Today in labor history, May 30, 1937: In what would become known as the Memorial Day Massacre, police open fire on striking steelworkers, their families, and supporters who were marching to the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago to set up a picket line. The police killed ten people and pursued those fleeing the attack, wounding many more; no one was ever prosecuted.
“Joe William Trotter Jr.’s African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry is more than a topical collection of essays by a pioneering scholar summarizing the history and historiography of Black coal miners. At a time when race, class, labor, and structural violence are coming back into sharp thematic focus due to the disproportionate effects of a major global pandemic on many communities of color, Trotter’s work is also a prescient—and deeply personal—exploration of the formation and growth of Black working-class communities, institutions, social and cultural networks, and political movements for reform and liberatory change over time.”
Pages for Picket Lines: A Labor History Reading List
By James Tracy
Since 2013, the labor movement has been coming off the ropes and landing punches. The Economic Policy Institute reported that over 900,000 workers participated in strikes or work stoppages from 2018-2019. The upsurge of the past seven years have included workers at microbreweries, telecommunications firms, big-box stores, schools, and fast food restaurants. Labor’s story is one of the most inspiring, terrifying and dynamic histories to be told. The ways that we understand the history of working-class resistance ultimately shapes what we think of as possible today.
The foundation of Labor History was built by groundbreaking historians grappling ways to tell a history from below. The upsurge of worker rebellions has been accompanied by an upsurge of powerful books! City Lights asked me to put together a reading list that shows the dynamic books out there, a starting point to come to terms with this history.
Fantastic read challenging the notion that labor’s decline was due to lack of organizing in the 1970s. Written by a labor organizer turned academic, and notable for its attention to gender and race.
Kelley, possibly the finest historian in the game today, will make you forget everything you think you know about sharecroppers, the Great Depression, Black organizing, and communists!
Possibly one of the most important recent labor anthologies. By updating Social Reproduction Theory, invisible labor is made visible therefore opening up new possibilities for change.
Everyone contemplating what a “Green New Deal” might look like should read Ortiz’s treatment of the Forgotten Workers of America to build a real deal that leaves no worker behind.
This book could alternatively be called “A People’s History of California,” made all the more relevant today as the Golden State becomes the 5th largest economy in the world.
Please check them out here, as I said before, all of the proceeds from these prints will go to the IWW (or another organization, if something like a strike starts up, I will make a news post if that happens)
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) has mediators working throughout the United States. A number of states have their own mediation agencies that provide mediation within that state. For years, these state mediation agencies and FMCS have worked cooperatively as members of the Association of Labor Mediation Agencies (ALMA). ALMA holds annual conferences that provide opportunities for agencies and their mediators for training, sharing information, and ensuring cooperation among agencies.
At the 1963 annual ALMA conference, an agreement was reached to develop a code of conduct for mediators. William Simkin, the newly appointed Director of FMCS, was a driving force behind this imitative.
At the September 1964 annual conference, the liaison committee’s draft code was presented, discussed, and adopted. The code was put into immediate effect with this title: “Code of Professional Conduct for Labor Mediators.”
The Code described these five mediator responsibilities:
Responsibility of the Mediator Toward the Mediation Process.
Responsibility of the Mediator to the Parties.
Responsibility of the Mediator Toward Other Mediators.
Responsibility of the Mediator Toward Their Agency and other Professions.
Responsibility of the Mediator Toward the Public.
This post was submitted by Jerome T. Barrett. Dr. Barrett donated his collection pertaining to his career as a labor mediator, commissioner, and director of the Office of Technical Services of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS).
