Vol. 76/No. 2 January 16, 2012
January 16, 1987
Even before the smoke had cleared from the New Year’s Eve hotel fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico, opponents of the labor movement jumped to pin the blame on the hotel workers’ union.FBI officials, the governor of Puerto Rico, hotel management personnel, and the big-business news media have all tried to implicate Local 901 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the fire, which killed nearly 100 people.
Without citing any evidence—simply “suspicions”—Gov. Rafael Hernández Colón declared that “one tends to think this matter rises from the labor situation.”
This is a blatant frame-up. And it is directed against a group of workers who are resisting a union-busting drive by the hotel’s U.S. owners. Management has been pushing to “reclassify” job categories in order to hire nonunion workers and get rid of at least 90 union jobs.
January 15, 1962
A second tent city, to house Negro tenant farmers evicted in the course of a drive to become registered voters, was established this month in western Tennessee. The tents—three large ones, with three more in preparation—have been set up in a cornfield on one of the few Negro-owned farms in Haywood county.The first such settlement, known as “Freedom Village,” is still in operation in adjacent Fayette county. It was established in 1960 when white landlords began mass evictions of Negro tenant farmers who had been involved in a voters-registration drive there. White-owned banks also refused credit to Negro farmers who had registered to vote, and white-owned businesses refused to sell gasoline or tractor parts to them.
Thus far there has been no federal move to block the new victimizations.
January 16, 1937
The struggle between the United Automobile Workers’ Union and the General Motors Company is rapidly approaching a showdown with thousands of workers on strike in many plants and with the vital “feeder” industries being tied up by strikes.Violence has already broken out in Flint, and labor spies, thugs, and Pinkertons are being imported into the affected areas in wholesale numbers.
The United Auto Workers, a CIO affiliate, have presented the following demands to General Motors as the alternative for a general strike affecting all GM plants: Abolition of all piece work systems of pay and the adoption of a straight hourly rate; thirty hour week and six hour day with time and one-half for overtime over the basic work day and work week; seniority based on length of service; union recognition.
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