Labor history Sep 11, 75,000 coal miners end strike, World Trade Center, real-life Norma Rae dies

[Omaha Steve]

September 11

Some 75,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia end a ten-week strike after winning an eight hour day, semi-monthly pay, and the abolition of overpriced company-owned stores, where they had been forced to shop. (Remember the song, "16 Tons," by coal miner’s son Merle Travis, in which there’s this line: "I owe my soul to the company store.") - 1897


More than 3,000 people died when suicide highjackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Among the dead in New York were 634 union members, the majority of them New York City firefighters and police on the scene when the towers fell - 2001

And this:
September 11, 2001 - Hundreds died -- and thousands of others sprung into action -- when the World Trade Center was attacked in New York City. The events of that day forever changed the lives of many Americans. Read about some of the working class heroes of Sept. 11 in the AFL-CIO's special section.

Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life Norma Rae of the movies, dies at age 68. She worked at a J.P. Stevens textile plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. when low pay and poor working conditions led her to become a union activist - 2009

Labor history found here: http://www.unionist.com/big-labor/today-in-labor-history & here: http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?history_9_09_11_2011