IBEW LOCAL 363 - Frontier
Today's Labor History
August 13 Weekend
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WEEKEND LABOR HISTORY: Striking miners at Tracy City, Tenn., capture their mines and free 300 state convict strikebreakers. The convicts had been "leased" to mineowners by officials in an effort to make prisons self-supporting and make a few bucks for the state. The practice started in 1866 and lasted for 30 years (8/13/1892); Newspaper Guild members begin three-month strike of Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, shutting the publication down in their successful fight for union recognition (8/13/1936); Civil rights leader and union president A. Philip Randolph strongly protests the AFL-CIO Executive Council's failure to endorse the August 28 "March on Washington" (8/13/1963); President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act (r), providing, for the first time ever, guaranteed income for retirees and creating a system of unemployment benefits (8/14/1935); Members of the upstart Polish union Solidarity seize the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. Sixteen days later the government officially recognizes the union. Many consider the event the beginning of the end for the Iron Curtain (8/14/1980); Former AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland (l) dies at age 77 (8/14/1999); Populist social commentator Will Rogers killed in a plane crash, Point Barrow, Alaska. One of his many classic lines: "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts" (8/15/1935); President Richard M. Nixon announces a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents in an atempt to combat inflation (8/15/1971); Gerry Horgan, chief steward of CWA Local 1103 and NYNEX striker in Valhalla, NY, is struck on the picket line by a car driven by the daughter of a plant manager and dies the following day. What was to become a four-month strike over healthcare benefits was in its second week (8/15/1989)