This Week in Labor History - October 18

The "Shoemakers of Boston"—the first labor organization in what would later become the United States—was authorized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony - 1648
 
New York City agrees to pay women school teachers a rate equal to that of men - 1911
 
IWW Colorado Mine strike; first time all coal fields are out - 1927
 
Some 58,000 Chrysler Corp. workers strike for wage increases - 1939
 
The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) was formed as a self-governing union, an outgrowth of the CIO's Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee. UPWA merged with the Meatcutters union in 1968, which merged with the Retail Clerks in 1979 to form the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) - 1943
 
GM agrees to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - 1983
(Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality: Many blue-collar arenas remain contested terrain for females. Women still struggle to get training, to get jobs, and to secure a harassment-free workplace. Despite the efforts of the pioneering generation, females still enter these jobs one by one and two by two and only against great odds do they remain there. These oral histories explore the achievements of the women who made history simply by going to work every day.)