Labor History

Labor Quote: Joe Hill
You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye)
In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high)
Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay)
You'll get pie in the sky when you die (That's a lie!)

From Joe Hill's "The Preacher and the Slave"; video by Mischief Brew. The legendary labor leader and song writer - born Joseph Hillstrom - was born in Gavle, Sweden on this date in 1879.

Today's Labor History

This week's Labor History Today podcast: Socialist fairy tales. Last week's show: Pueblo steelworkers' historic strike.

October 7
Hollywood's "Battle of the Mirrors." Picketing members of the Conference of Studio Unions disrupted an outdoor shoot by holding up large reflectors that filled camera lenses with blinding sunlight. Members of the competing IATSE union retaliated by using the reflectors to shoot sunlight back across the street. The battle went on all day, writes Tom Sito in "Drawing the Line" - 1946

October 8
Thirty of the city's 185 firefighters are injured battling the Great Chicago Fire, which burned for three days - 1871

October 9
Retail stock brokerage Smith Barney reaches a tentative sexual harassment settlement with a group of female employees. The suit charged, among other things, that branch managers asked female workers to remove their tops in exchange for money and one office featured a "boom boom room" where women workers were encouraged to "entertain clients." The settlement was never finalized: a U.S. District Court Judge refused to approve the deal because it failed to adequately redress the plaintiff's grievances - 1997