Today in Labor History: March 28, 1871 – Paris Commune: over 200,000 people turned out at the Paris City Hall to see their newly elected revolutionary officials. They raised the red flag, emblematic of the Commune, over all public buildings.
1920s-1930s
March 28, 1911: Police killed several members of the anarchist Bonnot Gang. This was after months of bank robbing & mayhem. The Bonnots were the first known criminals to use a car to aid their escape. So, they some called them the Automobile Gang. Revolutionary and novelist, Victor Serge, was a member of the Bonnot Gang.
March 28, 1915: Police arrested Emma Goldman because she gave a lecture on contraceptives. Goldman believed that knowledge of and access to contraceptives was key to women’s ability to control their own bodies. And this was fundamental to their social and material well being.
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1918—2,000 Canadians protested against conscription and they forced the police to retreat.
March 28, 1935—Gas House workers went on strike in Saint Louis. This was possibly the first utility workers strike in the U.S.
1950s-1960s
March 28, 1959—The Mexican government arrested railroad union leaders who had threatened to strike.
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968—Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. And a 16-year old boys was shot. Police arrested 280 workers. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers earned starvation wages under plantation-like conditions, working for racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late, or for talking back. They got no breaks. Organizing peaked in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.
The 1970s
March 28, 1972—Workers launched a General Strike in Quebec to support workers locked out of La Presse newspaper. They struck in early April, and again in May. But, some sources give late March as the beginning of the General Strike.
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1977—AFSCME Local 1644 of sanitation workers struck in Atlanta, Georgia, for a pay raise of fifty cents per hour. This predominantly African American local saw their fight as a continuation of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, linking labor and civil rights as part of the same struggle. For several years prior, they organized to get black civil rights leaders elected to public office. They succeeded in getting their man, Maynard Jackson, elected mayor of Atlanta.
As vice mayor, Jackson supported their 1970 strike. Yet, in his first three years as mayor, he refused to give them a single raise. Consequently, their wages dropped below the poverty line for a family of four. Jackson accused AFSCME of attacking Black Power by challenging his authority. He fired over 900 workers by April 1 and crushed the strike by the end of April. Many believe this set the precedent for Regan’s mass firing of 11,000 air traffic controllers during the PATCO strike, in 1981.
March 28, 1979—Three Mile Island nuclear power plant partially melted down.
Pingback: Today in Labor History December 21 - Michael Dunn