Today in Labor History April 10, 1880: Frances Perkins was born on this day. She served as Secretary of Labor under FDR. And she was the first woman to hold a cabinet-level position.
April 10, 1917: An explosion occurred at the Eddystone Ammunition Works in Pennsylvania. As a result of the blast, 133 people died, mostly women and girls.
Today in Labor History April 10, 1919: Mexican troops killed Emiliano Zapata.
1940s
April 10, 1941: Seattle’s Hooverville was burnt to the ground. During the Great Depression, people set up Hoovervilles across the U.S. to protest the policies of President Hoover. Seattle’s Hooverville took up 25 city blocks by 1941.
Today in Labor History April 10, 1947: FBI agents visited Ronald Reagan and his wife Jane Wyman. At the time, he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. The FBI accused them of belonging to a communist front group. However, Reagan agreed to become a secret informer. And then he went on to have a long career as an anti-communist.
1990s-2000s
April 10, 1997: Exotic dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady ratified their first-ever union contract. Thus, they became the first successfully unionized sex business. (Pacers, in San Diego, had unionized a few years earlier. However, they had an open shop. This allowed management to recruit new, non-union employees. Consequently, they were able to decertify the union.) Lusty Lady later became a worker-owned cooperative. And they joined NoBAWC (the network of Bay Area Workers Collectives).
Today in Labor History April 10, 2006: Tens of thousands of immigrant workers demonstrated across the U.S. 200,000 immigrants and their supporters marched in Washington, D.C.