#BlueCollarWriter Labor News Update - December 15, 2025:
https://www.bluecollarwriter.com/home/labor-news-update

#1u #UnionStrong #UnionYes #ItsBetterInAUnion #LaborHistory #NLRB #Jobs #Economy

Today in Labor History December 15, 1970: Polish youth and workers torched the Gdansk Communist Party headquarters and quietly watched it burn. Elsewhere in Poland, ZOMO riot police shot miners striking at "Manifest Lipcowy" mine in Jastrzebie, Upper Silesia, wounding four.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #poland #communism #riot #police #miners #strike #union #policebrutality #gdansk #solidarity

Today in Labor History December 15, 1941: Nazi troops murdered over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The temperature was −15 °C (5 °F). They threw children into pits alive, to save bullets, assuming that they would quickly freeze to death.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #holocaust #nazis #fascism #jews #antisemitism #ukraine #soviet #concentrationcamp #massacre #slaughter

Today in Labor History December 15, 1914: A gas explosion at Mitsubishi Hōjō coal mine, in Kyushu, Japan, killed 687. It was the worst mining disaster in Japanese history and one of the worst in the history of the world. The explosion was caused by a spark igniting methane and coal dust. The blast was so powerful, it sent the cage (shaft elevator) shooting out of the shaft. In Japan, miners’ wives worked with them in the mines. Consequently, 20% of those who died were women.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #workplacedisaster #Mitsubishi #japan #women

Today in Labor History December 15, 1890: The U.S. military arrested Lakota leader Sitting Bull for failing to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. During his arrest, one of his men, Catch the Bear, fired at Lieutenant "Bull Head," who turned and shot Sitting Bull. Both men died. The people living in Sitting Bull's camp fled to the Pine Ridge Reservation. On December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry caught them at Wounded Knee and slaughtered nearly 300 men, women and children.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #woundedknee #lakota #indigenous #genocide #ghostdance #massacre #sittingbull #nativeamerican

Today in Labor History December 15, 1792: The U.S. Bill of Rights was adopted promising freedom of speech, religion, the press, and "the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

190 years later, the Clash rewrote these rights into plain English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxl3PRmaXUU

#workingclass #LaborHistory #billofrights #constitution #freespeech #freepress #protest #punkrock #clash

Today in Labor History December 15, 1973: The American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In the 1950s and 1960s, some therapists used aversion therapy to "cure" homosexuality. Like in Anthony Burgess’s, “A Clockwork Orange,” they would show patients pictures of naked men while giving them electric shocks or drugs to make them puke. In the 1973 vote, 5,854 members voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM, while 3,810 voted to retain it. In a compromise, they agreed to remove homosexuality from the DSM, but replaced it with "sexual orientation disturbance" for people "in conflict with" their sexual orientation. They did not completely remove homosexuality from the DSM until 1987. And despite the overtly torturous nature of the therapy, as of today, only 8 U.S. states have banned it. And only a handful of nations have banned it (including Canada, Brazil, Ecuador, Spain, France, Germany, and Greece.)

#workingclass #LaborHistory #lgbtq #homophobia #transphobia #conversiontherapy #dsm #therapy #mentalhealth #torture #psychiatry #clockworkorange #books #authors #writers #fiction @bookstadon

Today in Labor History December 14, 1970: Strikes began in Gdansk, Poland, and spread to Gdynia, Szczecin, other industrial centers, with widespread factory occupations. Labor resistance and protest continued in Gdansk, leading to the formation of Solidarnosc, in the early 1980s, which ultimately toppled the Communist government once and for all in 1989. However, in 1970s, the Polish People’s Army quashed the strikes, killing at least 44 people.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #solidarity #Solidarnosc #poland #communism #strike #union #repression #massacre

Today in Labor History December 14, 1951: Bagel Bakers Local 338, of the Bakery and Confectionery Workers International Union, went on strike in New York. They shut down 32 of the city’s 34 bagel bakeries. The remaining 2 bakeries could not keep up with the city’s 1.2 million per week demand for bagels. Lox sales dropped 30-50%. The strike lasted until February.

The Bagel Bakers Local 338 was established in the early 20th century. Originally, it was comprised of an entirely Jewish workforce and conducted its meetings in Yiddish. The union controlled the bagel market for decades, until the 1960s, with the introduction of the automated Thompson Bagel Machine, which could produce 300 dozen bagels in the time that two men working together could roll 125 dozen. In the early 1970s, the union merged into a broader baker's union.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #yiddish #jewish #newyork #lowereastside

Today in Labor History December 14, 1852: Daniel DeLeon was born on this date in Curacao, West Indies. DeLeon was one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the Socialist Labor Party of America. He was also a leader of the Political action faction within the IWW that hoped to create socialism through the ballot box. Soon after the founding of the IWW, his faction lost out to the Direct Action faction, led by Big Bill Haywood, and eventually broke off to form the short-lived Workers International Industrial Union. His philosophy and writings influenced Socialist Labor Parties in Canada, the UK and Australia.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #directaction #socialism #danieldeleon #bigbillhaywood

Today in Labor History December 14, 1914: Antonio Ramon Ramon, an Anarchist from Grenada, Spain, attempted to assassinate Colonel Roberto Silva Renard. Silva was the architect of the Santa María de Iquique Massacre (1907), in which Ramón's half-brother had died. The Santa Maria Massacre, which killed up to 3,500 striking saltpeter miners, along with many wives and children, was Chile’s deadliest massacre. Ramon stabbed Silva seven times, but failed to kill him. When he was captured, he tried to kill himself by drinking strychnine, which he promptly puked back up. Workers held demonstrations and raised money for his defense. He was released from prison in 1919. There are no records of what became of him afterward. Silva was permanently injured from the attack. He became blind and was an invalid until his death in 1920.

The accompanying image is called La Venganza (Revenge). It was created by Chilean artist Javier Rodriguez Pino. It shows a bearded man, naked from the waist up, holding a dagger. Rodriguez Pino created a collection of artwork for La Historia de Antonio Ramon Ramon. He has also done artwork depicting Pinochet’s reign of terror. For more of his artwork: https://www.javierodriguezpino.com/copia-de-ruinas

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #chile #santamaria #massacre #strike #union

Today in Labor History December 13, 1896, Lucia Sanchez Saornil was born in Madrid, Spain. Anarcha-feminist, poet and member of the militant union, CNT, she also cofounded Mujeres Libres, in response to the sexism within the anarchist movement. Its goal was to fight for women's liberation from their "triple enslavement" by ignorance, sexism and exploitation. Mujeres Libres ultimately grew into a movement of over 30,000 people. After the fascists defeated the Republicans in the Civil War, she briefly went into exile in France, but later returned and lived clandestinely within Francoist Spain until her death in 1970, barely escaping capture by the Nazis, when they overtook France. During the war, she wrote articles about anarchism and feminism in the FAI's magazine Tierra y Libertad and the CNT's newspaper Solidaridad Obrera. She also corresponded with Emma Goldman, inspiring her to organizing international support for the anti-fascist cause. You can see her with Goldman and another woman in this 1938 photograph of her.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #luciasanchezsaornil #spain #anarchism #cnt #fai #fascism #antifascism #sexism #feminism #civilwar #poetry #books @bookstadon

Today in Labor History December 13, 2001: Beginning of Argentine General Strike & the period of workers' self-management known as the Horizontalidad. President Fernando de la Rúa declared a state of siege. State violence killed 39 civilians, 25% of whom were miners.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #GeneralStrike #argentina #horizontalidad

Today in Labor History December 13, 1867: Fenians (Irish Republican Brotherhood) set off a bomb in London to free one of their members from Clerkenwell Prison. 12 people died. The bombing outraged the public, undermining Fenian efforts to establish independence or home rule. The Fenians had over 100,000 members at the time, including a large support network in the U.S.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #fenian #ireland #independance #prison #london

Today in Labor History December 13, 1636: The U.S. National Guard was created. The military force was originally created as a militia, by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to protect its economic interests by killing local indigenous people, especially members of the Pequot tribe. In 1877, they were used to protect the interests of capital during the Great Train Strike, the wave of wildcat strikes that had broken out across the country. During that wave, National Guards and Police killed at least 100 workers. They also protected the interests of capital by providing the majority of soldiers for 19th century imperialistic wars, like the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War. Governors used them to suppress the Watts Riot in Los Angeles (1965), the Detroit Race Riots (1967), the Rochester Race Riot (1964), antiwar protests at Kent State (1970), and Rodney King riots in Los Angeles (1992). In each of these deployments, they shot and killed unarmed civilians. They were also deployed during the George Floyd riots (2020), in the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, and in the San Francisco earthquake (1906).

Read my article on the Great Train Strike here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/31/the-great-upheaval/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nationalguard #kentstate #greatupheaval #trainstrike #strike #indigenous #genocide #militia #police #massacre #riot #racism #students #antiwar #protest

Today in Labor History December 13, 1986: Kuwasi Balagoon died of AIDS while in prison, while serving time for a Brinks robbery. Balagoon had been a member of the Black Panther Party. While in prison, he became disillusioned with the Panthers, became an anarchist and joined the more militant Black Liberation Army. He escaped from prison twice. In 1979, while on the lam from his second prison escape, he helped to free political prisoner Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba and who recently died there (2025). In 1986, he died in prison from AIDS. In 2019, PM Press released a collection of writings by and about Balagoon called, “Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier's Story.” And the prison abolitionist group, Black and Pink, which supports LGBTQ and HIV-positive prisoners, has, since 2020, run a "Kuwasi Balagoon award" for those living with HIV/AIDS. During his trial, he represented himself, admitted his guilt, but argued that his actions were justified in the war against the colonial, genocidal state. He was also open about his bisexuality. Yet many obituaries omitted this fact in what some activists have decried as the erasure of "internal struggle against homophobia and patriarchy."

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #blackpanthers #BlackLiberationArmy #racism #newafrika #assatashakur #prison #lgbtq #aids #hiv #politicalprisoner #author #writer #books #BlackMastodon @bookstadon

Today in Labor History December 12, 1945: The U.S. Army Military Government (USAMG), which occupied and controlled the southern half of the Korean peninsula from 9/8/45-8/15/48, outlawed the People’s Republic of Korea, which was occupied by the USSR. The USAMG banned strikes and opposition movements and starved civilians, leading to a deadly cholera outbreak and exacerbating popular discontent. Less than a year later, the Communist Party organized a General Strike. Deadly repression against the strikers further worsened discontent, leading to the Daegu and Jeju uprisings, in which thousands of workers were slaughtered by Korean forces, directed by U.S. advisors. In Jeju, up to 30,000 people, 10% of the entire population, were executed.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #korea #genocide #massacre #starvation #strike #ussr #soviet #GeneralStrike #repression #korea #jeju #communism

Today in Labor History December 12, 1941: Hitler declared the imminent extermination of the Jews at a secret meeting in the Reich Chancellery. The declaration came soon after the U.S. had declared war on Germany, eliminating the possibility of keeping the U.S. out of the war by using the Jews as hostages. The meeting marked a shift from propaganda and pogroms to outright planned annihilation. No official minutes were kept of the meeting, but much can be gleaned from Goebbels’s diary for that date.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #holocaust #jews #antisemitism #auschwitz #nazis #hitler #goebbels #genocide

#BlueCollarWriter Labor News Update - December 11, 2025:
https://www.bluecollarwriter.com/home/labor-news-update

#1u #UnionStrong #UnionYes #ItsBetterInAUnion #LaborHistory #NLRB #Jobs #Economy

Today in Labor History December 11, 1990: Students and workers demonstrated throughout Albania in protests that eventually led to the fall of communism, with a General Strike in 1991. And the communists were thoroughly trounced in the elections of March 1992.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #communism #coldwar #albania #EnverHoxha #uprising #students #protests #GeneralStrike