February 1

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

Some 25,000 Paterson, N.J., silk workers strike for 8-hour work day and improved working conditions.  Eighteen hundred were arrested over the course of the six-month walkout, led by the Wobblies.  They returned to work on their employers’ terms - 1913
(Strike!: Read about the Paterson silk workers and other strikes in this book which tells you something your school history books almost certainly did not: how working Americans for the past 125 years have used the strike again and again to win a degree of justice and fair play.)

The federal minimum wage increases to $1.60 per hour - 1968

Int’l Brotherhood of Firemen & Oilers merge with Service Employees Int’l Union - 1995

More info & ammo for unionists is available
online from Union Communication Services.

http://www.unionist.com/