Int?l Hod Carriers & Building Laborers? Union (today?s Laborers? Int?l Union) is founded, as 25 delegates from 23 Local Unions in 17 cities?representing 8,186 Laborers?meet in Washington, D.C. - 1903
A group of "puddlers"?craftsmen who manipulated pig iron to create steel?met in a Pittsburgh bar and formed The Iron City Forge of the Sons of Vulcan. It was the strongest union in the U.S. in the 1870s, later merging with two other unions to form what was to be the forerunner of the United Steel Workers - 1858
Birth date of Frances Perkins, named secretary of labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet-level office - 1880