August 12

The national Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners is founded in Chicago in a gathering of 36 carpenters from 11 cities - 1881
 
Coal company guards kill 7, wound 40 striking miners who are trying to stop scabs, Virden, Ill. - 1898
 
With the news that their boss, Florenz Ziegfeld, was joining the Producing Managers’ Assn., the chorus girls in his Ziegfield Follies create their own union, the Chorus Equity Assn. They were helped by a big donation from superstar and former chorus girl Lillian Russell. In 1955 the union merged with the Actor’s Equity Assn - 1919
 
Teamsters official William Grami is kidnapped, bound and beaten near Sebastopol, Calif. He was leading a drive to organize apple plant workers in the area - 1955
 
The North American Free Trade Agreement -- NAFTA -- was concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, despite protests from labor, environmental and human rights groups. It went into effect in January, 1994 - 1992 (Although workers in the United States have long understood that NAFTA has been a disaster, with more than two million jobs leaving the country for lower-wage countries following the law’s passage, relatively few Americans know what a nightmare NAFTA has been for Mexican workers -- the people who, the agreement’s proponents argued, would be lifted from poverty and be turned into serious consumers of American goods. NAFTA From Below ( http://unionist.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=9cee310b2c78fa78985b76038&id=24e15dae5b&e=7eab64386f ) details the terrible impact NAFTA has had south of the border, in testimonies from scores of Mexicans, first-hand accounts of workers organizing for their rights, of farmers and indigenous peoples fighting to preserve their land, and of efforts north and south to build alternatives.)
 
What was to become a 232-day strike by major league baseball players over owners' demands for team salary caps began on this day; 938 games were cancelled - 1994

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