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declaration of Independence
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Atlanta's Washerwomen Strike
women that would wash laundry wanted more money and they went around to all the laundry ladies telling them to join their strike. the higher-ups wanted to give them only a $25 flat rate and they said no. they continued to not wash people's clothes until they got what they wanted. -
The Battle of Cripple Creek
Miners went on strike, set up roving picket lines and closed most of the mines. They showed what solidarity is all about. The miners who were still going down in the working mines assessed themselves 10% of their wages to support the strikers, and the union set up soup kitchens. -
mother Jones
she got coal workers to band together and sign up for a union. She was banished from more towns and was held incommunicado in more jails in more states than any other union leader of the time. Mother Jones also was very concerned about child workers. During a silk strike in Philadelphia, 100,000 workers—including 16,000 children—left their jobs over a demand that their workweek be cut from 60 to 55 hours. -
Eugene Victor Debs
leader of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (BLF) in his youth. Later he helped found the American Railway Union (1894), the Socialist Party of America (1901) and the Industrial Workers of the World (1905).
preach the virtues of industrial cooperation and to discourage confrontations with either employers or the government -
McKees Rock Strike
he told the people what was happening in the mills. all the bad treatment and bad pay they were experiencing. When they returned to work three days later, they were fired. That was the breaking point. Within 48 hours, 5,000 workers went on strike. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
there was a place where they made clothes. there was a fire but the owners blocked all the exits so that the workers couldn't take breaks. these people were mostly immigrants -
Joe Hill
Hill became more famous in death than he had been in life. To Bill Haywood, the former president of the Western Federation of Miners and the best-known leader of the IWW, Hill wrote: "Goodbye Bill: I die like a true rebel. Don't waste any time mourning, organize! It is a hundred miles from here to Wyoming. Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah." Apparently he did die like a rebel. -
Frances Perkins
after witnessing the sweat house fire she decided to get involved in some unions. She consistently supported the rights of workers to organize unions of their own choosing and to pressure employers through economic action. In one famous incident captured in a widely circulated newspaper photo, an indomitable Perkins strides toward the U.S. post office in Homestead with thousands of steelworkers training behind her -
Walter Reuther
Walter Reuther was president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from 1946 until his death in 1970. Under his leadership, the UAW grew to more than 1.5 million members, becoming one of the largest unions in the United States. Reuther was widely admired as the model of a reform-minded, liberal, responsible trade unionist—the leading labor intellectual of his age, a champion of industrial democracy and civil rights who used the collective bargaining process -
The Great Postal Strike of 1970
the postal people were very poor and were barely surviving off their pay, the government had given themselves a big bonus even thought the postal people were struggling. the postal people were mad but they couldn't go on strike -
He Showed Us the Way
Cezar Chavez -
Address to the California, commonwealth club
Cezar Chavez