, GM guards beat UAW leaders at plant location.
Chicago Republic Steel Plant, local police kill 10 wounds 30 in Memorial Day Massacre
1946- US Navy seized oil refineries to break nationwide strike
1948 – UAW Labor Leader Walter Reuther is shot.
1952 – Truman orders US Army to seize nation’s steel mills to avert a strike.
1970 – Nixon declares state of national emergency over first post office national strike in 195 years
1980 – Ronal Regan fires thousands of Air Traffic Controllers for going on strike of the PATCO union.
1989- Valhalla NY, 21 years ago Gerry Horgan is runned down and killed by a scab while fighting for Medical Benefits on CWA Local 1103's picket line. CWA to this day wears red every Thursday for Gerry. We will never forget.
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Link: Curiously Removed From Site.
= new reply since forum marked as read
75th anniversary was last Saturday.
To my knowledge, GM never had a facility in River Rouge, MI.
Someone needs to fix that CWA history post.
Caption: "Battle of the overpass," by James Kilpatrick, May 26, 1937. UAW officer Richard Frankensteen is attacked by Ford Motor Company security officers. This photo captured national attention and led the Pulitzer committee to create a new category for photography. (James Kilpatrick / The Detroit News) Album ID: 1369999 Photo ID: 39083129
More info at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002731869
But you are correct... it should be added too...
In fact... that would be one hell of a project for DU and all progressives...
Fill out that list.
... but nothing in River Rouge, MI.
It looks to me like the CWA folks have blended the two into one.
They took a stand by sitting down
The sit down stirke of 1936 to 1937
The 1936-37 strike that led GM to recognize the UAW
July 6, 1998
Web posted at: 10:58 p.m. EDT (0258 GMT)
From Detroit Bureau Chief Ed Garsten
FLINT, Michigan (CNN) -- To understand why the United Auto Workers' strike against two General Motors parts plants -- now in its second month -- has been so hard to settle, you have to go back more than 60 years.
The UAW, then a fledgling union, began what is now known in the history of organized labor as the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37.
Workers at GM's Fisher Body plant held a sit-down protest inside the plant that lasted 44 days and led to the UAW's first contract with GM.
Working conditions at the time were deplorable, says Robert Keith, 90, one of the surviving sit-down strikers. ( 94 K/8 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
Larry Huber, another sit-downer, was a teen-ager at the time and faked his working papers to get a job at GM. "We were going to hold that plant until they recognized us as a union," he told CNN.
Before long, GM turned up the heat in the wintertime strike by shutting it off. Electricity to the plant was cut. Workers' wives smuggled in food and the National Guard was sent in.
"They set the machine guns right in the middle of the street on Chevrolet Avenue and you couldn't go by them," recalls Huber. "This was just to show authority."
On February 11, 1937, the workers finally prevailed and got what they wanted -- a contract agreement and respect.
"The result," says Wayne State University archivist Mike Smith," was a one-page contract between GM and the UAW. In essence this contract said that GM recognized the UAW as the official bargaining agent for the workers.
more...
http://www.cnn.com/US/9807/06/gm.strike.history.02/
Let me say it again: GM did not have a facility in River Rouge, MI in 1936.
Because most can't fathom... that it can be taken away.
Sheriff's deputies during the battle
A group of miners display one of the bombs dropped by Chafin's airplanes.
By 1920, most of West Virginia had been organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). The southern coalfields, however, remained non-unionized bastions of coal operator power. In early 1920, UMW president John L. Lewis targeted Mingo County for organizing. Certain aspects of Mingo made it more attractive to union leaders than neighboring Logan County, which was under the control of the vehemently anti-union Sheriff Don Chafin and his deputized army.[11] Mingo’s political structure was more independent, and some politicians were pro-union. Cabell Testerman, the mayor of the independent town of Matewan was one supporter of the union cause. He appointed 27-year-old Sid Hatfield as town sheriff.[11] As a teenager, Hatfield had worked in the coalmines, and was sympathetic to the miners' condition. He also claimed to be a member of the notorious Hatfield family of the Hatfield and McCoy "feud". These men provided union organizers an opportunity to gain a foothold, and unionizing accelerated rapidly in the county.[12]
In response to the organizing efforts, coal operators used every means to block the union. One of their primary tactics of combating the union was firing union sympathizers, blacklisting them, and evicting them from their homes. Their legal argument for evictions is best stated by S.B. Avis, a coal company lawyer; “It is like a servant lives at your house. If the servant leaves your employment, if you discharge him, you ask him to get out of the servants’ quarters. It is a question of master and servant.”[13][14] The UMW set up tent colonies for the homeless miner families, and soon a mass of idle and angry miners was concentrated in a small area along the Tug Fork River.[15] Even with the coal operators’ suppression, by early May 3,000 out of 4,000 Mingo miners had joined the union.[11] At the Stone Mountain Coal Company mine near Matewan, every single worker unionized, and was subsequently fired and evicted.[9]
On May 19, 1920, 12 Baldwin-Felts agents arrived in Matewan, including Lee Felts, and promptly met up with Albert Felts who was already in the area. Albert and Lee were the brothers of Thomas Felts, the founder and director of the agency. Albert had already been in the area, and had tried to bribe Mayor Testerman with 500 dollars to place machine guns on roofs in the town—which Testerman refused.[16] That afternoon, Albert and Lee along with eleven other men set out to the Stone Mountain Coal Company property. The first family they evicted was a woman and her children, whose husband was not home at the time. They forced them out at gunpoint, and threw their belongings in the road under a light but steady rain. The miners who saw it were furious, and sent word to town.[17]
As the agents walked to the train station to leave town, Sid Hatfield and a group of deputized miners confronted them and told the agents they were under arrest. Albert Felts replied that in fact, he had a warrant for Sid’s arrest.[18] Testerman was alerted, and he ran out into the street after a miner shouted that Sid had been arrested. Hatfield backed into the store, and Testerman asked to see the warrant. After reviewing it, the mayor exclaimed, “This is a bogus warrant.” With these words, a gunfight erupted and Sid Hatfield shot Albert Felts. Mayor Testerman fell to the ground in the first volley, mortally wounded. In the end, 10 men were killed, including Albert and Lee Felts.[18]
This gunfight became known as the Matewan Massacre...
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Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
HONEA PATH - All that remains of the abandoned South Carolina textile mill that was the site of the deadliest violence during a national labor strike 75 years ago are crumbling brick walls, creaky wood floors and whispers of the tragedy.
The fate of Chiquola Mills is unknown. The site is slated for auction in November after the owner failed to pay $5,000 in taxes and stopped demolition amid tough economic times.
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Others see an opportunity to preserve a historic site, where seven mill workers were gunned down when the superintendent, who was also the town mayor and judge at the time, ordered armed guards, many of them fellow townspeople, to fire into the workers
On Sept. 6, 1934, workers mired in the midst of the Great Depression and angry over low wages and harsh working conditions descended upon the mill as other employees were headed into work. Dozens were injured in the shooting and melee in Honea Path, a rural town in northwest South Carolina.
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Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2009/10/06/972533/honea-path-mill-crumbles.html#storylink=cpy
Most people have no idea about the about the labor movement in South Carolina. Those trying to unionize were beaten down, at times literally, by different groups that owners used. Help from the national level was spotty at best.
I just can not believe how being a union member has turned into such a terrible thing..... I voted for the "clerical" workers to join the AFSMCE union in the State of Wisconsin, back in the early 70's. It's just so sad that it was all for naught. 
