Introduction
- In trade unions, workers campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and fair treatment from their employers, and through the implementation of labour laws, from their governments. They do this through collective bargaining, sectoral bargaining, and when needed, strike action. In some countries, co-determination gives representatives of workers seats on the board of directors of their employers.
- Political parties representing the interests of workers campaign for labour rights, social security and the welfare state. They are usually called a labour party (in English-speaking countries), a social democratic party (in Germanic and Slavic countries), a socialist party (in Romance countries), or sometimes a workers' party.
- Though historically less prominent, the cooperative movement campaigns to replace capitalist ownership of the economy with worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and other types of cooperative ownership. This is related to the concept of economic democracy.
The labour movement developed as a response to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at about the same time as socialism. The early goals of the movement were the right to unionise, the right to vote, democracy and the 40-hour week. As these were achieved in many of the advanced economies of western Europe and north America in the early decades of the 20th century, the labour movement expanded to issues of welfare and social insurance, wealth distribution and income distribution, public services like health care and education, social housing and common ownership. (Full article...)
Selected article
The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a new law shortening the workweek for women, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers and involving nearly every mill in Lawrence. On January 1, 1912, the Massachusetts government enforced a law that cut mill workers' hours in a single work week from 56 hours, to 54 hours. Ten days later, they found out that pay had been reduced along with the cut in hours.
The strike united workers from more than 51 different nationalities. A large portion of the striking workers, including many of the leaders of the strike, were Italian immigrants. Carried on throughout a brutally cold winter, the strike lasted more than two months, from January to March, defying the assumptions of conservative trade unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that immigrant, largely female and ethnically divided workers could not be organized. In late January, when a striker, Anna LoPizzo, was killed by police during a protest, IWW organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were framed and arrested on charges of being accessories to the murder. IWW leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came to Lawrence to run the strike. Together they masterminded its signature move, sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont. The move drew widespread sympathy, especially after police stopped a further exodus, leading to violence at the Lawrence train station. Congressional hearings followed, resulting in exposure of shocking conditions in the Lawrence mills and calls for investigation of the "wool trust." Mill owners soon decided to settle the strike, giving workers in Lawrence and throughout New England raises of up to 20 percent. Within a year, however, the IWW had largely collapsed in Lawrence.
The Lawrence strike is often referred to as the "Bread and Roses" strike. It has also been called the "strike for three loaves". The phrase "bread and roses" actually preceded the strike, appearing in a poem by James Oppenheim published in The American Magazine in December 1911. A 1915 labor anthology, The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest by Upton Sinclair, attributed the phrase to the Lawrence strike, and the association stuck. A popular rallying cry from the poem was interwoven with the memory of the strike: "Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!" (Full article...)
October in Labor History
Significant dates in labour history.
- October 01 - The McNamara Brothers bombed the Los Angeles Times in 1910; Israel Kugler died
- October 02 - Peter J. Brennan died
- October 03 - J. H. Thomas was born; Clarence Gillis was born
- October 05 - The Hollywood Black Friday riot occurred during a set decorators' strike in 1945; the Winter of Discontent began in the United Kingdom in 1978; Tony Mazzocchi died
- October 06 - American Dream, a film about the 1985-86 strike at Hormel, debuted; the British Seafarers' Union was founded; the South African Democratic Teachers Union was founded
- October 07 - Joe Hill was born; the Structural Building Trades Alliance was formed; Joseph Labadie died
- October 08 - James Kirby died; Lee Batchelor died
- October 09 - The Taft–Hartley Act was invoked for the first time in U.S. history during the Steel strike of 1959; John McBride died; James J. Reynolds died
- October 10 - A series of general strikes began in 1995 in France
- October 11 - Joe Morris died; Joseph Lanza died
- October 12 - The German Confederation of Trade Unions was founded in Munich in 1949; the general strike began in the Nigerian Oil Crisis in 2004; Edward Grayndler was born
- October 13 - Sandra Feldman was born
- October 14 - Matthew Guinan was born; NASCAR union leader Curtis Turner died; Marcus Thrane was born
- October 15 - The International Seamen's Union was chartered by the AFL as the Seafarers International Union; the Confédération Française de l'Encadrement - Confédération Générale des Cadres was founded
- October 16 - I. C. Frimu was born
- October 17 - Giovanni Gronchi died
- October 18 - Pablo Iglesias was born
- October 19 - William Coaker was born; Bill Morris was born
- October 20 - George Becker was born; William Hutcheson died; Eugene V. Debs died; Weldon Mathis died
- October 21 - Gary Chaison is born
- October 22 - The Confederation of Turkish Real Trade Unions was founded; Jean-Pierre Timbaud died
- October 23 - The Coal strike of 1902 ended in the U.S.; James Petrillo died; Robert Courtleigh was born; Arthur Creech Jones died
- October 25 - John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL–CIO; Catherine J. Bell was born; John F. Henning was born
- October 27 - Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil
- October 28 - The Supreme Court of Canada issued a ruling in Newfoundland (Treasury Board) v. N.A.P.E.; Charlie Gordon was born
- October 29 - The International Labour Organization met for the first time; the Brotherhood of Marine Engineers merged with the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association in 1957; Kevin Barron was born; James Orange was born
- October 31 - 1923 Victorian police strike began in Australia; Maine AFL–CIO was founded; William O'Brien died; Mikhail Tomsky was born; Antonio Davis was born; Cecil Roberts was born
More Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that after being arrested for organizing a general strike in 1920, S. Girinis was sent to the Soviet Union following a Soviet-Lithuanian exchange of political prisoners?
- ... that up to 129,000 Canadian federal workers went on strike?
- ... that John Sterling, Anthony Harrison and Chuck Compton were all signed by the Green Bay Packers as replacement players because of a players' strike during the 1987 NFL season?
- ... that Russian pianist Pavel Kushnir died on a hunger strike after his arrest for anti-war videos posted on a YouTube channel with five subscribers?
- ... that labor lawyer Dick Moss argued the 1975 case which resulted in the establishment of free agency in Major League Baseball?
- ... that Jennifer Bates led thousands of Amazon warehouse workers to petition a vote for a union in Bessemer, Alabama?
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Selected Quote
The miners are out of work... Their problem is much more than a mining problem—it concerns the standards of living not only for themselves but in other parts of the world."
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— Eleanor Roosevelt. |
Did you know
- ...that David Brody is credited with co-founding the field of "new labor history"?
- ...that the U.S. Supreme Court held in Moyer v. Peabody (1909) that the U.S. government may imprison citizens without probable cause during an insurrection so long as it acts in good faith?
- ...that noted labor historian Selig Perlman is the uncle of author Judith Martin, better known as "Miss Manners"?
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