Think of it, 1912, women and children had their working hours cut from 56 to 54, but with a pay cut?? It's not that long ago, and the powers that be in the corporate financial Mafia are doing their best to turn the clock back. The system stinks it always has and always will.
This from Anarchist News:29th Annual Bread and Roses Festival!
Mon, 08/19/2013 - 17:42 -- Anonymous (not verified)
In 1912, a new state law went into effect reducing the work week
of women and children from 56 to 54 hours. But because so many women
and children worked in the mills, men’s hours were also reduced.
When the first paychecks of the year revealed a cut in pay, thousands
of workers, already barely surviving on an average pay of $8.76 a
week, walked out of the mills, and the Great Strike had begun.
The strike united workers from 51 different nationalities. Carried
on throughout a brutally cold winter, the strike lasted more than two
months, defying the assumptions of conservative trade unions within
the American Federation of Labor that immigrant, largely female and
ethnically divided workers could not be organized. In late January,
when a bystander was killed during a protest, I.W.W. organizers
Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were arrested on charges of being
accessories to the murder. I.W.W. leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn came to Lawrence to run the strike. Together they
masterminded its signature move, sending hundreds of the strikers’
hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and
Vermont. The move drew widespread sympathy, especially after police
stopped a further exodus, leading to violence at the Lawrence train
station.The IWW raised funds on a nation-wide basis to provide weekly
benefits for strikers and dramatized the strikers’ needs by
arranging for several hundred children to go to supporters’ homes
in New York City for the duration of the strike. The union
established an efficient system of relief committees, soup kitchens,
and food distribution stations, while volunteer doctors provided
medical care.
Congressional hearings followed, resulting in exposure of shocking
conditions in the Lawrence mills and calls for investigation of the
“wool trust.” Mill owners soon decided to settle the strike,
giving workers in Lawrence and throughout New England raises of up to
20 percent.
The Boston Industrial Workers of the world see this event as a
critical part of our history and fully support The Bread & Roses
Heritage Committee. we call to all workers to come out on labor day
SEPTEMBER 2, 2013 to recognize, commemorate, inform, and share the
labor history and social justice legacy of Lawrence’s 1912 Bread &
Roses strike.
an injury to one is an injury to all!
