This week on Labor History Today: Silk stockings were all the rage in the 1920s, but the workers who made them paid the price. When the H.C. Aberle Hosiery Company in Philadelphia imposed wage cuts and harsher working conditions in 1930, more than a thousand workers walked out, setting off one of the city's most dramatic labor struggles.

As tensions escalated between strikers, strikebreakers, police, and company management, 22-year-old Carl Mackley was killed in a confrontation that galvanized Philadelphia's labor movement. Tens of thousands attended his funeral, and his legacy lived on in the pioneering Carl Mackley Houses, a union-sponsored cooperative housing project built during the New Deal.

Labor Jawn’s Sam James and Gabe Christy trace the origins of the strike, the violence that engulfed Kensington, the fight for arbitration, and how one young worker's death became a lasting symbol of labor solidarity.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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This week on Labor History Today (originally broadcast 1/11/2026), Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of British Labor, 1780–1924. The book traces the rise of the world’s first modern labor movement through banners, boxes, coins, tools, and images created by working people during the Industrial Revolution and beyond—right up to the moment labor stood on the brink of political power in the 1920s.

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On this week’s Labor History Today (Originally released October 12, 2025): A visit to the Donora Smog Museum, where a six-day inversion in 1948 trapped toxic fumes over a Pennsylvania mill town and changed how the U.S. thinks about work, health, and accountability.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Labor History Today visits Old Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, widely considered the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.

In this excerpt from The Manufacturing Report, host Scott Paul tours the historic mill with National Park Service Ranger Allison Horrocks. Together they explore how Samuel Slater brought Britain's closely guarded textile technology to the United States, the role of Moses Brown and early investors, the rise of the Rhode Island mill system, and the transformation of work from home-based production to factory labor.

The conversation also examines the human costs of industrialization, including child labor, the commodification of workers, the emergence of wage labor, and the first worker resistance to the factory system.

Plus: Labor History in Two remembers the 1929 Gastonia textile strike and the struggle of Southern textile workers to organize.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

On Labor History Today: What happens if the labor laws that have governed workplace organizing since the 1930s simply disappear? Historian Leigh Campbell-Hale joins Labor Exchange host Robert Lindgren to discuss the 1927 Columbine Mine Strike, the stories labor history remembers—and forgets—and why those narratives matter for workers today.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

This week on Labor History Today: Hazel Dickens remembered. The Mine Wars Forum talks with Hazel’s nephew Buddy Dickens about the legendary labor singer’s deep roots in the West Virginia coalfields, her fierce commitment to miners and working people, and why her music still resonates today. From picket lines and black lung fights to the new Fly Away Home festival honoring her legacy, Buddy shares personal stories about one of labor’s most beloved voices.

Plus: Labor History in 2:00 on the 1946 coal strike and the first Chicago Teachers Union strike; new stories from the People’s 250 campaign about steelworkers, civil rights, and shop-floor struggles; and reflections on labor memory, justice, and organizing from Appalachia to Baltimore.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

On this week’s edition of Labor History Today: the People’s 250 campaign asks whose stories belong in America’s history, from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to today’s fights for worker dignity and democracy. Then historian Eric Bernardino joins America’s Work Force Radio to discuss the massive 1938 San Antonio pecan shellers strike led largely by Mexican women workers and fiery organizer Emma Tenayuca. Plus: the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum’s “Courage in the Hollers” labor history trail, Birmingham unionists who stopped a Klan church bombing, and this week’s Labor History in Two on the historic 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike.

Questions, comments, or suggestions? Contact us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation in partnership with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

On Labor History Today: What do Chicago’s three Haymarket monuments reveal about labor history, public memory, and who gets to shape the story of the past? Labor historian Peter Cole explains. Plus: Australia’s early fight for the eight-hour day, and Labor History in 2:00 on the 1934 West Coast Maritime Strike.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

On this week’s Labor History Today: a powerful look at past and present struggles for worker rights and justice. We revisit the Haymarket Affair and the origins of May Day, then hear from historian Marla Ramírez on the forced “banishment” of Mexican American families in the early 20th century—and how those policies echo in today’s debates over deportation and mixed-status families. Plus, a tribute to Pete Seeger and the music that helped sustain generations of labor and social movements.

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

On this week’s Labor History Today: Can resistance to Trumpism help rebuild worker power?

Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike!, joins labor historian Joe McCartin and organizer Stephen Lerner to discuss their argument that bold, disruptive action—from strikes to economic pressure campaigns—can revive the labor movement, drawing on both history and on-the-ground organizing to map a way forward.

We also visit Tacoma, Washington, where Sarah Gray takes us to the gravesite of “Solidarity Forever” author Ralph Chaplin—showing how labor history lives on in local traditions.

And in Labor History in 2, Rick Smith marks the 1999 West Coast port shutdown, when dockworkers struck in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal—demonstrating the power of international labor solidarity.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.