May 5

Nineteen machinists working for the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad gather in a locomotive pit to decide what to do about a wage cut. They vote to form a union, which later became the International Association of Machinists - 1888

Also on this date: National Typographical Union founded, Cincinnati, Ohio. On Chicago’s West Side, police attack Jewish workers as they try to march into the Loop to protest slum conditions. Some 14,000 building trades workers and laborers, demanding an eight-hour work day, gather at the Milwaukee Iron Co. rolling mill in Bay View, Wi. Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti arrested in Boston for murder and payroll robbery. Heavily armed deputies and other mineowner hirelings attack striking miners in Harlan County, KY. John J. Sweeney, SEIU president 1980 to 1995, then president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009, born. Lumber strike begins in Pacific Northwest, will involve 40,000 workers by the time victory is achieved after 13 weeks. The U.S. unemployment rate drops to a 30-year low of 3.9 percent

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