Vol. 79/No. 22 June 15, 2015
June 8, 1990
Tens of thousands of workers and farmers in East Germany staged a massive strike May 10 demanding protection for wages and pensions and from rising unemployment.The strikes came as top economic officials of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) negotiated a treaty on monetary, and aspects of political, unification.
A main feature of the treaty is establishing the FRG currency, the deutsche mark, as the single currency in both Germanys. The GDR’s currency will be traded for deutsche marks at a rate of one-to-one for wages and pensions.
In ratifying the treaty, the East German parliament would agree to adopt the FRG’s economic and tax policies and open up its economy to the capitalist market.
June 14, 1965
The Deacons for Defense and Justice, the armed self-defense organization of Negroes which originated in Jonesboro, La., last summer, is spreading across the South.A report by Roy Reed from Bogalusa, La., published in the June 6 New York Times, says that the organization now claims 50 to 55 chapters in various stages of organization in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. “The organization,” says Reed, “was formed largely out of a belief that Negroes could not expect impartial treatment from white lawmen and that, if they were to be defended against church burnings, bombings, beatings, killings and terrorism, they would have to do it themselves.”
The Deacons are organized strictly for defense and are highly disciplined. They consider one of their main jobs to be defense of civil rights workers.
June 15, 1940
HARRISON, N.J. — Refusing to be browbeaten by talk about their interfering with “national defence,” 155 workers in the electric furnace department of the Crucible Steel plant here, working on shell casings for the Navy, went out on strike last week and are still out.Theirs is a desperate revolt against grievances which they have vainly sought to resolve for two years. They are the lowest paid furnace men in the area, and are forced to work under a stagger system — each man works five days but the days’ off are rotated so that the plant is in continuous operation — which is actually a speed-up system.
These men are demanding a 10% increase in wages and an end to the stagger system. In October, too, they struck against the stagger system, but were sent back to work by the CIO Steel Workers Organizing Committee.
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