Historical Archive
Historical Articles
Sara Nelson, the Labor Movement Leader We Needed Most
If the pandemic has clarified for many Americans whose labor is essential and whose is not, it has also revealed how little those in power value that work. Nelson is well aware that at the precise moment we need a vibrant, powerful labor movement; what we have is one...
Labor’s Untold Story: An Old Book Is Getting A New Look
For unions in America, a fundamental problem is apathy. Members do not want to get involved, and a component of this is that there is not a sense of what the union stands for and what being in a union means. It may not be a coincidence that the book is published by...
A Louisville union built its strength as blacks, whites took on International Harvester
They crop up right around now, along with the ads for mattress sales: the annual assessments of the state of the American labor movement. There will be a certain mournful sameness to these Labor Day reflections. While wages stagnate and inequality escalates, union...
The Saddest Union Story
The two main factions that built the UAW in the 1930s and ’40s—Reuther’s social democrats and their communist-dominated opposition—were both comprised of highly talented idealists who saw the union as a vehicle to build a more egalitarian America. They attracted like...
Review: Tell the Bosses We’re Coming
Let’s start with collective bargaining. In Richman’s telling, much of how we behave at the bargaining table today can be traced back to the Treaty of Detroit, the landmark 1950 contract between the Auto Workers (UAW) and the Big Three automakers. Five years earlier,...
In Detroit, a Hallowed Ground for Auto Workers Finally Gets Its Due
The Ford Hunger March — also known as the Ford Massacre — served as a turning point in the story of organized labor in Detroit and across the U.S. The incident helped catalyze the creation of the United Auto Workers. But it was scarcely memorialized locally. For...
Talking About Auto Work — Or Any Work Under Capitalism — Means Talking About Constant, Brutal Violence
Auto work is typically remembered as one of the best industrial jobs a worker could get in postwar America. Less remembered, however, is how absolutely brutal and violent life on the auto factory floor was — and still is. Read the article here.
The 1936 GM Sit-Down Strike Changed Labor History
To earn worker trust and the right to speak for them, the upstart union had to confront and defeat GM, the industrial colossus that controlled almost 45 percent of domestic auto sales and employed 240,000 workers in 69 plants. In 1936, GM’s net profits approached $284...
Historian Erik Loomis on Deindustrialization in the United States
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 19, 1977. The Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company shut down its operations, laying off approximately 4,100 workers....
Historian Erik Loomis on Allegheny Textile Strike of 1845
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis on Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 15, 1845. Women working in the Pittsburgh textile mills met in Market Square to discuss the necessity of...
Historian Erik Loomis on the Landrum-Griffin Act
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis on Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 14, 1959. President Eisenhower signed the Landrum-Griffin Act after actively lobbying for its passage. It...
Video: “Why Union Members Should Study Labor History”
On September 3, The Teamster Rebel co-hosted an online presentation by labor activist and historian Toni Gilpin. You can watch her presentation in the video below: https://youtu.be/pObqZbUOyg4
Historian Erik Loomis on the Watsonville Canning Strike of 1985
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis on Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 9, 1985. The Latina workforce in the large frozen food facilities in Watsonville, California walked out on...
Historian Erik Loomis on Striking Workers’ Victory at the Pressed Steel Car Company in 1919
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 8, 1919. Workers return to work after victory in the Pressed Steel Car Company strike at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania...
A Louisville union built its strength as blacks, whites took on International Harvester
“We’re not going to be second-class citizens in the South.” That’s what the 2,000 workers at the sprawling new International Harvester factory — which once stood where planes now take off from Standiford Field — declared in 1947. They objected to the lower pay scale...
Historian Erik Loomis on the Avondale Colliery Mine Disaster of 1869
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 6, 1869. The Avondale Colliery mine near Plymouth, Pennsylvania caught on fire, killing 110 workers. This disaster...
Anti-racist solidarity: Kenosha’s labor history
Since the near-lynching of Jacob Blake by police, the city of Kenosha, Wis., population 100,000, has become a focus of the Black Lives Matter upsurge. Up to that point, Kenosha was just a dot on the map to most people. However, the city’s United Auto Workers (UAW)...
Historian Erik Loomis on the Textile Strikes of 1934
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis on Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 5, 1934. The North Carolina governor calls out the National Guard to crush the textile strike. Let's talk about how...
Historian Erik Loomis on the Hamlet Fire and Unsafe Working Conditions in the US
Follow Erik Loomis on Twitter Read Erik Loomis on Lawyers, Guns, & Money Historian Erik Loomis on This Day in Labor History: September 3, 1991. A chicken factory in Hamlet, North Carolina caught on fire thanks to nonexistent safety procedures,...
Labor’s Untold Story
Just in time for Labor Day — UE is pleased to announce that Labor’s Untold Story, the adventure story of the battles, betrayals and victories of American working men and women, is now back in print (its 29th printing), and can be purchased from UE’s online store at...
Fight Back Shop Newsletter
Fighting Times Shop Newsletter Cartoons
Briggs Worker Shop Newsletter
“Running the Plant Backwards” in UAW Region 5
