Labour unions ... Nitti had found a new source of income for the outfit. Mobsters s2e5: Frank Nitti
The Feds indicted Nitti for racketeering, mail fraud and conspiracy. ibid.
The heart of the Civil Rights movement: a movement Coca-Cola has a troubled history with … Martin Luther King called for a boycott of Coca-Cola. Mark Thomas, Dispatches: Coco-Cola, Channel 4 2007
In 2000 … Coca-Cola agree to pay nearly two hundred million dollars to settle a federal [race discrimination] case brought by employees. ibid.
January 2007: ‘The paramilitaries of Magdelena Medio call on the terrorist Coca-Cola trade unionists to stop bad-mouthing the Coca-Cola corporation, given that they have cost enough damage already … military targets of the Black Eagles’. ibid.
At least 189 major human rights violations and nine murders including this man … shot inside the Coca-Cola plant. ibid.
Over 4,000 trade unionists have been killed. Abby Martin, The Empire Files: Human Rights Hypocrisy: Colombia vs Venezuela, Dan Kovalik
In the late 1800s there was an intense battle between organised labor and the country’s industrial capitalists. Abby Martin: The Empire Files: America’s Unofficial Religion: The War on an Idea, Youtube 2015
Repression … was reinforced by hired gangs and lynch-mobs. ibid.
From a young age we’re taught fidelity to the system and to the state … In almost every industrialised country in the world socialist parties have huge representations … but in America everyone knows that being called a socialist or a communist carried an immediate negative connotation. Abby Martin: The Empire Files: America’s Unofficial Religion: The War on an Idea, Youtube 2015
In the late 1800s there was an intense battle between organised labor and the country’s industrial capitalists. ibid.
It’s been a real battle with real weapons. ibid.
Repression … reinforced by hired gangs and lynch-mobs. ibid.
But with the new law every single union officer was required to sign an affidavit pledging that they did not believe in socialism. If you did not sign, you lost your job. ibid.
Under the Smith Act it was deemed illegal for anyone to be a member of the communist party. ibid.
The old guard will use every weapon in its arsenal. ibid.
40th anniversary of the Great GM Sit-Down Strike: ‘… faced the buckshot, faced the tear-gas, this armband still has the tear-gas on it. The Women’s Emergency Brigade of Flint, Michigan, made American history …’ With Banners & Babies: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade, conference speaker, 1979
We were the pioneers of the labour movement. ibid. striker
The more you produced, the more likely you would keep their job. ibid.
The foremen were using the girls and holding it over their heads that if they didn’t do what they wanted to do, they wouldn’t have a job. ibid.
That’s all we had in Flint, Michigan – churches and bars. ibid.
We met in a little coalshed. ibid.
They would have done anything to turn one against the other. ibid.
That’s when we decided to form the Women’s Auxiliary. ibid.
General Motors’ goons – our lives were in danger – they actually prepared with guns. ibid.
First they turned the heat off on ’em, then they turned the water off on ’em. ibid.
The victory was won and the UAW was born. ibid.
‘My father … was a skilled roofer and he was a union man, and he said, If you go to work and there’s a union, join it, no matter what kind it is. Any union is better than none, and if there isn’t one, organise one.’ Union Maids, 1976
This is the story of three women who were part of the rank and file labor movement during the tumultuous 1930s. Their lives were like many other young working women. But all three rose to the demands of their time and became militant organizers for their class. ibid. caption
‘People took what ever little work they could get … Hoover told us that prosperity was just around the corner.’ ibid.
‘The whites and blacks did different kinds of work and made different kinds of pay also.’ ibid.
By the mid-1930s workers saw they could not make gains without the strength of a union. But the American Federation of Labor refused to organise the growing number of unskilled workers. The A F of L was made up of many separate trade unions. ibid. caption
‘The most exciting meetings were those that were called at the shop gates.’ ibid.
The win rate for union elections is steadily rising. Strikes are up from last year. And public support for unions is at a 57-year high. Why Corporate America Hates Unions, Youtube 18.01, Second Thought 2022
‘What they are scared of is a redistribution of power and wealth in this country.’ Strike: Inside the Unions I, Mick Lynch, BBC 2023
During the final months of 2022 Britain was engulfed in a cost of living crisis. Millions of working people in need of a pay rise turned to trade unions. And at this critical moment in their history, unions have opened their doors to cameras. ibid.
This is the biggest wave of strikes the country has seen in decades. ibid.
There are now threatened strikes by teachers, postal workers, civil servants, and right across the NHS. ibid.
In the midst of the UK’s new Winter of Discontent the government and unions are deadlocked. As the surge of strikes spreads and moves into its most intense phase yet we’re inside the setbacks and victories in the biggest industrial struggle for a generation. Strike: Inside the Unions II
Amazon employees in Coventry … The first official UK Amazon strike. ibid.
In South London the Abellio bus drivers are on their seventeenth day of strike action over pay and better working conditions. ibid.
February 2023: 348,000 days lost to industrial action in the UK. ibid.
For the Royal College of Nursing an escalation of strikes is also on the agenda. ibid.
Abellio: An 18% increase. ibid.
Labour supporters were cautiously optimistic about winning the next election. But then in a few short months all their hopes were dashed. A devastating series of strikes brought the country to a halt and changed the face of British politics for ever. Secret History: Winter of Discontent, Channel 4 1998
Labour was cast into the wilderness for 19 years and union power was smashed. ibid.
The trade unions were fed up after 3 years of incomes policy. ibid.
The first big test came with the pay negotiations at Ford … The unions finally accepted an odder of around 17% … The Ford settlement burst the way policy dam. ibid.
The 5% pay limit was being ignored by almost everyone except the government. ibid.
‘Crisis. What Crisis?’ ibid. The Sun headline
Kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don’t have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organised; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs, damnit! No roots, no fruit! Utah Phillips