Kansas City native Thomas Frank talks with the Heartland Labor Forum radio show about his new book about American populism, the long trail of elites who hate it, why pundits called Donald Trump a populist and why he’s nothing of the kind. Harvey J. Kaye on The Fight for The Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and The Greatest Generation Truly Great, from …

Chris visits the restored home of Kate Mullany, one of the least-known – and most interesting -- labor leaders in American history. Learn more here and check out the Don’t Iron While the Strike is Hot! musical here. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Labor leader Helen Marot was born to a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia. Questions, comments…

Today’s show is excerpted from “Pride on the Line: The UAW and Queer-Labor Solidarity after Stonewall” by Jamie McQuaid, part of the Our Daily Work Our Daily Lives Brown Bag series from Michigan State University. The talk took place in September 2022 and this originally aired on LHT on 10/30/22. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Wall Street Lays…

Joe McCartin, Ben Blake and Julie Greene remember the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police opened fire on striking steelworkers at Republic Steel in South Chicago, killing ten and wounding more than 160. Patrick Dixon interviews Tom Sito on the 1941 strike by animators against Walt Disney. Sito, a well-known American animator (Who Framed Roger R…

A mural celebrating Ben Fletcher – “The Black Wobbly” – was unveiled in Philadelphia on May 18; check out our audio postcard. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Remembering C.L.R. James Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor Histo…

Before last Friday, to know about the 1938 crab pickers strike in Crisfield, Maryland, you had to know about it. This is the story of so many worker struggles in this country; hard-fought fights that unlike other battles – the Civil War, for example – have virtually no monuments or plaques, no visitor centers. But now, on Crisfield Highway, Marylan…

In 1946, as part of a strike-ending agreement negotiated between the Department of the Interior and the United Mine Workers of America, photographer Russell Lee went into coal communities located in remote areas across the United States, documenting miners in 13 states. Photographs from this federal project have rarely been studied or exhibited—unt…

To call the April 19 vote by Volkswagen AG workers in Tennessee to unionize historic may be a bit of an understatement. Not only was it the first foreign-owned auto plant in the South to organize, the vote was a mind-blowing 2,628-985, or 73% in favor. The win by the United Auto Workers came after decades of losses as plant after plant opened acros…

Abolitionist John Brown is mistaken for a Black Lives Matter activist in Gene Bruskin’s latest labor musical, and a tour guide keeps Black worker history alive. Excerpted from the Labor Heritage Power Hour radio show. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHist…

The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike is one of the three most important in U.S. history, yet it’s largely unknown; why? Plus: CBTU president Terry Melvin on why the AFL-CIO’s Gompers Room was renamed the Solidarity Room. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Debs goes to prison. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you ca…

On the 35th anniversary of the Pittston Coal strike, we revisit our 2019 interview with Richard Trumka about the historic strike. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Upper Big Branch mine disaster. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.…

Labor historian Joe McCartin on the labor connection to National Rifle Association v. Vullo. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Remembering ILWU leader Harry Bridges. Read more: New York's Coercion of Private Companies to Blacklist the NRA Has a Long and Dark History Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be …

Today’s show comes to us from Re:Work, a woman-led radio show and podcast from the UCLA Labor Center, spotlighting the voices of workers, immigrants, and people of color. “Changing Lives, Changing L.A.” is a play created from transcripts from the UNITE HERE Local 11 Oral History Project and originally performed before a live audience at Loyola Mary…

From On The Line, the story of Diana Kilmury, the bold and fearless truck driver who took on both sexist attitudes on the job and a corrupt union. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Big Bill Haywood Talks General Strike. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at Labo…

The Power at Work podcast’s Joseph Brant reveals the winners of their Labor Oscars, all of which are classics of the genre. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Slovak Strike. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today…

David Corn, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for Mother Jones, brings us “A Story of Mother Jones (the Labor Organizer) That’s Relevant a Century Later”. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heri…

The history of Women's History Month, and Women in the U.S. Labor Movement, a special report from the Work Stoppage podcast, plus “We Were There” by Bev Grant and the New York City Labor Chorus, and, on Labor History in Two, the year was 1990; that was the day 9,300 workers walked out at Greyhound bus lines. NOTE: Bev Grant and the DC Labor Chorus …

Ben Fletcher was one of the most important black labor leaders in American history. Yet he’s almost entirely unknown. In today’s show, from the Working Class History podcast, and in honor of Black History Month, we learn about this little-known dock worker and labor organizer, who helped organize thousands of workers on the Philadelphia docks into …

Jeff Barnes was born and raised in Tazewell, Virginia, in the heart of coal country. He lives, writes, and practices law in Richmond. His novel “Mingo”, published in 2021, was inspired by his childhood fascination with the 1919 Matewan Massacre, which occurred during the bitter, brutal Coal Mine Wars and the stories his father told of growing up in…

The Valley Labor Report reports. Today’s labor history: Striking Hollywood writers return to work. Today’s labor quote: Bill Fletcher Jr. @LaborReporters @BillFletcherJr @wpfwdc @AFLCIO #1u #UnionStrong #LaborRadioPod Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast NetworkBy laborhistorytoday

Art Shields covered it all, as a reporter for the Daily Worker on the front lines in Spain, as a labor journalist, and organizer himself. He covered many key events for the left including the defense of Sacco & Vanzetti, the Battle of Blair Mountain, the organizing drives in Harlan County, the sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, and many more. Art …

David Byrne called him "the Diego Rivera of Pittsburgh." The Steel Workers’Solidarity Works podcast talks with two of their union’s members who are dedicating their time and expertise to saving the historic murals of Croatian painter and immigrant Maxo Vanka, which cover the walls of the St. Nicholas Croatian Church in Pittsburgh, and which depict …

Last October, Union Dues podcast host Simon Sapper took LHT’s Chris Garlock on a labor history walk in London; our November 5 episode covers our visit to the site of the factory where the 1888 Matchgirls Strike took place. Simon took us to several other nearby sites that illustrated the way workers lived -- and struggled – in those days; most of th…

Original airdate January 16, 2022 On December 11, 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. The speech is not long, just 30 minutes, but it’s tremendously historic, both in its content and its timing. In this speech, King connected the civil rights moveme…

Labor historian Julie Greene on why Woody Guthrie’s 1943 New Year’s resolutions still resonate today. On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1968; that was the day Johnny Cash played Folsom Prison. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@…

Back in the day of publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, newsboys were essential players in the circulation pipeline, cheap labor that made the highly competitive industry profitable. The newsboy became an America cultural trope or archetype, a focus of rags-to-riches fiction, the target of pity and social welfare activism, a smil…

Labor Heritage Power Hour co-host Elise Bryant talks with two young activists --Pride@Work’s Jarel Sanders and the A. Philip Randolph Institute’s Denicia Montford Williams -- about the new film “Rustin”, which tells the story of charismatic gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Musicians fight back. Questions…

From the Gilded Age to the 1920s, employers and allies used terrorism to control workplaces and communities. Our colleagues at the Heartland Labor Forum radio show talk to Chad Pearson, author of Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen & Employers to find out how terrorism disempowered the working class and its unions. On this week’s Labor History i…

In our first segment, Woody Guthrie Center Director Cady Shaw on the story behind Woody Guthrie’s song "1913 Massacre". Check out the video here. Then, Central Oregonizing, Radical Songbook podcast host Michael Funke’s brief history of unions at sawmills in Bend, Oregon from 1916 to 2000. Check out the video here. On this week’s Labor History in Tw…

Melbourne’s Solidarity Breakfast podcast talks to Alex Ettling, co-editor ofKnocking The Top Off: A People's History of Alcohol in Australia. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us a…

All Who Labor podcast host Anna Nowalk speaks with Georgetown University’s Brother Ken Homan about the distance between what we say we believe and how those values are lived out, particularly as it relates to the Jesuits. The conversation stretches from topics further in the past, such as slavery, to more current labor activism at universities. On …

"In Ludlow, the workers were killed by bullets and kerosene; here they died from poverty.  The names are illuminated at night. People are claiming the memorial. They're leaving items, artifacts, relics, coins, stones, gifts for the dead, telling them that we see them." The average age of the people in the pine boxes was 23 years old; half of them w…

Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art walks us through the BMA’s brand-new exhibit, Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA, which explores the importance of women artists many of whom are unknown today, yet who captured the human faces of industrial and domestic labor and its inherent racial, gendered, and class …

Yesterday, the IWW -- the Industrial Workers of the World -- hosted a dedication ceremony for a new monument in Centralia, Washington. The Centralia Tragedy, also known as the Centralia Conspiracy and the Armistice Day Riot, was a violent and bloody incident that occurred in Centralia on November 11, 1919, during a parade celebrating the first anni…

LHT’s Chris Garlock tours the East London site of the 1888 Matchgirls Strike with Union Dues podcast host Simon Sapper. On this week’s Labor History in 2:00: Birth of populist Will Rogers. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor Hist…

The summer blockbuster “Oppenheimer” generated a lot of interest in the history of how nuclear weapons were developed in the United States, but the film leaves out an important part of this history: the sacrifice made by tens of thousands of workers in the production of our country’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Excerpted from the Heartland Labor Forum…

A talk with the writer, producer and director of Triangle: Scenes from a Prosecution, a new one-act dramatization of the criminal trial of the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory following the 1911 fire that took 146 lives in New York City. Plus, music and poetry by Bev Grant and Joe Glazer. The new Triangle Fire Memorial was unveiled and ded…

In 1953 the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) established a set of ten guiding principles at its’ tenth biennial convention in San Francisco. This manifesto represents a fascinating historical document, a snapshot in time but also a roadmap, a statement of aspiration calling upon union members to look beyond internal conflicts deri…

In 2005 the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal, West London closed after seven decades of production. Tim Strangleman spent the last six months of the Brewery’s life working with a photographer to record in words and picture the site before it closed. Subsequent research revealed an incredibly rich story of corporate cultural change and the transformat…

This week, labor history takes a deep dive into "True Crime" territory. Billy Gohl was called "The Ghoul of Grays Harbor" in the early 20th Century when he was accused of being the murderer who dumped several bodies into the canals around Aberdeen in Washington State. Was he one of America's first serial killers? Or was he just another in a long li…

Two years before the pro-labor musical revue “Pins & Needles” became a big Broadway hit in 1937, “Parade”, another musical featuring pro-labor songs flopped after just 40 performances and the Theatre Guild -- which did so well with “Pins & Needles” just a few years later -- lost $100,000 dollars. In today’s edition of Labor History Today, we bring …

Irish immigrants, who toiled in the silver mines of Leadville, Colorado, in the late 1800s are largely forgotten. Many died penniless, buried in paupers’ graves. But now a Colorado professor has dug up their stories and their struggles. The Heartland Labor Forum brings us a report on the Irish Immigrant Miners’ Memorial.*** Then, Remember our Strug…

The story of how a popular labor song was lost, and then found. From The Labor Exchange, Colorado's only labor focused radio show, airing on KGNU Community Radio, Mondays at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Questions, comments, and suggestions welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor…

Part 1 of our 2018 interview with Jeremy Brecher, the historian, documentary filmmaker, activist, and author of books on labor and social movements, including the classic book Strike! Plus: Patrick Dixon talks with history professor Sarah Rose about the Americans with Disabilities Act and the complex history of disability and work. Jordan Biscardo,…

The story of Cleophas Williams, the first African American president of Local 10 of the ILWU, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Thanks to WBAI’s Building Bridges radio show, where a longer version of this originally appeared. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Packers. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to fin…

Filmmaker Yale Strom ("American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs") remembers WEVD, the Chicago radio station named for labor leader Eugene Victor Debs; Dan Duncan celebrates the founding of the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department; Saul Schniderman marks the anniversary of the publication of the IWW’s "Little Red Song Book," and …

The story of how the International Woodworkers of America Archive began, was almost lost, and continues to preserve the records of what was once British Columbia's largest and most powerful union. Today’s report comes from On the Line: Stories of BC Workers. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Singing a union tune. Questions, comments, or suggesti…

From 1935 to 1943 the Federal Art Project -- a project of the Works Progress Administration, or WPA-- employed some 10,000 artists and craft workers, helping them survive the Great Depression. The artists created hundreds of thousands of visual arts: paintings, murals, prints, posters, and renderings. Many of them survive to this day, but you have …

The Death In The West podcast re-opens the case of Frank Little, a union organizer whose brutal unsolved murder shocked the nation during the tumultuous summer of 1917. Features Frank Little, a brand-new song from the R.J. Phillips Band. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1970. That was the day the United Farm Workers, led by Cesar C…

Ben Fletcher was one of the most important black labor leaders in American history. Yet he’s almost entirely unknown. In today’s show, from the Working Class History podcast, we learn about this little-known dock worker and labor organizer, who helped organize thousands of workers on the Philadelphia docks into the most powerful multiracial union i…