On This Day in Working Class History

On this day, 18 July 1887, the Argentinian anarchist bakers' union Sociedad Cosmopolita de Resistencia y Colocación de Obreros Panaderos (Cosmopolitan Society of Resistance and Placement of Bakery Workers) was founded in Buenos Aires. It was established with the assistance of Italian anarchists Errico Malatesta and Ettore Mattei. It would hold its first public event on August 4, which later became officially recognised as Bakers' Day, and initiated its first strike the following year.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8989/argentina-bakers'-union-formed

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At midnight on 16 July 2015, 140 workers at the state-owned Qulliq Energy company in Nunavut, Canada, walked out on strike demanding pay increases to keep up with rising prices. The strike, by members of the Nunavut Employees Union who maintained power lines and plants in the region, continued for three weeks until the local government offered them a new three-year pay deal which included pay rises of 2% in the first year and 1.5% in each of the subsequent years, which the workers accepted.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7352/nunavut-power-workers-strike

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On this day, 15 July 1966, national rail operator British Rail scrapped a "colour bar" preventing Black workers from higher paid employment at Euston station in London. At the time the bar was supported by unions but a Black train guard, Asquith Xavier, campaigned to overturn the bar, eventually finding some support in Parliament. 
Xavier was a member of the Windrush Generation who moved to Britain after World War II. In 2019 many of those who moved with him were to be criminalised and deported by the government. 
Despite the success of his campaign, when Xavier was promoted he faced racist abuse and had to work with a police guard, eventually the stress took its toll and he died in 1980.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8683/british-rail-scraps-colour-bar
Learn more about Black British workers' struggles in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/the-making-of-the-black-working-class-in-britain-ron-ramdin

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On this day, 14 July 1966 a group of US GIs were given the order to deploy to Vietnam. James Johnson Jr., David A. Samas, and Dennis Mora refused and became the Fort Hood Three: the most high profile US refuseniks to date. They were court-martialled and each jailed for five years. But they helped spark a militant anti-war GI movement which brought an early end to the conflict. Learn more about the GI resistance to the war in our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e10-the-gi-resistance-in-vietnam-part-1/

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On this day, 13 July 1917, thousands of workers joined a spontaneous strike in São Paulo following the police killing of a 21-year-old shoemaker, José (or Antonio) Martínez, at a demonstration against the high cost of living two days previously. The stoppage soon became a general strike, and workers could only be persuaded to return to work three days later after being given a 10% pay increase. 
More information and sources: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8481/s%C3%A3o-paulo-general-strike
The strike wave at this time is commemorated by this T-shirt of the Month, made by a workers' co-operative and supporting grassroots unions in South Asia: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/t-shirt-of-the-month0523

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On this day, 12 July 1994, around 4,000 workers at Bridgestone-Firestone tyres in Decatur, Illinois, Akron, Ohio, Noblesville, Indiana, Des Moines, Iowa and Oklahoma City walked out on strike. Workers were protesting against the introduction of 12-hour shifts, pay and healthcare cuts, cuts to unemployment and injury benefits and a two-tier workforce. The workers, members of the United Rubber Workers union, joined 1,600 URW members who had already walked out at Dunlop in Alabama. To fight back, Bridgestone-Firestone hired 2,300 permanent scabs to replace the strikers. After 10 months, the strike was defeated, and many of the strikers were not rehired.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8406/bridgestone-firestone-strike

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On this day, 11 July 1989, a huge strike began of miners in the Soviet Union demanding better food supplies, cleaner working conditions, adequate housing, better care of the environment in mining areas, and rights to share management of the mines.
In March, two brief strikes occurred at the Lidiieka and Kirov mines in Donbass, Ukraine. In July a much bigger strike began in both the Donbass and the Kuznetsky basin in Western Siberia. Within a few days, the strike had grown to 100,000 workers, and threatened to become a general strike when sympathy strikes began.
Most miners had returned to work by July 25, after officials agreed to most of their demands. These included more meat and soap, rights to share management and profits in the industry, and increases to pay, vacation time and other benefits.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7730/soviet-miners-strike

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On this day, 10 July 1949, Black Industrial Workers of the World dockworker activist Ben Fletcher died at his home in Brooklyn, aged 59.
Fletcher was the leading organiser in Local 8 of the union, which organised the multiracial workforce on the Philadelphia docks in the early part of the 20th-century, and he was one of dozens of IWW members imprisoned during World War I.
His funeral was attended by old comrades who praised his lifetime of activism, his sense of humour, his effectiveness as a speaker and more. Sam Weiner said:
“Ben, we won’t forget the great part you played in the struggle to emancipate the workers, and we will carry on inspired by your example.”
Learn more about his life and activism in our podcast episodes 73-74: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e73-ben-fletcher/

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On this day, 9 July 1919, bartenders in Allentown, Pennsylvania, went on strike to impress on citizens the "horrors" of prohibition which was due to be introduced. There was a working class movement of hundreds of thousands called "No beer, no work" which aimed to stop prohibition with strike action. However this is the only actual strike we are aware of.
We have produced items commemorating the No beer no work movement, using their original artwork, here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/no-beer-no-work

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On this day, 8 July, 1908, Black and white coal miners in Birmingham, Alabama, walked out on strike together against an attempt from bosses to eliminate the union. The strike grew quickly to a majority of workers in the area, including those who had previously been scabs. Bosses used evictions, armed thugs, scabs from the North, and forced convict labour to try to break the strike, and the press advocated vigilante attacks and tried to rouse white residents against the multiracial union. Eventually the Governor declared martial law and sent in the army against the workers, breaking the strike and marking a massive setback both to workers and to racial unity in the South. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10815/birmingham-coal-strike

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