Today in Labor History October 24, 1641: Felim O’Neill of Kinard, the leader of the Irish Rebellion, issued his Proclamation of Dungannon, justifying their uprising to end to anti-Catholic discrimination, create greater Irish self-governance and to reverse the plantations of Ireland. The rebels attacked Protestant plantation settlements and took garrison towns held by the Irish Army. It began as an attempted coup d’état by Catholic gentry and military officers. However, it developed into a widespread rebellion and ethnic conflict. The rebellion lasted 7 months and is considered the beginning of the Irish Confederate Wars (1641-1653).
Today in Labor History October 24, 1871: A mob of 500 White and Hispanic people entered Old Chinatown, Los Angeles, and robbed, beat and murdered Chinese residents in the Chinese massacre of 1871. The incident started after reports that the Chinese were slaughtering whites in cold blood, including a cop and a rancher. A mob of white and Hispanic people attacked Chinatown. They killed 19 Chinese immigrants. They hanged 15 of them, after first shooting them to death. This represented fully 10% of L.A.’s small Chinese community.
Today in Labor History October 24, 1892: Black and white teamsters, salesmen and packers struck together in New Orleans, paralyzing commerce throughout the city and quickly turning into a General Strike. Workers were fighting for a 10-hour work day. They were soon joined by non-industrial workers, such as musicians, clothing workers, clerks, utility workers, streetcar drivers and printers. The media repeated lies that black mobs were rampaging through the streets beating up white women and children. However, the workers refused to break ranks and continued to show solidarity with each other, regardless of skin color. In the end, the workers won the 10-hour workday and overtime pay. But the employers refused to accept the union shop or to recognize the unions as representatives of the workers.
Today in Labor History October 24, 1929: The NY Stock Exchange lost 11% of its value in one of the most devastating stock market crashes in the history of the US. It marked the beginning of the Great Depression, which saw unemployment in the U.S. rise to 25%. Farming communities were particularly hard hit, with crop prices falling by 60%. The depression coincided with the Dust Bowl, further exacerbating the loan defaults and suffering in the Midwest. Hundreds of thousands of Americans became homeless, and began congregating in shanty towns that were known as “Hoovervilles.” In 1933, Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act mandating a separation between commercial banks and investment banks, in hopes of averting another similar crash. However, there have since been two stock market crashes worse than Black Thursday: The Black Monday of October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones fell 22.6%, and the Black Monday of March 16, 2020, when the stock market fell by 12.9%. Both saw bigger percentage drops than any single day of the 1929 crash.
October 24, 1940: The 40-hour work week went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, only to be routinely ignored by bosses and constantly whittled away at over the next 70 years.
Today in Labor History October 24, 1947: Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming many of his own employees as communists, including Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, because of their activism as union organizers. In 1993, the New York Times wrote that Disney had been passing secrets to the FBI from 1940 until his death in 1966. In return, J. Edgar Hoover let Disney film in FBI headquarters in Washington and made Disney a “full Special Agent in Charge Contact.”
Today in Labor History October 24, 1956: At the request of the Stalinist regime of Hungary, a massive Soviet force invaded Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution, a nationwide uprising against the policies imposed by the Soviet Union. It began in Budapest when university students demonstrated at the Hungarian Parliament Building. They were protesting the USSR’s domination of Hungary. After a delegation of students entered the building of Hungarian Radio to broadcast their demands for political and economic reforms to the civil society of Hungary, the delegation was detained. When police shot and killed several protestors, Hungarians organized revolutionary militias to battle the authorities. The uprising lasted from June until early November. The Soviets utilized 31,550 troops and over 1,100 tanks to quell the revolt. They killed as many as 3,000 Hungarians and wounded 13,000. The Soviet and Hungarian militaries lost 722 soldiers in the battles.
Today in Labor History October 24, 1975: In Iceland, 90% of women participated in a national strike in protest of gender inequality.
October 24, 1987: The AFL-CIO readmitted the Teamsters Union, which had been expelled in 1957. The 35-member executive council of the AFL-CIO voted unanimously to readmit the 1.6-million member Teamsters Union. This was despite the federal investigation into the union’s links to organized crime.