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PODCAST

Labor History in 2:00

The Rick Smith Show

A daily, pocket-sized history of America"s working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.

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All Episodes

01:59

December 11 - Transit Workers Railroaded

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/11

On this day in labor history, the year was 1918.That was the day streetcar workers in Kansas City walked off the job. It was the third strike since August 1917. Workers had previously struck for union recognition and joined the city general strike that Spring. By summer, the city was so desperate for wartime labor, the transit company began hiring women. Though women faced initial opposition, by fall, the union demanded they receive equal pay for equal work. The company had been paying them $15

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01:59

December 10 - The Real Henry Ford Story

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/10

On this day in labor history, the year was 1915. That was the day the one millionth Model T rolled off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, near Detroit. Henry Ford started Model T production seven years earlier. For nearly 20 years, the Tin Lizzie served as the first affordable vehicle, opening up travel and leisure to a new middle class. Ford refashioned the packing house conveyor to develop the assembly line. Before production moved to the sprawling modern River Rouge complex, the Highland

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01:59

December 9 - Billionaire-Backed Attack Group Founded

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/09

On this day in labor history, the year was 1958. That was the day twelve ultra-conservatives, including industrialists Robert Welch, Fred Koch and Harry Lynde Bradley gathered in Indianapolis to found the John Birch Society. These men saw secret cabals and communist conspiracy everywhere. They mobilized their vast financial resources to fuel Cold War paranoia. They opposed New Deal policies, the Civil Rights Movement, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and the Equal Rights Amendment

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01:59

December 8 - Labor Activists Targeted

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/08

On this day in labor history, the year was 1941. That was the day eighteen supporters of the Socialist Workers Party were sentenced in the first Smith Act trial. Earlier that summer, twenty-nine militants had been targeted and arrested for their leadership of events in Minneapolis during the 30s. They had led the 1934 Teamsters strikes that made Minneapolis a union town, successfully confronted the fascist Silver Shirts in 1938 and led a WPA strike the following year. By 1941, federal agents were

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01:59

December 7 - National Union of Steam Engineers is...

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/07

On this day in labor history, the year was 1896.That was the day eleven steam engineers met in Chicago to found the National Union of Steam Engineers, the forerunner of the International Union of Operating Engineers. Ten of the eleven came from the stationary field. They often worked 60-90 hours a week in dangerous working conditions. Constructing and operating steam boilers was highly skilled, labor-intensive and potentially deadly work. At the time, steam powered railroad and construction

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01:59

December 6 - Deadliest Day in Mining History

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/06

On this day in labor history, the year was 1907. That was the day an explosion rocked Fairmont Coal Company’s number 6 and number 8 coal mines in Monongah, West Virginia, killing 367 miners. Newspaper reports estimated the number of dead to be as high as 500. It is considered the worst mine disaster in the history of the United States. Most miners were killed instantly as the explosion destroyed the mine entrance and its ventilation system. Those not killed instantly suffocated from poisonous

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01:59

December 5 - Reviving the Sit-Down Strike

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/05

On this day in labor history, the year was 2008.That was the day UE local 1110 members at Republic Windows in Chicago began a five–day occupation to protest the imminent closure of their plant. A month earlier, Republic workers witnessed management moving machinery out of the factory. They began monitoring where the machinery was going and soon learned it was headed for a new, non-union plant in Iowa. They planned a possible plant occupation. By December 2, management announced the plant was

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01:59

December 4 - Contempt of Court

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/04

On this day in labor history, the year was 1946.That was the day Federal Judge T. Alan Goldsborough fined John L. Lewis $10,000 and the United Mine Workers $3.5 million. In what was characterized as “a roaring courtroom scene,” Lewis rose to challenge the judge to fine him whatever he wanted. The judge had just found Lewis and the UMW in contempt of court for ignoring his November 18 order to head off a soft-coal strike, then in its fourteenth day. Judge Goldsborough had replaced his order with a

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01:59

December 3 - The 1946 Oakland General Strike

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/03

On this day in labor history, the year was 1946. That was the day a general strike erupted in Oakland, California.Workers, mostly women, had been on strike for a month at two downtown department stores. Teamsters honored their picket lines and refused to make deliveries. Infuriated owners of Hastings and Kahn’s demanded their merchandise and turned to the city for help. On this day, police assembled early in the morning to clear the streets of picketers. They attacked strikers, forced them off the

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01:59

December 2 - John Brown Hanged

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/02

On this day in labor history, the year was 1859. That was the day John Brown was hanged in Charles Town, Virginia in what is now West Virginia. He had been sentenced to death on charges of treason, murder and insurrection for his role in the raid on the United States Federal Armory at Harper’s Ferry. Brown and twenty-one abolitionists intended to seize the arsenal there, then build a free settlement in the Appalachian Mountains. From there, abolitionists and free people of color would wage a

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01:59

December 1 - Exploitation in the Mines

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/12/01

On this day in labor history, the year was 1912. That was the day the Anaconda Copper Company instituted its rustling card system at its copper mines in Butte, Montana. The company used the rustling card in two ways: as a work permit and as way to keep track of miners. A miner looking for work would first have to apply for a card. Miners had to present information about citizenship status, English literacy skills, work history and two years of employer references. Once the card was approved, the

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01:59

November 30 - The World Loses the Miners’ Angel

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/30

On this day in labor history, the year was 1930. That was the day the world lost the miners’ angel, Mother Jones. She had crossed the country many times over, been involved in practically every strike that built the labor movement; stood with miners and steel workers and mill children everywhere. Mother Jones had asked to be buried with the Virden Martyrs, killed in the Massacre of 1898, at Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, Illinois. Dozens of labor leaders including AFL president William Green,

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01:59

November 29 - A Deadly Dust in the Air

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/29

On this day in labor history, the year was 1937. That was the day the National Labor Relations Board began hearings on an unfair labor practice brought by the International Union Mine, Mill and Smelters. Mine, Mill had been fighting the union busting tactics at Eagle-Picher Lead Company. The union had been organizing lead and zinc miners in the Tri-State area of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. During the Great Depression, they built the union by emphasizing safer working conditions, stressing the

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01:59

November 28 - Stop the Presses! Workers Demand a...

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/28

On this day in labor history, the year was 1953. That was the day 400 photo-engravers at six New York City newspapers walked off the job. Members of the AFL’s International Photo-Engravers Union had just voted down arbitration. All but one local newspaper, The New York Herald Tribune were idled as 20,000 newspaper workers refused to cross the engravers picket lines. Six days into the strike, that newspaper suspended operations as well. Writers at The New Yorker magazine remarked they were “curled up

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01:59

November 27 - Sitting Down at Midland Steel

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/27

On this day in labor history, the year was 1936. That was the day 1200 production workers at Detroit’s Midland Steel sat-down for higher wages, an end to piecework and union recognition.The strike was called just before noon. When 800 on the second shift arrived for work, they readily handed their lunches, cigarettes and newspapers through the windows to the sit-downers. The UAW had embarked on a massive organizing drive throughout the country. Days earlier, the GM sit-down strike had begun in

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01:59

November 26 - Revolutionizing the Rails

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/26

On this day in Labor History the year was 1867. That was the day that J.B. Sutherland of Detroit patented the first specialized refrigerated railroad car. Southerland’s design included ice tanks at both ends of the car and ventilation flaps on the floor, which used gravity to send a draft of cold air flowing throughout the car.

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01:59

November 25 - Strike for Better Schools

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/25

On this day in Labor History the year was 1946. That was the day that teachers in St. Paul, Minnesota went on strike. It was the first ever organized walkout of teachers in the United States. The strike was organized by the St. Paul Federation of Teachers Local 28.

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01:59

November 24 - Cigar Makers Organize

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/24

On this day in Labor History the year was 1875. That was the day that Samuel Gompers founded the Cigar Makers’ International Union Local 144 in New York City. The very first Cigar Marker’s Union local had been established in Baltimore in 1851 by craftsmen who opposed importation of lower-paid laborers from Germany.

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01:59

November 23 - Strike Like an Egyptian

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/23

On this day in labor history, we are going way, way, way back. The year was 1170 B.C. So the exact date is a bit of an estimate. Egyptian workers initiated what just might be the first recorded strike in world history. The workers were toiling on public works projects, including building tombs of the pharaohs, in the Valley of the Kings.

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01:59

November 22 - Massacre at Bogalusa

Labor History in 2:00 ·

2024/11/22

On this day in labor history, the year was 1919. That was the day four leaders of the Carpenters union were shot dead in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and the International Union of Timber Workers had embarked on an organizing drive of white and black workers at Great Southern Lumber Company. Bogalusa functioned as a company town. Lumber bosses controlled company housing, local politicians and ruled the town with an iron fist. By 1919, the two unions began organizing

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