News

It took 1,231 firefighters 30 hours to put down The Great Baltimore Fire, which started on this day and destroyed 1,500 buildings over an area of some 140 acres - 1904

Seattle General Strike begins. The city was run by a General Strike Committee for six days as tens of thousands of union members stopped work in support of 32,000 striking longshoremen - 1919

President Bill Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave Act.  The law requires most employers of 50 or more workers to grant up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for a family or medical emergency - 1993

February 9 is the expiration of CWA District 3’s contract with AT&T Mobility.

CWA will be engaging in another round of actions on February 9 – to show our support for District 3 negotiations and to show our opposition to AT&T’s attacks on our jobs.

The Robert D. Johnson Memorial Scholarship Fund, administered by the Cleveland Foundation, is now accepting applications for the 2018-2019 academic year.  Application deadline is 5 p.m. EDT, April 15, 2018.  Awards will be announced by June 15, 2018.

  LOCAL LEADERS

We are pleased to announce another round of online training for locals on CWA dues systems, membership tracking and related financial operations for locals.

This is not a step-by-step training, however, sessions are structured to help you understand how the overall system works, including how to get the most out of the Orion system. The webinars are open to local officers, clerks and bookkeepers and others who help track dues and membership for your local.

The schedule is as follows:

 
Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a White man launched the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott and the birth of the civil rights movement, is born in Tuskeege, Ala. - 1913

The U.S. Supreme Court rules the United Hatters Union violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by organizing a nationwide boycott of Danbury Hatters of Connecticut - 1908
 
U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act banning child labor and establishing the 40-hour work week - 1941

Three hundred newsboys organize to protest a cut in pay by the Minneapolis Tribune - 1917
 
Legal secretary Iris Rivera fired for refusing to make coffee; secretaries across Chicago protest - 1977
 
The 170-day lockout (although management called it a strike) of 22,000 steelworkers by USX Corp. ends with a pay cut but greater job security.  It was the longest work stoppage in the history of the U.S. steel industry - 1987

Led by 23-year-old Kate Mullaney, the Collar Laundry Union forms in Troy, N.Y., and raises earnings for female laundry workers from $2 to $14 a week - 1864
 
Bricklayers begin working 8-hour days - 1867

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is born in Hyde Park, N.Y. He was elected president of the United States four times starting in 1932.

Dolly Parton hits number one on the record charts with "9 to 5," her anthem to the daily grind - 1981

American Miners’ Association formed - 1861
 
First U.S. unemployment compensation law enacted, in Wisconsin - 1932

New York City maids organize to improve working conditions - 1734
 
Mine explosion in Mount Pleasant, Pa., leaves more than 100 dead - 1891
 
First meeting of the Int’l Labor Organization (ILO) - 1920
 
Kansas miners strike against compulsory arbitration - 1920
 

In what could be considered the first workers’ compensation agreement in America, pirate Henry Morgan pledges his underlings 600 pieces of eight or six slaves to compensate for a lost arm or leg. Also part of the pirate’s code, reports Roger Newell: shares of the booty were equal regardless of race or sex, and shipboard decisions were made collectively - 1695
 
Samuel Gompers, first AFL president, born in London, England. He emigrated to the U.S. as a youth - 1850
 
The Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America is chartered by the American Federation of Labor to organize "every wage earner from the man who takes the bullock at the house until it goes into the hands of the consumer." - 1897
 
 

Sojourner Truth addresses first Black Women’s Rights convention - 1851
 
The Sheet Metal Workers Int'l Association (SMWIA) is founded in Toledo, Ohio, as the Tin, Sheet Iron and Cornice Workers’ Int’l Association - 1888

Krueger’s Cream Ale, the first canned beer, goes on sale in Richmond, Va.  Pabst was the second brewer in the same year to sell beer in cans, which came with opening instructions and the suggestion: "cool before serving" - 1935
 

Some 10,000 clothing workers strike in Rochester, N.Y., for the 8-hour day, a 10-percent wage increase, union recognition, and extra pay for overtime and holidays. Daily parades were held throughout the clothing district and there was at least one instance of mounted police charging the crowd of strikers and arresting 25 picketers. Six people were wounded over the course of the strike and one worker, 18-year-old Ida Breiman, was shot to death by a sweatshop contractor. The strike was called off in April after manufacturers agreed not to discriminate against workers for joining a union – 1913

Indian field hands at San Juan Capistrano mission refused to work, engaging in what was probably the first farm worker strike in California - 1826

Birth of Terence V. Powderly, leader of the Knights of Labor - 1849
 
The United Mine Workers of America is founded in Columbus, Ohio, with the merger of the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union - 1890
 
Five hundred New York City tenants battle police to prevent evictions - 1932

Some 750,000 steel workers walk out in 30 states, largest strike in U.S. history to that time - 1946
 
Postal workers begin four-day strike at the Jersey City, N.J., bulk and foreign mail center, protesting an involuntary shift change.  The wildcat was led by a group of young workers who identified themselves as “The Outlaws”- 1974
 
Six hundred police attack picketing longshoremen in Charleston, S.C. - 2000
 

Chicago Crib Disaster—A fire breaks out during construction of a water tunnel for the city of Chicago, burning the wooden dormitory housing the tunnel workers.  While 46 survive the fire by jumping into the frigid lake and climbing onto ice floes, approximately 60 men die, 29 burned beyond recognition and the others drowned - 1909

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) founded – 1920

Twenty strikers at the American Agricultural Chemical Co. in Roosevelt, N.J., were shot, two fatally, by factory guards. They and other strikers had stopped an incoming train in search of scabs when the guards opened fire - 1915
 
Some 3,000 members of the Filipino Federation of Labor strike the plantations of Oahu, Hawaii. Their ranks swell to 8,300 as they are joined by members of the Japanese Federation of Labor - 1920
 
Yuba City, Calif., labor contractor Juan V. Corona found guilty of murdering 25 itinerant farm workers he employed during 1970 and 1971 - 1973
 
Bruce Springsteen makes an unannounced appearance at a benefit for laid-off 3M workers, Asbury Park, N.J. - 1986

U.S. Supreme Court rules in Moyer v. Peabody that a governor and officers of a state National Guard may imprison anyone—in the case at hand, striking miners in Colorado—without probable cause “in a time of insurrection” and deny the person the right of appeal - 1909
 

"Take This Job and Shove It," by Johnny Paycheck, is listed by Billboard magazine as the most popular song in the U.S. - 1978
(Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class is a remarkable account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s.)