Today in labor history Feb 27, 450 Woolworth’s workers occupy store for 8 days, SCOTUS sit down etc

[Omaha Steve]

February 27

Legendary labor leader and socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs becomes charter member and secretary of the Vigo Lodge, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. Five years later he is leading the national union and in 1893 helps found the nation’s first industrial union, the American Railway Union - 1875

Birth of John Steinbeck in Salinas, Calif. Steinbeck is best known for writing “The Grapes of Wrath,” which exposed the mistreatment of migrant farm workers during the Depression and led to some reforms - 1902

Thirty-eight miners die in a coal mine explosion in Boissevain, Va. - 1932


450 Woolworth’s workers and customers occupy store for eight days in support of Waiters and Waitresses Union, Detroit - 1937

The Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes, a major organizing tool for industrial unions, are illegal - 1939

And this:
February 27, 1939 - Following a decade that saw many sitdown strikes, including the famed action by auto workers in Flint, Michigan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sit-down strikes were illegal.

Read more about this ruling at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/24.1/pope.html

Mine disaster kills 75 at Red Lodge, Mont. - 1943

Labor history found here: http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?history_9_02_27_2011 & here: http://www.unionist.com/today-in-labor-history