TODAY IN LABOR HISTORY! August 13 Striking miners at Tracy City, Tenn., capture their mines and free 300 state convict strikebreakers. The convicts had been leased to mineowners by officials in an effort to make prisons self-supporting and make a few bucks for the state. The practice started in 1866 and lasted for 30 years - 1892 Newspaper Guild members begin 3-month strike of Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, shutting the publication down in their successful fight for union recognition - 1936 Civil rights leader and union president A. Philip Randolph strongly protests the AFL-CIO Executive Councils failure to endorse the August 28 March on Washington - 1963 Five construction workers are killed, 16 injured when the uncompleted roof of the Rosemont (Ill.) Horizon arena collapses - 1979 (Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits follows the history of the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO from the emergence of building trades councils in the age of the skyscraper. It takes the reader through treacherous fights over jurisdiction as new building materials and methods of work evolved; and describes numerous Department campaigns to improve safety standards, work with contractors to promote unionized construction, and forge a sense of industrial unity among its fifteen (and at times nineteen) autonomous and highly diverse affiliates.)
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 05:00:20 +0000
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