Republic Steel Strike Riot Newsreel Footage is a 1937 newsreel of the strike at Republic Steel on Memorial Day, May 30, 1937, which escalated into a massacre when Chicago police fired on protestors. Ten protesters were killed by the police and thirty others suffered gunshot wounds. The police also used clubs and tear gas on the protesters. The film was produced by Paramount Pictures for their Paramount News series. In 1997, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The footage contained in the newsreel was illegally banned from being shown in Chicago by the Chicago Police Department for fear of causing unrest, and later the Paramount News company agreed to refrain from screening it elsewhere. The editor of Paramount News described the footage as "not fit to be seen," and that allowing the public to view it in its entirety could "incite local riot." However, clips from the footage were edited and released as a newsreel that framed the strikers as a violent mob.
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, commonly known as the United Steelworkers (USW), is a general trade union with members across North America. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, the United Steelworkers represents workers in Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States. The United Steelworkers represent workers in a diverse range of industries, including primary and fabricated metals, paper, chemicals, glass, rubber, heavy-duty conveyor belting, tires, transportation, utilities, container industries, pharmaceuticals, call centers, museums, and health care.
Republic Steel is an American steel manufacturer that was once the country's third largest steel producer. It was founded as the Republic Iron and Steel Company in Youngstown, Ohio in 1899. After rising to prominence during the early 20th Century, Republic suffered heavy economic losses and was eventually bought out before re-emerging in the early 2000s as a subsidiary. The company currently manufactures Special Bar Quality (SBQ) steel bars and employs around 2,000 people. It is currently owned by Grupo Simec, based in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The following is a timeline of labor history, organizing & conflicts, from the early 1600s to present.
The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) was one of two precursor labor organizations to the United Steelworkers. It was formed by the CIO on June 7, 1936. It disbanded in 1942 to become the United Steel Workers of America. The Steel Labor was the official paper of SWOC.
George Becker was a steelworker, American labor leader and president of the United Steelworkers (USW) from 1993 to 2001. During his tenure as president of the Steelworkers, Becker also served as a vice president of the AFL-CIO.
Lloyd McBride was an American labor leader and president of the United Steelworkers of America from 1977 to 1983.
A wildcat strike is a strike action undertaken by unionised workers without union leadership's authorization, support, or approval; this is sometimes termed an unofficial industrial action. The legality of wildcat strikes varies between countries and over time.
In re Labor Board, 304 U.S. 486 (1938), is a 5-to-2 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the National Labor Relations Act requires the filing of a petition and a transcript in order for an enforcement order to proceed in federal court, and that a writ of prohibition and writ of mandamus are appropriate measures to take in quashing a petition when no transcript has been filed.
Harry Alvin Millis was an American civil servant, economist, and educator and who was prominent in the first four decades of the 20th century. He was a prominent educator, and his writings on labor relations were described at his death by several prominent economists as "landmarks". Millis is best known for serving on the "first" National Labor Relations Board, an executive-branch agency which had no statutory authority. He was also the second chairman of the "second" National Labor Relations Board, where he initiated a number of procedural improvements and helped stabilize the Board's enforcement of American labor law.
Anti-union violence is physical force intended to harm union officials, union organizers, union members, union sympathizers, or their families. It is most commonly used either during union organizing efforts, or during strikes. The aim most often is to prevent a union from forming, to destroy an existing union, or to reduce the effectiveness of a union or a particular strike action. If strikers prevent people or goods to enter or leave a workplace, violence may be used to allow people and goods to pass the picket line.
The women's day massacre was an event that took place on June 19, 1937, in Youngstown, Ohio. Members of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) were protesting Little Steel Management to receive recognition for their union organization. In March 1937, U.S. Steel had agreed to recognize the union, but the smaller Republic Steel refused to follow suit. Republic's anti-union chairman, Thomas Girdler, defied labor laws and used force to intimidate workers, firing over a thousand union supporters. These actions led to workers striking at steel mills across several states in the Little Steel strike and to an intense class battle. The strike went beyond picketing when steelworkers' wives joined the demonstration alongside their husbands in an event deemed "Women's Day".
The Little Steel strike was a 1937 labor strike by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its branch the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), against a number of smaller steel producing companies, principally Republic Steel, Inland Steel, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. The strike affected a total of thirty different mills belonging to the three companies, which employed 80,000 workers. The strike, which was one of the most violent labor disputes of the 1930s, ended without the strikers achieving their principal goal, recognition by the companies of the union as the bargaining agent for the workers.
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis, a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW), and called the Committee for Industrial Organization. Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers, who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions.
Ahmed White is the Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. His scholarship centers on the intersection of labor and criminal law and on the concept of rule of law. He has written numerous academic articles and two books, The Last Great Strike, which details the history of the 1937 Little Steel Strike, and Under the Iron Heel, which is the first comprehensive account of the campaign of legal repression and vigilantism that effectively destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World.
Mollie Lieber West was a labor activist and leader. Born in Sokolow, Poland, she emigrated with her parents to the United States at the age of 13 and settled in Chicago, where she faced challenges adapting due to the language barrier and a physical disability. After organizing a strike against Depression-era cuts to the arts at her high school, West graduated and became involved in labor organizing.
Strikes in the United States in the 1930s played a major role in reshaping the economy as it recovered from the Great Depression. Unions gained millions of members for unions in the American Federation of Labor (AFL)and the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Energized by successful strikes in major industries with the help of New Deal agencies, the unions played a major role in Democratic Party efforts to reelect President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, as well as 1940 and 1944.
John Vernon Riffe was an American labor unionist.
