News & Updates

WEEKEND LABOR ARTS CALENDAR

Fri/Sun: fire work (DC)

Mon: Labor Heritage Power Hour Labor Day Special (radio); 11a on WPFW

Mon: DC Labor Chorus Concert and Sing-Along (MD); 2p at New Deal Cafe

Mon: 41st Annual Bread & Roses Festival (MA)

Ongoing:

Power & Light: Russell Lee's Coal Survey (DC)

Don't Stand Alone: Black Labor Organizing in New Orleans (LA)

‘Crafting Sanctuaries’ Sheds Light on Black Experience in the South During the Great Depression

The images in this exhibition focus on the American South, particularly the lives of sharecroppers. Tenant farmers who worked land belonging to someone else—to whom they paid rent in the form of crops instead of cash—were often bound up in a cycle of indebtedness, thanks to high interest rates and unfair contract terms that made it difficult to break even, let alone get ahead. Beholden to landowners, many sharecroppers experienced a system that essentially prolonged certain conditions of slavery. Read more.

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A group of 30 or so fast-food workers and allies wearing purple t-shirts gather outside a state building in Oakland, CA. They hold bright flags with the Fast Food Council logo, depicting a worker raising a flag. They hold signs that read "Fast Food Council: Fair wages; Fair working hours; Fair working conditions"

Billy Joel - Allentown

From the Top 60 Songs For Workers' Rights Playlist

Jim Croce - Workin' at the Car Wash Blues

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CLICK HERE for our complete labor arts calendar; look for our Labor Arts Calendar edition on Monday

1996: Dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady Club vote 57-15 to be represented by SEIU Local 790. Their first union contract, ratified eight months later, guaranteed work shifts, protection against arbitrary discipline and termination, automatic hourly wage increases, sick days, a grievance procedure, and removal of one-way mirrors from peep show booths

1998: Northwest Airlines pilots, after years of concessions to help the airline, begin what is to become a two-week strike for higher pay.

2000: Delegates to the Minnesota AFL-CIO convention approve the launching of workdayminnesota.org. It was the first web-based daily labor news service by a state labor federation.

“Our labor should be valued. Our labor is power. If we can harness our power, we can move mountains… we’re in a moment where labor is being attack, and we have to stand together.”

SEIU-USWW President David Huerta

Resisting Trump’s Rewrite: Black Slave Labor’s Secret Strategies

This week on Labor History Today: the Solidarity Forever podcast explores how enslaved Black laborers resisted and strategized before the Civil War. At a time when the President attacks the Smithsonian for “focusing too much on slavery,” we’re keeping the people’s history—our history—alive.

LAST WEEK’S QUIZ: Joyce Miller, a vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers, became the first female member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council on August 22, 1980. Elected at the 1995 convention, Linda Chavez-Thompson was the first person—and first woman of color—to serve as Executive Vice President of the AFL‑CIO. Appointed in 2007, Arlene Holt Baker became the first African American to serve as Executive Vice President of the federation when the Executive Council approved her to fill Chavez‑Thompson’s unexpired term.

Zoltoid, The Worker Safety Oracle (8/22) Dropkick Murphys Rock Cleveland for Union Rights (8/15)

Songs, Strikes, and Solidarity (8/8)

From Meow Wolf to Matewan: This Week in Labor Art & History (8/1)

Still Hot, Still Fighting: Labor Art Heats Up the Summer (7/25)

'Saturday Night Live’ VFX Artists Ratify Historic First Union Contract (7/18)