Labor History Today

Labor History Today: In our first segment, we honor Dolores Huerta, the pioneering organizer and United Farm Workers co-founder who died this week at 96. Then, how did “Solidarity Forever” become labor’s enduring anthem? From the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum’s Mine Wars Forum podcast, historian and museum co-founder Catherine Venable Moore traces Ralph Chaplin’s song to West Virginia’s Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike. Along the way: socialist newspapers, union-busting violence, and the work of building solidarity across differences.

Hosted by Chris Garlock, produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the...

Labor History Today: UMWA Secretary-Treasurer Michael Phillippi connects Mother Jones’ legacy with today’s labor struggles at Miners Day in Mount Olive, Illinois. Then, we remember Jack Metzgar with our 2021 interview about Bridging the Divide and the value of working-class culture.

Hosted by Chris Garlock. Thanks to James Goltz of JASE Media Service for the Miners Day recording.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Found...

Labor History Today: LHT producer and host Chris Garlock toured the Reuther Library Archives last week with archivist and Tales from the Reuther Library host Dan Golodner; we'll share that tour in an upcoming episode of LHT. Meanwhile, here's one from our own archives...
The legal and civil rights legacy of George W. Crockett Jr., from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast. Peter Hammer describes the life and legacy of Crockett, a Black lawyer who fought racism and defended constitutional rights in landmark cases from the 1940s through the 1960s. Hammer is an A. Alfred Taubman Endowed...

On Labor History Today: A Virginia road and a century-old song reveal how workers carry solidarity across generations.

Anthony Dominiczak of the Labor Memory Project takes us along Gravel Lick Road in Castlewood, Virginia, where a family memorial and an abandoned coal plant connect the Harlan County Coal War, the Pittston strike and a more recent fight over a landfill.

Then, marking Joe Hill’s 147th birthday, we share an episode from Solidarity Works, the United Steelworkers podcast. Chelsea Engle explores the immigrant worker, IWW organizer and songwriter whose songs still speak to working people to...

On Labor History Today: An automobile museum full of cars—but where are the workers who built them? Retired autoworker and union leader Mark Strolle helped answer that question with “Assembled in Lansing,” a new permanent exhibit at Michigan’s R.E. Olds Transportation Museum.

In this conversation with Chris Garlock, a shorter version of which originally aired on the Labor Heritage Power Hour, Strolle traces Lansing’s labor history through sit-down strikes, the successful one-day Lansing Labor Holiday, and the union contracts that helped generations of workers buy homes, send their children to college and retire with digni...

On Labor History Today: What can labor history teach us about the present—and the possibility of change? In this episode, we share excerpts from the relaunch of the Working History podcast. Beth English talks with historians Sarah McNamara, Julie Greene, Eileen Boris, and Mae Ngai about the many kinds of work and workers that belong in labor history, from immigrant and domestic workers to the people who built the Panama Canal. Plus, Rick Smith tells the story of Shays’ Rebellion on Labor History in 2:00.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can...

On this week’s Labor History Today: Delta pilots trace the 1894 Pullman Strike’s connections to Labor Day and today’s airline labor law; more than 400,000 unionists march on Washington for 1981’s Solidarity Day; and Latin American tunnel workers wage a five-year fight against wage discrimination in Vancouver. Plus, Youngstown remembers the devastating steel-mill shutdown known as Black Monday.
Sources: Engage: The Podcast For Delta Pilots; On The Line: Stories of BC Workers; Labor History in 2:00
Music: Rails of Rage (Pullman Strike, 1894) - Bridget Roos

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you...

On this week’s Labor History Today, we explore how working people preserve the history that official markers, museums and tours too often leave out.

Every Labor Day, union members and community activists gather at Ralph Chaplin’s gravesite in Tacoma, Washington, to sing “Solidarity Forever” and honor the Wobbly poet, writer and artist who created labor’s enduring anthem. Vance Lelli and Nathe Lawver of the Pierce County Central Labor Council share the story of the annual commemoration—and explain why Chaplin’s words still resonate more than a century later.

Then we travel to Ybor City...

On this week’s Labor History Today: Activist and artist Austin Sauerbrei talks about his debut graphic novel Trouble! at Coal Creek, which brings to life the 1890s miners’ uprising in Tennessee, where striking workers and Black prisoners found common cause against exploitation. It’s a moving call for solidarity, told in powerful words and images. Austin talked with our colleague Robert Lindgren, who hosts and produces Labor Exchange, the excellent radio show that airs weekly on KGNU Community Radio in Boulder, Colorado.
Originally released 9/7/25

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you ca...

On this week’s Labor History Today: John Dick and Dave Elsila of the Michigan Labor History Society take Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant on a tour of Transcending, Detroit’s spectacular monument to working people and the achievements of organized labor. Plus, a musical tribute to Dolly Parton and her songs of work, family and working-class life. Labor History in 2:00 marks the Battle of Blair Mountain and FDR’s 1935 effort to make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.
CLICK HERE to watch a video of our tour of Transcending.
Music: Detroit City, 9 to 5, Coat of Many C...

On this week’s Labor History Today: The IWW’s Little Red Songbook was created to “fan the flames of discontent”—and its songs have carried solidarity into workplaces, union halls, picket lines and jail cells ever since.

To mark the 117th anniversary of its first publication, listeners share their favorite songs from the legendary collection: “We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years,” “Mr. Block,” “The Red Flag,” “The Preacher and the Slave” and “Dump the Bosses Off Your Back.” We also hear “Ain’t Done Nothing If You Ain’t Been Called a Red,” now proposed for the forthcoming 39th...

On this week’s Labor History Today: Richard Trumka traces the history of labor art from the coalfields of Harlan County and the Flint sit-down strike to the Pittston mineworkers’ strike. Speaking at the Labor Heritage Foundation’s Great Labor Arts Exchange in June 2009, the future AFL-CIO president explains how songs, murals, films and stories preserve workers’ struggles and carry solidarity from one generation to the next. Trumka was elected AFL-CIO president on September 16, 2009, and served until his death on August 5, 2021.
Plus, Labor History in Two looks back at how anti-communist hysteria was used in 1938 to divide workers and unde...

On this week’s Labor History Today: Dave Zirin discusses his new book, The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, exploring the historian's influence on generations of activists—and even on Hollywood.

Then, marking the August 7 birthday of labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, producer Anthony Dominiczak looks back at the life of the legendary "Rebel Girl" and the fight over her historical legacy.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today...

On this week’s Labor History Today: A hand-held fan donated to the Museum of Vancouver tells the story of Canadian workers who volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Its wooden struts bear the signatures of loggers, miners, and trade unionists from British Columbia who traveled thousands of miles to defend Spain's democratically elected government.

From the On the Line: Stories of BC Workers podcast, historian David York explores the lives behind those names and the labor movement's long tradition of international solidarity. At a time when authoritarian movements are once again on the ri...

On this week’s Labor History Today: Historian Dr. Jeffrey Johnson tells the story of the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing and the infamous frame-up of labor leader Tom Mooney, who spent more than two decades behind bars before his eventual release and pardon. Recorded live at the 9th Annual Reuther-Pollock Labor History Symposium, Johnson explores how xenophobia, anti-labor fervor, and miscarriages of justice from a century ago still echo loudly today.
Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: The Battle of Blair Mountain.
Original airdate: 8/31/2025

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how yo...

As Spain and Argentina meet in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, Labor History Today looks beyond the action on the pitch to explore soccer's deep roots in working-class communities and labor struggles.

British labor journalist and trade unionist Simon Sapper traces the history of "the people's game," from its origins in factory towns and mining communities to today's battles over billionaire ownership, rising ticket prices, and the commercialization of the world's most popular sport.

Then we revisit one of the most important—and least remembered—labor struggles of the Progressive Era. While the 1912 "Bread and Rose...

On this week’s Labor History Today: The FIFA World Cup is once again captivating fans around the globe as the 2026 tournament heads into the semifinal round, with France facing Spain on July 14 and England taking on Argentina on July 15. While soccer is often viewed as a relatively recent arrival in the United States, the game actually has deep roots here, thanks to immigrant workers from Britain and Europe who brought football to mining towns, factories, and mill communities in the late nineteenth century. This week's Labor History Today – originally released during the 2022 World Cup -- explores the long—and of...

On this week's Labor History Today: As the nation reflects on Independence Day, we turn from the "Great Men" of history to the voices of the people. We begin with Frederick Douglass's searing 1852 speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, performed by James Earl Jones, then hear from the Labor and Working-Class History Association's People's 250 project, where workers, historians, and activists share stories that place working people at the center of the American story. Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: July 4 Freedom to Join a Union

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find...

This week on Labor History Today: Silk stockings were all the rage in the 1920s, but the workers who made them paid the price. When the H.C. Aberle Hosiery Company in Philadelphia imposed wage cuts and harsher working conditions in 1930, more than a thousand workers walked out, setting off one of the city's most dramatic labor struggles.

As tensions escalated between strikers, strikebreakers, police, and company management, 22-year-old Carl Mackley was killed in a confrontation that galvanized Philadelphia's labor movement. Tens of thousands attended his funeral, and his legacy lived on in the pioneering Carl Mackley...

This week on Labor History Today (originally broadcast 1/11/2026), Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of British Labor, 1780–1924. The book traces the rise of the world’s first modern labor movement through banners, boxes, coins, tools, and images created by working people during the Industrial Revolution and beyond—right up to the moment labor stood on the brink of political power in the 1920s.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHi...

On this week’s Labor History Today (Originally released October 12, 2025): A visit to the Donora Smog Museum, where a six-day inversion in 1948 trapped toxic fumes over a Pennsylvania mill town and changed how the U.S. thinks about work, health, and accountability.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The Mother Jones Monument is Dedicated.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor an...

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Labor History Today visits Old Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, widely considered the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.

In this excerpt from The Manufacturing Report, host Scott Paul tours the historic mill with National Park Service Ranger Allison Horrocks. Together they explore how Samuel Slater brought Britain's closely guarded textile technology to the United States, the role of Moses Brown and early investors, the rise of the Rhode Island mill system, and the transformation of work from home-based production to factory labor.

The conversation also...

On Labor History Today: What happens if the labor laws that have governed workplace organizing since the 1930s simply disappear? Historian Leigh Campbell-Hale joins Labor Exchange host Robert Lindgren to discuss the 1927 Columbine Mine Strike, the stories labor history remembers—and forgets—and why those narratives matter for workers today.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor...

This week on Labor History Today: Hazel Dickens remembered. The Mine Wars Forum talks with Hazel’s nephew Buddy Dickens about the legendary labor singer’s deep roots in the West Virginia coalfields, her fierce commitment to miners and working people, and why her music still resonates today. From picket lines and black lung fights to the new Fly Away Home festival honoring her legacy, Buddy shares personal stories about one of labor’s most beloved voices.

Plus: Labor History in 2:00 on the 1946 coal strike and the first Chicago Teachers Union strike; new stories from the People’s 250 ca...

On this week’s edition of Labor History Today: the People’s 250 campaign asks whose stories belong in America’s history, from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to today’s fights for worker dignity and democracy. Then historian Eric Bernardino joins America’s Work Force Radio to discuss the massive 1938 San Antonio pecan shellers strike led largely by Mexican women workers and fiery organizer Emma Tenayuca. Plus: the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum’s “Courage in the Hollers” labor history trail, Birmingham unionists who stopped a Klan church bombing, and this week’s Labor History in Two on the historic 1934 Minneapolis Teamst...

On Labor History Today: What do Chicago’s three Haymarket monuments reveal about labor history, public memory, and who gets to shape the story of the past? Labor historian Peter Cole explains. Plus: Australia’s early fight for the eight-hour day, and Labor History in 2:00 on the 1934 West Coast Maritime Strike.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Worki...

On this week’s Labor History Today: a powerful look at past and present struggles for worker rights and justice. We revisit the Haymarket Affair and the origins of May Day, then hear from historian Marla Ramírez on the forced “banishment” of Mexican American families in the early 20th century—and how those policies echo in today’s debates over deportation and mixed-status families. Plus, a tribute to Pete Seeger and the music that helped sustain generations of labor and social movements.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of L...

On this week’s Labor History Today: Can resistance to Trumpism help rebuild worker power?

Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike!, joins labor historian Joe McCartin and organizer Stephen Lerner to discuss their argument that bold, disruptive action—from strikes to economic pressure campaigns—can revive the labor movement, drawing on both history and on-the-ground organizing to map a way forward.

We also visit Tacoma, Washington, where Sarah Gray takes us to the gravesite of “Solidarity Forever” author Ralph Chaplin—showing how labor history lives on in local traditions.

And in Labor History in 2, Rick Smith m...

This week’s Labor History Today features Labor Express Radio in Chicago, previewing May Day 2026. From the 1886 fight for the eight-hour day to today’s call for an “economic blackout,” organizers are mobilizing for what could be a major test of workers’ power. Find out more about May Day activities at maydaystrong.org
Music: We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years by George Mann.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is pr...

On this week’s Labor History Today, producer producer Harold Phillips talks with Victoria McCallum and Lantz Simpson, co-writers of The Last Words of Joe Hill, a short play imagining Joe Hill in a modern coffee shop, sparking conversations about unions, work, and power.

The interview is interspersed with scenes from the radio version of the play, as Hill’s voice challenges young workers navigating low wages, job insecurity, and organizing drives—echoing struggles that continue today.

From the legacy of the Industrial Workers of the World to current campaigns like Starbucks Workers United, the episod...

On this week’s Labor History Today: In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. stood with striking sanitation workers in Memphis—members of AFSCME Local 1733—delivering his powerful “Mountaintop” speech just one day before his assassination. We reflect on King’s labor legacy and what it means for organizing today.

With the 2026 baseball season underway, we also take a look at the business of the game, featuring a segment from the Heartland Labor Forum on how players organized to break free from a system that bound them to their teams—and built one of the most powerful unions in the country...

On this week’s Labor History Today: As Women’s History Month draws to a close, we mark the founding of the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974, when more than 3,000 women from 58 unions came together in Chicago to demand a stronger voice in the labor movement.
Then, from

This week on Labor History Today, we explore moments when workers didn’t just demand change—they forced it.
Detroit, 1937: sit-down strikers face a violent police raid—and resist, floor by floor, in a pivotal moment in the fight for union recognition.
Seattle, 1919: Conor Casey takes us inside the Labor Temple, as workers coordinate a general strike that briefly turns organized labor into the city’s governing force. See photos on LHF’s Labor Landmarks Map.
New York City, 1970: postal workers launch an illegal strike that spreads nationwide, defies federal troops, and wins real gains.
From

This week on Labor History Today: From the fiery tragedy that shocked the nation—the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—to the powerful solidarity of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. We’ll also hear how a rebellious group of DJs turned a Bay Area radio station into a labor battleground in 1968, proving that the counterculture wasn’t just about rebellion—it was also about dignity, creativity, and fair pay on the job. And we visit Idaho’s Sunshine Mine Disaster Memorial, where a towering miner stands watch over 91 tombstones honoring workers lost in one of the deadliest hard-rock mi...

On this week’s Labor History Today, we continue our look at the legacy of A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major Black-led union in the United States.

Recorded at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, SEIU International President April Verrett reflects on what Randolph’s legacy means for workers today.

Posting on International Women’s Day, this conversation highlights the role of women workers—especially in care and service jobs—in carrying forward the fight for dignity, organizing rights, and democracy. Verrett connects the porters’...

On this week’s Labor History Today, historian Eric Arnesen marks the centennial of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, tracing how A. Philip Randolph and Black railway workers built the first major Black-led union in 1925, fought for what Randolph called “manhood rights”—dignity on the job—and helped lay the groundwork for the 1941 and 1963 Marches on Washington, reshaping both the labor movement and the modern civil rights struggle.
Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: The Price of Demanding Equal Pay, The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down, and Remembering E.D. Nixon.

NOTE: Arnesen’s February 10 talk was part of a special Bl...

On this week’s Labor History Today, host Chris Garlock explores how workers’ struggles leave lasting marks—not just on history, but on the physical landscape itself.

In Hamilton, Ontario, the 1946 Stelco strike helped secure collective bargaining rights for Canadian steelworkers—but also triggered a backlash that literally reshaped Woodlands Park, once known as the “People’s Park,” to prevent workers from gathering there again.
And in Marion, North Carolina, Chris traces the story of the 1929 Marion Massacre, when sheriff’s deputies opened fire on striking textile workers. Today, even the small gravestone marking where workers were killed may...

On this week’s Labor History Today: Labor History in 2:00 on the Sons of Vulcan’s 1865 strike, a Labor Jawn conversation with songwriter Mindy Murray about her song “Striking at Kings,” and a return to 1937 Anderson, Indiana, and the violence following the Flint sit-down strike. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @Georgetow...

This week on Labor History Today: The 66th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins — a turning point that helped ignite the modern Civil Rights Movement and reshaped American politics. We feature an in-depth conversation from The Green and Red Podcast, tracing the origins of the sit-in movement, from Greensboro and Nashville to the rise of SNCC, and exploring how militant nonviolence, media exposure, and youth-led organizing forced a national reckoning — with powerful parallels to today’s struggles against state violence.
Then, on Labor History in 2:00, we revisit another watershed moment in collective action: the 1919 Seattle General Strike, when tens of tho...

This week on Labor History Today, we remember Pete Seeger and how his songs helped build movements—from union halls to civil rights and environmental campaigns. Then we turn to the 1933 Funsten Nut Strike in St. Louis, led by Black women who organized more than 2,000 workers, and talk with the creators of the new play A Brick and a Bible.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Her...