On this day, 11 June 2016 a three-week strike by miners at Tasiast in Mauritania ended after the Kinross Gold Corporation agreed to restart negotiations on a new labour agreement within 10 days. The Canadian-owned company was attempting to reduce its production costs.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7731/tasiast-miners-strike-ends

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On this day, 10 June 1973, a strike of gravediggers at three cemeteries in the New York metropolitan area was expanded to include 44 others. On June 21, the courts ordered strikers to return to work, which they ignored. The president of the striking Local 365 of the Cemetery Workers and Greens Attendants union was subsequently found guilty of contempt of court, jailed and fined. Eventually, after 27 days of strike action, the employers from Jewish, Roman Catholic and nonsectarian cemeteries, collectively agreed most of the workers' demands, including annual wage increases of $12 per week for the next three years, and an employer-funded pension scheme. During the dispute some bodies were buried by relatives and friends of the deceased, but a backlog of at least 1,400 unburied bodies remained.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8213/NY-gravediggers-strike-grows

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On this day, 9 June 1963, Black civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested on trumped up charges and brutally beaten in jail. 
Hamer had become a voting rights activist, and was on her way home to Mississippi from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina when she was arrested with other activists. 
In detention, a Mississippi police officer ordered two other prisoners to beat Hamer with a blackjack. Hamer and her activist friends were beaten brutally, and although charges were dropped and she was released three days later it took her over a month to recover and she was left blind in one eye and with kidney damage which contributed to her premature death at the age of 59. 
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sued the local police department for the attack, but the perpetrators were acquitted by an all-white jury.
Previously in 1961, Hamer had been sterilised without her consent or knowledge by a white doctor, who was acting according to Mississippi authorities' plan to reduce the poor Black population of the state.
Despite the violence she was subjected to, Hamer continued her civil rights activism until her death.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10916/fannie-lou-hamer-arrested

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On this day, 8 June 1861, eight coalminers working in the Redbank mine in Queensland, Australia, went on strike demanding an extra shilling per ton in pay. The strikers' names were Thomas Jones, George Smith, Edward Davis, Hugh Carter, John Coleman, William Griffith, Abel Alford, and Thomas Stafford. While the strike was an important event in Australian labour history, some sources erroneously describe it as the first strike in Queensland, whereas in fact numerous groups of Chinese shepherds had gone strike in Queensland beforehand.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10816/redbank-miners-strike

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On this day, 7 June 1948 Chinese indentured phosphate miners on Nauru protested when a ship came to take them back to China, but they demanded part of their pay.
The workers charged that Chinese interpreters who controlled the community funds would not pay out their share of contributions. Police attempted to arrest one Chinese worker, after which the other miners barricaded themselves into their settlement. The Pacific Islands Monthly journal claimed that the workers "built barricades, armed themselves with spears, clubs and axes, and showered stones upon officials who approached them."
The Administration, run by Australia on behalf of the United Nations, responded by declaring a state of emergency and bringing in riot police. Police attacked the settlement, killing two and injuring 16 Chinese miners. They also arrested 49 people, two of whom were bayoneted to death in custody.
The killer of the workers in custody was charged with unlawful killing but later acquitted. In contrast, the surviving 47 Chinese workers were convicted of offences including extortion and rioting, and deported.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7982/Nauru-Chinese-workers-protest

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On this day, 6 June 1988, a general strike was declared in South Africa by Black unions and anti-apartheid groups. Up to three million took part in the stoppage, in protest at the two-year-old state of emergency and further proposed restrictions on the right to strike. The strikers held out against police, who opened fire on crowds in townships, until 8 June.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10638/anti-apartheid-general-strike

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On this day, 5 June 2001, rioting broke out in the Harehills area of Leeds in response to a heavy-handed police search on an Asian man who had been wrongfully arrested over his car's 'suspicious' tax disc. Unrest broke out later that evening as a multiethnic crowd of around 200 Black, Asian and white people burning cars and attacking police, leaving two injured.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10542/harehills-riots

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On this day, 4 June 2003 after five weeks of strike action, workers in the Faroe Islands won a pay increase of 9% over the next two years, as well as other improvements.
Around 12,000 workers organised in the Færøernes Arbejderforeninger walked out on strike in May – almost a third of the entire working population. Most of the strikers were dockworkers or workers in the fish processing industry.
The refusal to unload ships caused supplies and fuel on the islands to run out, which forced the employers to concede to several demands, including a pay increase, an increase in piece rate payments to dockworkers, as well as new contractual arrangements forcing employers to purchase specialist equipment needed by workers for certain jobs. More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7956/faroe-islands-strike-wins

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On this day, 3 June 1977, police in India opened fire on a workers' demonstration, killing 12. Thousands of workers from the Bhilai Steel plant and mines had been demonstrating at the police station where strike leader Shankar Guha Niyogi was being held following his arrest the previous day. As the steel plant was a joint Soviet-Indian project, the Communist Party denounced Niyogi as a CIA agent. He was assassinated in 1991 by employers' hired guns. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10200/bhilai-steel-workers-massacre

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On this day, 2 June 1975, 100 sex workers occupied the church of Saint Nizier, Lyon, refusing to leave unless their convictions for soliciting were rescinded. They were evicted after a week, but a precedent-setting legal judgement cancelled the workers’ imminent prison sentences shortly thereafter. 
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