Today In Labor History

November 11
1887: Haymarket martyrs hanged, charged with the bombing death of eight police during a Chicago labor rally.

1919: IWW organizer Wesley Everest lynched after Centralia, Wash. IWW hall attacked.

November 13


1909: 259 miners died in the underground Cherry Mine fire. As a result of the disaster, Illinois established stricter safety regulations and in 1911, the basis for the state’s Workers Compensation Act was passed.

1914: A Western Federation of Miners strike is crushed by the militia in Butte, Mont.

1945: GM workers’ strike closes 96 plants.

1975: Unionist Karen Silkwood dies in a suspicious car crash while traveling to give a reporter documents on nuclear power safety violations at her Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant.