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This Week in Labor History - November 8

November 08
20,000 workers, Black and White, stage general strike in New Orleans, demanding union recognition and hour and wage gains - 1892

President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces plans for the Civil Works Administration to create four million additional jobs for the Depression-era unemployed. The workers ultimately laid 12 million feet of sewer pipe and built or made substantial improvements to 255,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, 3,700 playgrounds, and nearly 1,000 airports (not to mention 250,000 outhouses still badly needed in rural America) - 1933

This Week in Labor History - November 8

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This Week in Labor History - November 7

Some 1,300 building trades workers in eastern Massachusetts participated in a general strike on all military work in the area to protest the use of open-shop (a worksite in which union membership is not required as a condition of employment) builders. The strike held on for a week in the face of threats from the U.S. War Department - 1917
(In this expanded edition of Strike! you can read about labor-management conflicts that have occurred over the past 140 years. Here you’ll learn much about workers’ struggle to win a degree of justice, from the workers’ point of view. Brecher also examines the ever-shifting roles and configurations of unions, from the Knights of Labor of the 1800s to the AFL-CIO of the 1990s.)
 

This Week in Labor History - November 7

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This Week in Labor History - November 6

French transport worker and socialist Eugene Pottier dies in Paris at age 71. In 1871 he authored “L’Internationale,” the anthem to international labor solidarity, the first verse of which begins: "Stand up, damned of the Earth; Stand up, prisoners of starvation" - 1887

A coal mine explosion in Spangler, Pa., kills 79. The mine had been rated gaseous in 1918, but at the insistence of new operators it was rated as non-gaseous even though miners had been burned by gas on at least four occasions - 1922
 

This Week in Labor History - November 6

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This Week in Labor History - November 5

Eugene V. Debs, labor leader, socialist, three-time candidate for president and first president of the American Railway Union, born - 1855
 
Everett, Wash., massacre, at least seven Wobblies killed, 50 wounded and an indeterminate number missing - 1916
 
Some 12,000 television and movie writers begin what was to become a 3-month strike against producers over demands for an increase in pay for movies and television shows released on DVD and for a bigger share of the revenue from work delivered over the Internet - 2007

This Week in Labor History - November 5