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Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

Oct 1, 2024

This Day in Labor History: October 1, 1910. Ironworkers union leaders blow up the Los Angeles Times building because publisher Harrison Gray Otis was so crazy anti-union. Unfortunately, the bomb went off early and killed 21 workers. Let's talk about this massive disaster!

In the early 20th century, Los Angeles was arguably America’s most conservative city. An hotbed of anti-union extremism, organized labor was almost entirely nonexistent. No one did more to push this policy than Harrison Gray Otis.

In 1896, Otis took over the city’s Merchants Association and turned it to an virulently anti-union organization. Using his powerful newspaper as a mouthpiece for antiunionism, Otis spent the next two decades as the nation’s most important anti-union advocate.

Read 38 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

Sep 17, 2024

This Day in Labor History: September 17, 2011. A group of activists started protesting in Zucotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Let's talk about Occupy Wall Street and its influence on the present!

Soon gaining the nation’s attention and spawning similar groups across the country, Occupy Wall Street became the first major grassroots protest against inequality in the New Gilded Age.

While it in itself did not lead to long-term victories, it spawned a new era in America’s fight for economic justice and began the careers of a new generation of activists that resonates throughout progressive and leftist movements today.

Read 57 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

Aug 9, 2024

This Day in Labor History: August 9, 1910. The first patent was issued for the electric washing machine. I am going to use this seemingly random event as a jumping off point to explore one of the most forgotten labor sectors in American history—unpaid domestic labor in the home!

Like many household technologies of the twentieth century, the washing machine created radical changes to housework, almost entirely done by women.

While Americans almost always embrace technological advances with the zeal of religious converts, in fact the larger effects of household technologies have been complex and not always great for the women engaged in domestic labor in the home.

Read 33 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

Jul 18, 2024

This Day in Labor History: July 18, 1899. New York newsboys went on strike over the big newspaper companies forcing them to pay for their unsold papers!! Let's talk about this iconic moment that made William Randolph Hearst look like the hypocrite he very much was!

The rise of the newspaper industry in the late 19th century is well known.

Newspaper moguls such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer took the old newspaper business, dominated by local concerns and appealing to relatively small and targeted audiences, and made it national.

Read 30 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

Jul 7, 2024

This Day in Labor History: July 7, 1903. Mary “Mother” Jones launched the Children’s Crusade in support of a Philadelphia textile strike and to raise awareness about the need to end child labor. They marched to Long Island, where Theodore Roosevelt refused to meet with them!

Child labor had been central to the American workforce since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, especially in the textile industry. While the technology of textiles had changed dramatically in the century after this, the basic labor strategy had not.

Employers sought the lowest paid labor and whenever they could, that included children. States such as Alabama repealed their child labor laws just to attract New England-based textile firms avoiding unions.

Read 32 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

May 26, 2024

This Day in Labor History: May 26, 1937. Henry Ford's thugs beat the living hell out of leading United Auto Workers organizers and officials, including Walter Reuther, as they attempted to enter the River Rouge factory. Let's talk about the Battle of the Overpass!

By May 1937, the United Auto Workers was an increasingly confident union. The creation of the CIO and the passage of the National Labor Relations Act had finally given industrial workers access to the unions they desperately craved.

Through the sit-down strikes of the previous winter, the UAW had won contracts with General Motors and Chrysler. That left Ford as the last of the Big Three to organize. The UAW set out that spring to finish the job.

Read 31 tweets

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