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A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
Sunday Feb 14, 2021
On this day in labor history, the year was 1918.
That was the day 300 commercial laundresses in Kansas City walked off the job, demanding a union.
Male laundry delivery drivers successfully organized the previous summer.
They soon joined the women on the picket lines.
The Employers’ Association had financed an open-shop drive since the beginning of the war.
The laundry companies refused to grant wage increases to the drivers.
They also refused to acknowledge the women’s demand for a union.
The Women’s Trade Union League tried to hold hearings about the strike at the Hotel Muehlebach.
But the Hotel refused to allow striking black workers into the building.
As a result, their white coworkers refused to testify.
When the hearings were finally moved, the women told of intolerable conditions.
Laundresses complained of filthy workplaces and potential firetraps.
They reported that laundry owners had put together their own private police force.
These guns for hire assaulted women strikers, breaking one’s arm, another’s wrist and injuring many more in hopes of deterring them from pressing on with their demands.
In the 6th week of the strike, 25,000 more workers of Kansas City called a general strike.
According to historian Maurine Weiner Greenwald, “they supported the laundry workers’ demands for increased wages, union recognition and enforcement of state regulations regarding hours and working conditions.”
Greenwald notes the general strike was relatively peaceful until the Kansas City Railway attempted to run streetcars with scab labor.
Finally, the laundry companies agreed to union recognition and later promised wage increases.
They soon reneged. But the show of solidarity among workers provided key lessons for future labor struggles in Kansas City.
September 22 - A Pepperoni Pizza and a Union
September 21 - The March of Mother Jones
September 20 - Upton Sinclair is Born
September 19 - The Solidarity March
September 18 - The Horse Race
September 17 - The Southern Differential
September 16 - Oil Workers Demand 52 for 40
September 15 - GM Rocked by Strike Wave of 350,000
September 14 - The Springfield General Strike
September 13 - Shoot to Kill Orders in Rhode Island
September 12 - The United Rubber Workers is Founded
September 11 - The World Trade Center Health Program
September 10 - Chicago Teachers Say, Enough!
September 9 - Deadly Anti-Union Violence at Gastonia
September 8 - The Delano Grape Strike Begins
September 7 - ILWU Wins at Longwood
September 6 - Thursday, Bloody Thursday
September 6 - Thursday, Bloody Thursday
September 5 - The First Labor Day Parade
September 4 - Reconstruction Crumbles in Mississippi
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