On This Day in Working Class History

On this day, 18 April 1945, workers in Turin, Italy, walked out on strike in protest at Nazi German occupation. Workers and resistance fighters distributed leaflets the previous night calling for a walkout. On the morning of April 18, factories, workshops, shops, markets, schools, transport and postal and telephone services were all shut down.
Some workers, like at Fiat Mirafiori, occupied their plants, while thousands of others took to the streets. A huge march went through Piazza Sabotino, headed by women carrying Italian flags and placards, calling on the fascists to surrender, and singing the "Red Flag".
One eyewitness, Giorgio Amendola, reported: "What impressed me was the confidence of the crowd, the firm and serene courage and an air of celebration and joy, everyone was happy and seemed to be saying: you see how strong we are. The fascists did not show up. In fact, the whole neighborhood was in our hands".
Just over a week later, on April 27, partisans entered the city and by the following day the last remaining fascist troops had fled.
Learn more about the Italian resistance in our podcast episodes 77-80: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e77-80-italian-resistance/

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On 17 April 2016 thousands of oil workers in Kuwait walked out on strike against government plans for privatisation of parts of the oil industry, and a new payroll system which, workers claimed, would reduce salaries. The strike slashed oil production in the country in half, from 3 million barrels per day down to just 1.5 million.
On April 20, workers eventually agreed to return to work "in respect for the emir and in loyalty to him", according to the Kuwait Oil Workers Union, while negotiations took place. The union claimed the strike had been "extremely successful", but it is unclear if they achieved any concessions.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7783/kuwait-oil-strike

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On this day, 16 April 1970, a white foreman at a Chrysler plant in Detroit threatened to murder a Black worker. 
When the worker complained Chrysler went to sack the worker claiming he had a knife. 
Around 1,000 workers, Black and white, walked out on strike in protest, shutting the plant for an entire weekend until management backed down and reinstated him. 
Learn more in our podcast episodes 61-62, about Black workers organising in Detroit at that time. Available wherever you get your podcasts, or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/28/e12-the-league-of-revolutionary-black-workers-in-detroit/
Pictured: Black workers protest in Detroit around this time

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On this day, 15 April 1916, the newspaper of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union announced the formation of its Domestic Workers Union in Denver, Colorado. 
Much of the history of the group was lost, but a fascinating letter by Jane Street, its secretary, was illegally seized by the Justice Department in 1917 and only discovered nearly 60 years later.
She was writing to another domestic worker organiser in Tulsa, Oklahoma in which she described how they organised and took action to improve pay and conditions:
"if you want to raise a job from $20 to $30. . . you can have a dozen girls answer an ad and demand $30—even if they do not want work at all. Or call up the woman and tell her you will accept the position at $20. Then she will not run her ad the next day. Don’t go. Call up the next day and ask for $25 and promise to go (and don’t go). On the third day she will say, 'Come on out and we will talk the matter over.' You can get not only the wages, but shortened hours and lightened labor as well."
More information in our podcast episode 16 about women in the early IWW: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/12/02/e16-women-in-the-early-iww/

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On this day, 14 April 1913, workers across Belgium went on strike, after the failure of Parliament to introduce universal male suffrage, the strike, in which 700,000 workers participated, were not only able to bring many national industries to standstill but also force Parliament to immediately reconvene.
Suffrage would be granted only after World War I, but the general strike of 1913 proved to be a significant victory for the socialist movement.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8018/belgian-general-strike

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On this day, 13 April 1890, Black dock worker and leading Industrial Workers of the World union activist, Ben Fletcher, was born in Philadelphia. Starting work on the docks in 1910, he joined the revolutionary IWW union three years later and became the lead organiser of its Local 8 on the Philadelphia docks. At a time when most unions were racially segregated, Fletcher helped build a powerful, multiracial workers' organisation which organised a strike in 1913 and won many improvements.
In 1918, after the entry of the US into World War I, Fletcher was arrested and charged with dozens of other IWW members for supposedly hampering the war effort. Despite there being no witnesses to testify against Fletcher, he and all the others were convicted. Fletcher was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, after which he quipped to fellow defendant Big Bill Haywood: "The Judge has been using very ungrammatical language." When Hayward asked him "How is that, Ben?" Fletcher replied: ‘His sentences are much too long.’” 
His sentence was commuted in 1922, and he immediately returned to Philadelphia to take part in a strike for a maximum 40 hour work week.
Learn more about his life and activism in episodes 73-74 of our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e73-ben-fletcher/
And you can find out even more in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/ben-fletcher-the-life-and-times-of-a-black-wobbly-peter-cole

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On this day, 12 April 1920, workers in Ireland launched a general strike in support of pro-independence prisoners who were on hunger strike in Mountjoy prison, Dublin. The postal service, public transport, shops, pubs and public toilets were all shut. After two days, the British government caved and released all the prisoners. More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8363/ireland-general-strike

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On this day, 11 April 1960, the body of a young activist, Kim Ju-yul, was found on the beach in Masan, South Korea. The young high school student had disappeared during a protest the previous month against electoral corruption under the US-backed Rhee dictatorship. Authorities declared that his autopsy showed he had died by drowning, but protesters forced their way into the hospital where his body was being held and discovered that Kim's skull had been split by a teargas grenade which had penetrated from his eyes to the back of his head. Anger at the murder exploded across the country the following week in what became known as the April revolution which overthrew the regime. 
Learn more about South Korean history at this time in our podcast episode 51: https://workingclasshistory.com/2021/03/24/e51-jeon-tae-il-and-lee-so-sun/ 

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On this day, 10 April 1911, a general strike erupted in Lima, Peru bringing business and transport to a standstill. The stoppage broke out in support of a walkout of 500 workers at a US-owned cotton mill the previous month who were demanding better pay, the abolition of the night shift and a reduction of the working day from 13 to 10 hours. Faced with a general strike, the president intervened and forced the mill to agree to the workers' demands. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8164/general-strike-in-lima

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On this day, 9 April 1946, Palestinian Arab and Jewish workers at the Tel Aviv post office walked out on strike. The next day, they were joined by postal workers across all of Palestine in what would soon develop into a general strike of blue and white-collar public sector workers.
In response to the postal workers' strike, employers quickly made far-reaching concessions, which the Histadrut (the Jewish union federation) recommended employees accept. However, rank-and-file postal workers voted to reject the offer and continue their strike.
On 14 April, Arab and Jewish railway workers joined the strike, paralysing the country's rail system. Middle and lower-level white collar government employees also joined the strike so that, by 15 April, 23,000 workers were on strike across the country. It also seemed that oil workers would join the strike, but this was opposed by the Histadrut on the basis that it would harm the broader Zionist project.
Despite this, by the end of April workers had won a number of concessions: a increase in wages and cost-of-living adjustments, and improvements to the pension system. Palestinian Arab and Jewish communists declared the strike "a blow against the 'divide and rule' policy of imperialism, a slap in the face of those who hold chauvinist ideologies and propagate national division."
However, the strike would prove to be a one-off as worker solidarity gave way to ethnic cleansing and the Nakba.
Learn more in episodes 86-87 of our podcast, about class struggle in Palestine: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e86-87-class-struggle-in-palestine/

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