June 30, 1928

Alabama outlaws the leasing of convicts to mine coal, a practice that had been in place since 1848. In 1898, 73 percent of the state’s total revenue came from this source. 25 percent of all African-American leased convicts died.

June 27, 1905

The Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the “Wobblies,” is founded at a 12-day convention in Chicago. The Wobbly motto: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

June 26, 1839

Emma Miller – seamstress, trade union organizer, suffragist, and founder of the Australian Labor Party – is born.  She was an advocate for equal pay and equal rights for women and a committed activist and organizer until her death in 1917.  The epitaph on her gravestone reads: “The world is my country; to do good is my religion.”

June 25, 1938

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) into law. The FLSA applied to industries whose combined employment represented only about one-fifth of the labor force. In these industries, it banned certain types of child labor, established a minimum wage, and set a maximum workweek at 44 hours.

June 24, 1880

Agnes Nestor is born. Nestor, who began working in a glove factory at age 14, helped to found the International Glove Workers Union and served in various leadership positions within the union from 1903-1948, including president. She helped organize unions in other industries, campaigned for women’s suffrage, a minimum wage, and maternity health legislation, and against child labor.

June 23, 1947

The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 – more commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act – becomes a federal law when Congress overrides President Harry Truman’s veto.  The law prohibited a variety of strikes, boycotts, and picketing; union shops were restricted and states were allowed to pass “right-to-work” laws that outlawed closed union shops. 

June 22, 1977

137 workers on strike at the Grunwick photo processing plant in Willesden, North West London, are supported by the first in a series of solidarity demonstrations and mass pickets attempting to prevent buses carrying scabs from entering the plant. The mainly female Asian workforce walked out in 1976 over wages and working conditions, were all fired, joined a union, and were on the picket line for two years.

June 21, 1877

Ten miners accused of being militant “Molly Maguires” are hanged in Pennsylvania. A private corporation initiated the investigation of the men through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested them, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. “The state provided only the courtroom & the gallows,” a judge said many years later.

June 18, 1935

Locked out dock workers and supporters march through Vancouver, British Columbia, toward Ballantyne Pier where scabs are unloading ships, and are met and attacked by police and Mounties.  The ensuing battle lasted for three hours, and resulted in numerous injuries and hospitalizations, including that of a fleeing striker who had been shot in the back of his legs.  

June 18, 1935

Locked out dock workers and supporters march through Vancouver, British Columbia, toward Ballantyne Pier where scabs are unloading ships, and are met and attacked by police and Mounties.  The ensuing battle lasted for three hours, and resulted in numerous injuries and hospitalizations, including that of a fleeing striker who had been shot in the back of his legs.