Vol. 77/No. 14 April 15, 2013
April 15, 1988
WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 1,000 union members and their supporters rallied at the Capitol March 23 to protest the union-busting tactics of Eastern Airlines’ management.The rally was one of a series of actions organized around the country.
The contract of the International Association of Machinists expired on Dec. 31, 1987, and the union is attempting to negotiate a new one. The company has proposed wage cuts of as much as 50 percent, slashing benefits, and a new hire wage of $5 an hour.
Mary Jane Barry, president of the Transport Workers Union local that organizes Eastern flight attendants, told of harassment, discipline, and firings of workers.
“We have to stop Frank Lorenzo,” she said, referring to the chairman of Texas Air, Eastern’s parent company. “Our success will be labor’s success.”
April 15, 1963
A new wave of anti-segregation demonstrations is sweeping the South. The most spectacular of these are taking place in one of the most heavily industrialized and unionized cities in the country—Birmingham, Ala. The demonstrations, which police have attacked with trained dogs, are under the leadership of veteran rights fighter Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which he heads. So far over a hundred demonstrators have been arrested in ten days of sit-ins and protest marches.The United States Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, has been urging Negroes to call a moratorium on the Birmingham demonstrations until a new city administration takes office. Shuttlesworth rejected the advice declaring: “We have had all the moratoriums we want. We are in this to the end.”
April 16, 1938
A swiftly-spreading strike of more than 150,000 workers in the airplane, automobile, and motor factories around Paris was the immediate response of the French working class to the formation of the cabinet of Edouard Daladier.Sit-down strikers in the Citroen plants were joined in rapid succession by the 35,000 workers in the Renault factories. Without awaiting orders from their unions or parties, workers in one plant after another joined in the movement for defense of the workers’ livelihood from the open capitalist offensive.
The French proletariat approaches this test of strength with admirable spirit but also with dangerous weaknesses. Strikes and even armed struggles can yield no solution to the vital problems of the working masses unless they are backed up by an audacious and determined plan for the organization of the proletarian revolution.