On This Day in Working Class History

On this day, 6 September 2008, 27,000 Boeing assembly workers went on strike over pay and outsourcing. The workers, based in Kansas, Oregon, and Washington stayed out for eight weeks, costing the company $100 million per day, until they won a 15% pay increase over 4 years, and more opportunities to challenge the company's use of outside contractors.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10674/boeing-assembly-workers-strike

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On 5 September 2013 it was reported that South African workers employed in the construction of the Saint Helena airport went on strike. Reportedly, workers were unhappy with prefabricated steel huts which were to be their accommodation. It is unclear how the dispute concluded, although the airport was constructed on time and completed in 2016.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7966/saint-helena-airport-strike

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On this day, 4 September 1936, employees walked off the job at Trocadero Grill in Vancouver, demanding a wage increase. Bosses hired scabs to replace the striking workers, but customers supported the strike with a boycott. After one week, management agreed to the strikers' demands, but only four of the strikers were rehired. These four would subsequently organise the other new workers into the union.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10482/trocadero-grill-strike

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On this day, 3 September 1940, Uruguayan radical author and journalist Eduardo Hughes Galeano was born in Montevideo. He was imprisoned following the military coup in the country in 1973, and forced into exile in Argentina. His book Open Veins of Latin America was banned by governments in Uruguay as well as Chile and Argentina. After the US-backed military coup in Argentina, he was again forced to flee after being singled out for execution by the death squads. He returned to Montevideo after democratisation, and lived there until his death in 2015.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10254/eduardo-hughes-galeano-born

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On this day, 2 September 1963 workers at Philippines Airlines walked out on strike. Within a few days, major international airlines were forced to boycott Manila airport to avoid disruption from pickets.
The government of Diosdado Macapagal, which was supported by the left-wing Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (Communist Party) and Lapiang Manggagawa (Workers Party), ordered the workers to return to work.
The strikers refused, and blocked roads to the airport, so on September 7 Macapagal sent police with automatic rifles, bayonets and attack dogs to attack the strikers, injuring many.
The strike ended in defeat and work resumed at the airport on September 10.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/11170/philippines-airlines-strike

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On this day, 1 September 1974, Puerto Rican attendees at a Labour Day event in Newark, New Jersey rioted against police after years of brutality, as well as poor living and economic standards. An argument between festival goers and police escalated when an officer's horse knocked over a game table. The police department mobilized virtually its entire 1,500‐member force as hostilities and tensions from the fighting spilled into the streets, which further increased tensions, resulting in rocks and bottles being thrown at police over the course of the next three days. At least 16 people were injured in the late‐afternoon fighting and three men were admitted to hospitals with gunshot wounds, two of them in serious condition on the first day of the riots. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8161/newark-puerto-rican-riots

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On this day, 31 August 1972, a meeting of striking building workers in the Chester and North Wales Action Committee was held at the Bull & Stirrup pub in Chester, North West England. During this meeting, it was decided to send six coaches of striking building workers to Shrewsbury the following week to picket construction sites which hadn't yet come out on strike. That day would prove fateful for a number of building worker activists (and the wider trade union movement) as, despite no violence being reported by the dozens of police who followed the pickets all day, 24 workers would be arrested months later on bogus charges of 'conspiracy' to intimidate.
Learn more about the dispute in our podcast episodes 65-66 with Ricky Tomlinson, actor and one of the Shrewsbury 24: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e65-66-building-workers-strike-w-ricky-tomlinson/
Pic: The strikers in Shrewsbury

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On this day, 30 August, 1908, union officials of the United Mine Workers called off a strike by Black and white coalminers in Birmingham, Alabama, four days after the Governor sent in the army to evict the strikers' tent colony and following a violent campaign of repression. Despite this, workers attempted to continue the stoppage but they were sadly defeated. Armed thugs terrorised the strikers, and lynched one Black miner, while the press generated hysteria about the race mixing workers. The Birmingham Age-Herald denounced a union meeting where "a negro…embrace[d] a white speaker…in the very presence of gentle white women and innocent little girls." The defeat was a blow to mineworkers and working class racial unity in the South. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10269/birmingham-coal-strike-ends

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On this day, 29 August 2016, 600 oil refinery workers on the Caribbean island of Curaçao walked out demanding a pay increase. The strike continued for over two weeks, until a general strike broke out in its support. Faced with closed schools, shops, and no electricity, the employers caved in. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10083/cura%C3%A7ao-oil-refinery-strike

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On this day, 28 August 1968 in Chicago, Black bus drivers in the city went on wildcat strike against their racist union, the Amalgamated Transit Workers. While 80% of drivers were Black, the union leadership was white, and did not heed the concerns of Black workers. White scab drivers kept services running in wealthier areas. In this article about the Democratic National Convention protests the same day is a short history of the strike: https://libcom.org/history/chicago-1968 More info as well in our podcast about the strike wave at the time: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/07/22/e8-the-vietnam-war-strike-wave/

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