-
13TH AMENDMENT
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. -
1ST LABOR DAY
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. -
HAYMARKET RIOT
At Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, a bomb is thrown at a squad of policemen attempting to break up a labor rally. The police responded with wild gunfire, killing several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more.The demonstration, which drew some 1,500 Chicago workers, was organized by German-born labor radicals in protest of the killing of a striker by the Chicago police the day before. Midway into the rally, a force of nearly 200 policemen arrived to disperse the workers. -
HOMESTEAD STRIKE
The Homestead strike, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, pitted one of the most powerful new corporations, Carnegie Steel Company, against the nation’s strongest trade union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. An 1889 strike had won the steelworkers a favorable three-year contract; but by 1892, Carnegie was determined to break the union. His plant manager stepped up production demands, and when the union refused to accept the new conditions, he locked the workers out of the plant. -
SHIRTWAIST FACTORY FIRE
On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 145 workers. It is one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history–most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers. -
WAGNER ACT
Wagner Act, officially National Labor Relations Act (1935), single most-important piece of labour legislation enacted in the United States in the 20th century. Its main purpose was to establish the legal right of most workers (notably excepting agricultural and domestic workers) to organize or join labour unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. -
1930S MOTOR SIT DOWN STRIKE
December 30, 1936, Was one of the first sit-down strikes in the US, autoworkers occupy the General Motors Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Michigan. The autoworkers were striking to win recognition of the United Auto Workers as the only bargaining agent for GM’s workers &wanted to make the company stop sending work to non-union plants and establish a fair minimum wage scale, a grievance system and a set of procedures that would help protect assembly-line workers from injury.The strike lasted 44 days. -
FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938
he Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and youth employment standards affecting full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments. -
TAFT HARTLEY
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, sponsored by U.S. Senator Robert A. Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, was designed to amend much of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (the Wagner Act) and discontinued parts of the Federal Anti-Injunction Act of 1932. The Taft-Hartley Act was the first major revision to the Wagner Act, and after much resistance from labor leaders and a veto from President Harry S. Truman, was passed on June 23, 1947. -
STEEL STRIKE OF 1959
The steel strike started because of a simple request for higher wages due to steel companies recording higher profits. It then turned into the largest strike in U.S history with a total of 500,000 people. This happened on July 15, 1959 and shut down almost every steel mill in the country. In the end the steelworkers returned to work with a revised contract, increased wages, increased pensions, improved health benefits, and the end of McDonald's presidency.
