The U.S. Army takes control of Gary, Indiana, and martial law is declared after steelworkers clash with police. The chickens came home to roost. The rest of the story is well-known. The year 1970 saw strikes in almost every employment category. The president of the local was Gary Bryner, then twenty-nine years old. Between 1970 and 1980, the NEA grew by a million members. Farmworkers joined substitute teachers to shut down school bus barns. In boom and bust, the strike movement continued uninterrupted, if unpredictably. Nonetheless, violence from strikers, law enforcement, and opponents of the strike contributed to an atmosphere of chaos on many college campuses in May 1970. The 1972 strike at the General Motors colossal plant at Lordstown, Ohio, was led by long-haired, unshaven workers. Many, seen Strikes, actions, and events were organized and carried out on a campus by campus basis without the support of any major national civil rights or antiwar organizations. In May 1970, students across America, though they came from widely disparate backgrounds and held a broad range of political ideologies, overcame geography and their differences to come together and make their voices heard. Ten contract demands were chosen; they focused on the following areas: part-timers, appearance standards; supervisors working, unsafe equipment, sick days, holidays, and radios. The largest strike took place in the steel industry, in which nearly 350,000 workers went on strike in an attempt to gain the right to bargain. But the industrial unrest had a huge impact. In Seattle, 17,000 Boeing machinists struck. Already on our list? This spirit was deepened by the fact that Sadlowski himself had been outspoken on broader social issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights. Our new issue on conspiracy is out now. Rolling back the clock, a chorus of employers introduced demands for deep concessions from its workers. Student protests were further galvanized when National Guardsmen opened fire on protesting students at Kent State University on May 4, injuring nine and killing four. The AFT welcomed the anti-affirmative-action Bakke decision, the Supreme Court ruling against racial quotas, and opposed NEA policies that implemented racial and gender quotas in its governing bodies. WebOctober 6, 1919. In a televised address on April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced that US military units had entered Cambodiain an effort todisrupt North Vietnamese supply lines. The rank and file accepted this, though only barely nearly half voted to stay out longer. In the automobile industry, this movement began in wildcat strikes and the development of a revolutionary union movement spearheaded by DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) at Chryslers Dodge Main plant in Detroit. In 1980, UPSurge joined forces with TDU, and today, UPS workers represent its single largest section in addition, they numerically dominate the Teamsters union itself. The next day, outraged students began to protest the Cambodia incursion on college campuses across the United States and, at a meeting of student activists in New Haven, the idea for a national student strike was born. Another instance of where the NSIC strike demands did not fully match the motivations of some striking students was on the issue of civil rights. In 1974, it won a Supreme Court case striking down mandatory leave for pregnant teachers. The strikes, taken together, were reflective of the rebellious movements of the era. While the antiwar movement was always driven by students, the May 1970 Student Strike was unique in that the campus became the center of political activity and protest. This is a partial list of actions, derived mostly from reports compiled by the National Strike Information Center, a student group at Brandeis University. In January 1978, when teachers struck in the Canton, Ohio, schools, 400 were arrested, including 230 in one swoop at Timken High School. Railroad workers, in defiance of federal interventions, turned an eighty-one-day dispute with the Norfolk Western into a national railroad strike. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Native Americans, gay men, lesbians, and women organized to change discriminatory laws and pursue government support for their interests, By the middle of 1975, employment was nearly back to pre-recession levels, and the workers insurgency remained very much alive, above all in the coalfields. Candles and power cuts are my memories of the 70s. raymond anthony aleogho dokpesi | funeral mass | june 22, 2023 | ait live | mass for the dead These unions forecast the future for much of labor, developing in the midst of the transition from an industrial working class to one based on the public and service sectors. Many, seen from the outside, were inconsequential affairs; others shook the nation. With their demand for democracy in their unions, workers sought to make these institutions their own, recalling the students demand for self-government, or participatory democracy.. The steel companies used the crisis to combine jobs, intensify discipline, and increase productivity, at the same time replacing older facilities with new technology. Motivations for participating in the strike were ultimately as diverse as the students themselves. Different schools used different combinations of these strategies, meaning that the national student strike looked different oneach and everycampus declared to be in some way or another on strike.At UC Berkeley, where the strike was by and large peaceful, strikers shut down campus operations completely for the remainder of the academic year and sought and reconstitute the university as a space for organizing against the war in Southeast Asia. Repression, both by employers and from the state, played a significant role, and striking workers, in particular in the absence of official union support, were often defenseless in the face of violence. This, then, was not the labor movement of the 1950 and 60s, though those decades, too, had been at times places of workplace turmoil. High school participation was much more limited and was restricted to major hubs of student protest like eastern Massachusetts, New York City, and the Bay Area. WebPages in category "1970 labor disputes and strikes" The following 9 pages are in this category, out of 9 total. One of the most intriguing features of the strike was the widespread participation of liberal to moderate students at historically moderate to conservative campuses in moderate to conservative states. Nationally, hundreds of thousands worked in basic steel. 09. It was just the wrong time and everyone eventually agreed to resume regular daily activities. 3266291). An April Pew survey found that nearly 6 out of 10 (58%) Americans think the country was better off for people like them 50 years ago. UAW president Douglas Fraser responded with this prophetic retort: I believe the leaders of business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in this country. Indeed, they had. Taken together, these issues paint a picture of the political and social climate of 1970 that made the student strike possible. Apart from that my abiding memories is of dreariness, decay and depression apart from the summer of 76 of course. Within two years, however, CLUW was essentially dead, undermined by the women of the bureaucracy, themselves, as often as not, second-class citizens in their own unions. This is well beyond the scope of this investigation. "Prof.FellmanRecalls Campus Electricity during Vietnam Era." Slick McIntyre, Sydney, NSW, I remember the 70s well, I was working in construction at the time, roofing and steel erecting, the power cuts and three-day week didn't affect me much but even though all the things Andrew Marr described happened, he made it sound like the country was on its knees, but I don't recall it being as bad as he writes, we still had more industry then, and were a major producing country, and the average price of a pint of beer, when we went decimal in 1971, was two shilling (10 pence)and the music was a lot better than today's rubbish, men were a lot better dressed, you wouldn't get in a night club or a dance hall, without a collar and tie, 70s comedies on the telly were better, and we had Morecambe and Wise too. The workers movements were not without victories; over the course of the decade, they made unions more democratic and more inclusive, they recast the shop steward and won significant economic and social battles. As a 13-year-old at the turn of the decade I clearly remember the 70s miners' strike, the winter of discontent, the three-day working week and gritters on strike. The year 1970 saw strikes in almost every employment category. They reveal radical students support for the Black Panther Party and the Black Power movement in general. The majority of workers were excluded women, people of color, farmworkers, and service workers. Critics contended the union called the strike in the worst possible circumstances; there were months of coal stockpiles on the ground. Students in every state joined the protests of May 1970, including Alaska which is the only state where we have found no record of a proclaimed campus strike. When black autoworkers, fighting the speed-p, staged sit-in strikes in the summer of 1973 in Detroit at the Jefferson Assembly, Eldon Road, and Mack Avenue plants, they were not, for the most part, supported by whites, a few radicals excepted. Eichsteadtargues that the Kent State killings ensured that the already historic protests across the nation would only get bigger because the war had literally come home.[13]That four students had been shot simply for protesting made the student strike personal for students, and for some superseded the importance of the invasion of Cambodia. UPSurge, the rank-and-file UPS workers organization, founded in Cleveland in 1975, was allied with the TDU but differed in that it was first of all organized to fight the company. All this produced a rebellion within the union, first and foremost in District 31, the United Steel Workers (USW) largest, where Sadlowski defeated the incumbent for the position of district director. I got married in 1974 and when I went to rent a TV from the local Co-op was not allowed to in my own name as I was a woman. WebReturning soldiers increased the supply of workers, which drove wages down. The NEA had another advantage. So, for example, the coal miners caught up with the rest of the industrial working class, while pushing back productivity, essential if mining was to be made safer. That campuses across the South, including Alabama, Arkansas, andMissippippi, joined the strike movement speaks to the importance of this singular moment. In 1969, Jock Yablonski, a union officer in Clarksville, Pennsylvania, challenged Boyle but lost in an election mired in fraud. They rightfully feel they are not running their own affairs and are not being represented on the district level. This secret widening of the Vietnam conflict drew immediate condemnation around the the world and fierce protests from antiwar activists in the United States, especially on college campuses. Fellman, Gordon. However, this was still a meaningful marker of the extent of young Americans dissatisfaction with their leaders actions and policies and many students continued protests both on andoff-campuseven after their official strike had ended. It was astonishing; 650 UPSurgers gathered in a Holiday Inn in the eastern suburbs of the city. The worst strike for many was on throwaway nappies. I was a control engineer at Huddersfield Power Station at the time and part of my duties was to switch off the supply to various substations around the town, according to an official rota. It did not, however, lead to the unity that many hoped for, certainly not in the automobile industry. (Chicago: 1970), 10, [10]National Strike Information Center,Newsletter #5(Waltham: 1970), 1, [16]Broadhurst, Christopher. That is, they fought for control of their jobs. WebHosepipes were banned in London. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) electrified black workers, as well as the Left. On November 12, 1974, negotiations stalled, and 120,000 miners walked off their jobs, honoring their tradition of no contract, no work. The United Mine Workers (UMWA) had long been the backbone of American labor; as the largest union, in the 30s, it had bankrolled the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). There were 199 teachers strikes in 1979, matching the previous high in 197576. The coal miners exemplified this the ability of workers to win great victories, yet also, alas, the limitations of trade unionism. In the late 1970s, strikes continued to be the order of the day. At other schools, like Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin, strikers likewise succeeded in halting operations for the remainder of the year, but protests were more militant and were met by violent opposition from local law enforcement and, in some cases, the National Guard. In the years between 1976 and 1979, there were, again, strikes nearly everywhere that is, in every sector and throughout the country. Thus inspired, rank-and-file miners then set out to transform formal democracy into practical democracy, and coal miners embarked upon a campaign to transform relations in the mines themselves. My mother had to cross a picket line to get into the maternity hospital (they told her she couldn't come in, her response is unprintable.). Later the Brandeis administration insisted that the students reimburse the university for $9000 in long-distance phone charges and printing bills..[5]The students were able to raise $6,000 by October of 1970 at which time ProfessorFellmansent a letter to the editor ofThe New York Review of Booksrequesting donations to cover the remaining $3,000. One amusing event was during the coal strike and three day week, my father looked in he paper and decided that, as we were on a 'high risk' for power cuts at home we would go to the city to the cinema to see the new James Bond. A Report on the First National Student Strike in U.S. History, May, 1970. Long lines at unemployment offices became the norm, as did free food distribution in industrial centers. Broadhurst, Christopher. Main points for 2018 There were 273,000 working days lost due to labour disputes, the sixth-lowest annual total since records began in 1891. WebMonday, May 4, 1970. In 1976, Frank Fitzsimmons, Teamsters president, called an official strike, nationwide, of truckers in the freight industry under pressure from the rank and file, including the new organization Teamsters for a Decent Contract (TDC). [15]In our database, the states with the most impacted campuses were New York (153 actions), Massachusetts (145 actions), and California (106 actions), but Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois schools were also heavily impacted. And Leeds were in the 1st division where they are now.Rodney Thornton, Leeds UK, In January and February of 1974, because of a strike by Britain's miners, the government imposed a three-day working week and rationed electricity supplies. This backlash manifested itself violently in some cases, like at the University of Washington, where eight strikers were injured when thirty club-carrying vigilantes went onto campus one night to get the demonstrators and at Hofstra where pro-war students organized a campaign to strike back.[17], In total, injuries were reported for over 100 demonstrators, 28 policemen, and two National Guardsmen, and six students were killed. JD Constantine, now, Fairfax, VA, USA; then, London NW2, England. The national student strike was unprecedented in its scale and is an inspirational testament to the power of young people to disrupt politics at a national level and force their concerns to be acknowledged. Every two to three days, the center produced mimeograph strike information bulletins listing campuses on strike, clarifying strike demands, and highlighting important news. Subscribe today to get it in print at a special discounted rate! The following October, TDC became Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). It was a time of dismal economic decline. This open communication network made students across the country aware that they were part of something larger than what was going on at any one given campus. But when Helen Wise, president of the NEA, rebutted the charge that the NEA teachers were not trade unionists, she said, fairly, that there are many liberals within the association who think of the AFL-CIO as too conservative. She continued, The AFT, while paying lip service to minority involvement, opposed an effective way to assure it. Shut It Down! Subscribe today to get it in print! There has been rock throwing, windshields have been smashed, tires slashed and air hoses cut. WebThe 1960s were a period when longheld values and norms of behavior seemed to break down, particularly among the young. Authorities suspended classes on 97 campuses and 20 remained closed for the remainder of school year. WebSuzanne Kvilhaug U.S. History's Biggest Strikes A strike is an organized stoppage of work conducted by laborers in order to impose bargaining power against employers. They dont know where they came from. The results, for tens of thousands of workers, were devastating. That kept me entertained for hours. In Ohio, the National Guard was deployed, and trucks were commandeered and towed away. In 1971, hard-pressed by the shippers, West Coast longshoremen defied the flag wavers with a strike that threatened the flow of military goods and personnel to Vietnam. Certainly, there was widespread sympathy for workers in struggle, but there was no organizational way of expressing such support. Without the centers dedicated team of volunteers, coordinating a spontaneous, nationwide strike with the technology of the 1970s would have been nearly impossible. WebKey points. The rubbish kept coming, and it's only now that I realise that all the council owned recreation areas were used as garbage disposal areas, the hallowed grounds of public school Winchester College, of course were unaffected, hence the working class got kicked in the balls by its own kind yet again! Within the NEA, wrote the historian Marjorie Murphy, internal changes had made it clear that the mammoth organization was slowly but inevitably restructuring itself into a union. In the course of the 1970s, the NEA grew at a rate of nearly 100,000 new members each year, reaching the 2 million mark in 1980. The industry and the union blamed foreign competition, but just as important was overcapacity in an aging, capital-intensive industry. WebEmployment and labour market People in work Employment and employee types The history of strikes in the UK The history of strikes in the UK 21 September 2015 From the onset of In these years of extensive teacher activity, the AFT was embroiled in racial disputes a legacy, in part, of its racist confrontations with black community activists in the New York teachers strikes of 1968. In the 1960s, however, it was a shadow of its former self. We would have candles and mum made us all Bovril to drink. The Anti-Vietnam War Movement By 1965 a variety of people in the United States had become active in a vocal movement to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is editor of E.P. A Report on the First National Student Strike in U.S. History, May, 1970 (Chicago: Urban Research Corporation, 1970); New York Tmes, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Atlanta Constitution digital copies from ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Elsewhere, the impact of recession in 1974 was devastating, above all in the auto industry. Ultimately, the blockaders failed. [1]J.E. Blum, Alana. National Strike Information Center,Newsletter #5,7 May 1970, National Strike Information Center,Newsletter #7,11 May 1970. The NEA denounced a court ruling that would not require school authorities to readjust attendance zones to keep up with racial population shifts. This came, and it was decisive, not in 1974, and not in 1978, but in 1981, when the new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the striking air traffic controllers and decertified their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO). Many people felt that trade unions stood up for the interests of . [3]Two nights later, the strike center began operations after one student phoned GordonFellman, a sociology professor who would provide guidance and assistance to the students as the strike grew, and asked to use Perlman Hall, the sociology building, as the strike headquarters. If the steelworkers had been consulted they never would have agreed to an International Executive Board which excluded blacks, Latinos, and women. Web1. Nevertheless, for working women, the struggle continued. In September 1978, 20,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) walked off their jobs in Philadelphia. Why does she think the 70s look still strikes such a chord? On April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced that American forces had invaded Cambodia in an effort to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines. These newsletters were mailed to news organizations and to a long list of campuses where they helped sustain the sense of solidarity, demonstrating that each campus was part of a nationwide mobilization of unprecedented dimensions. The 1980s were a catastrophe for the labor movement. The same spring, the Teamsters struck UPS in the central states, this time pressured by UPSurge, the organization of the UPS rank and file. I am sure that hurt many people. The NEA, despite its conservative origins in the era of segregated schools it organized biracial unions in the South supported integration and affirmative action. I seem to remember contests of how to get along with tiny amounts of water - winners combined boiling food, washing dishes, bathing, washing clothes and finally, using the remains to water the garden, in about the same order with the same water. Film and TV writers are now in their 8th week of a strike against the major film studios. Eichsteadt, J. E. (2007). UPSurge responded to the UPS settlement with wildcat strikes in eight Midwestern cities. The strike could not continue because of demands; large kitchens that had to mass produce meals and send them around the city, firemen and laundry washers stayed on the job. Many typically conservative campuses with little history of antiwar activism participated in the strike with great enthusiasm, with students taking over buildings, staging demonstrations, and boycotting classes for days on end. Trying times, but we managed to keep generating as long as we were needed.John Blackburn, Wetherby UK, I don't remember all the political chaos, but I do remember playing Scrabble by candlelight and the fact that we couldn't bury my deceased grandfather. there is not a great difference between the things I stand for and the things that NAM leaders stand for. A Strike Committee formed at the University of Minnesota, and a This list may not reflect recent changes. By the mid-1970s, according to historian Michael Honey, the Southern civil rights movement had spilled over into industry, so that after decades of painful effort . b. And 15,000 pulp and paper workers used mass action and traveling pickets in a near general strike in the Pacific Northwest. It continues to stand out as a voice for rank-and-file Teamsters and a model for the kind of rank-and-file movement we still need. New York Times, May 24, 1970, New York ed. I remember my parents trying to bake their own bread because the bakers were on strike like everybody else. Inflation increased as much as 25%, so that workers' salaries didn't go as far as they had previously.c. The air traffic controllers represented a small number of workers. In the 70s, however, steelworkers were losing jobs; they faced stagnant and declining real incomes and witnessed increasing numbers of plant closings. In August 1974, Everywhere you turn, wrote one reporter, someone is on strike: airline mechanics, bus drivers, copper miners, sanitation workers, firemen, hospital workers, painters, steelworkers, telephone workers. Governor Ronald Reagan threatened to send in the National Guard, but the strike continued to spread. Car haulers wildcatted in Linwood, New Jersey, and Lordstown, Ohio, as well as postal workers at the Richmond, California bulk mail center. The power went out and we never did see the end of the filmLouise Warren, Leicestershire UK, The main effect of the drivers' strike was lack of fuel delivery. The unions, one-party organizations, typically were led by old men or bland bureaucrats, sometimes by gangsters, nearly all lifers (honorable exceptions aside). The NEA was already a large organization in the 1960s. Every day a new challenge. Our new issue on conspiracy is out now. The strike of 160,000 miners lasted 110 days, continuing despite the Taft-Hartley injunction issued by President Jimmy Carter. However, there were some protesters who threw rocks and bottles at police officers, and there were also some scuffles between strikers and pro-administration students.
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