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Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

3 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 3, 1931. Farmers converged on England, Arkansas to demand poverty relief. This led to Will Rogers’ poverty tour and a greater national conversation about conditions in rural America in the early years of the Great Depression!!

In 1930, Arkansas suffered a severe drought, the worst in the state’s history to that time. The state was devastated.

People didn’t grow enough food there anyway, being part of the cotton culture that dominated the region and it was clear by the end of the year that it would not be able to feed itself. Arkansas’ senators went to Herbert Hoover and asked for drought relief.

Read 25 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

2 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 2, 2006. A coal mine near Sago, West Virginia exploded. Thirteen miners were trapped inside and only one of those survived the two days it took to get the miners out. Let's discuss another murder of coal miners by indifferent capitalists!

By the early 2000s, the coal industry was very different from its heyday. There were far fewer mines and far fewer miners. Mountaintop removal had replaced earlier forms of strip mining which had itself largely replaced underground mining.

Instead of the small operators of the past, increasingly fewer conglomerates controlled the nation’s coal mines.

Read 35 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

1 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 1, 1867. Landowner Isham Bailey signed a one-year sharecropping deal with freedmen Cooper Hughs and Charles Roberts. Let's talk about sharecropping, how it was a post-Civil War compromise labor system, and its terrible exploitation!

The point of slavery was to control a labor force. And while we talk about racist violence during and after slavery, the purpose behind that racist violence was to control workers. When the Civil War ended and emancipation came, that did not change.

Too often when we discuss slavery, we beat around the bush as to the real reason it existed--whites expected people of color to labor for them. It was part and parcel of the colonial experiment.

Read 35 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

28 Dec 21

This Day in Labor History: December 28, 1869. The Knights of Labor were founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The organization grew slowly, but by the late 1870s, the Knights had become the nation’s largest labor union, remaining so until 1886. Let's talk about the Knights!

Labor was at a crossroads in post-Civil War America. The Civil War helped spur the growth of large factories and capitalists like John D. Rockefeller began expanding their economic reach into what became the monopoly capitalism of the Gilded Age.

Workers found the ground caving under their feet. Working-class people began criticizing the new economic system, but it took several decades for modern radicalism to become a common response for the working classes.

Read 35 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

27 Dec 21

This Day in Labor History: December 23, 1831. The Baptist Rebellion began in Jamaica. This slave rebellion of up to 60,000 people, put down over the next couple of weeks, also was the final straw that moved the United Kingdom toward outlawing slavery in its colonies!!!

By the early 1830s, the slave system in the British colonies was under attack from a number of fronts. First, there was a large abolitionist movement in Britain, led by William Wilberforce. This was known to slaves in the Caribbean.

Second, the British religious denominations had engaged in large-scale missions among the slaves in the previous decades.

Read 28 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

12 Dec 21

This Day in Labor History: December 12, 1957. The AFL-CIO evicted four unions from the federation for corruption, most notably the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Let's talk about corruption in mid-century unions.

This moment to fight the corruption that gave organized labor a bad name was indicative of the frequent problem of power leading to corruption, even in organizations designed to empower workers.

The reality is that corruption has always been a part of some labor unions, just like any powerful institutions with access to money can have corruption.

Read 31 tweets

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