June 13, 1994
Some 1,800 members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, and Ohio, struck Leslie Fay Inc. — one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of women’s clothing on June 1. This is the first strike against the company in its 50-year history.
One hundred fifty of the 200 ILGWU Local 145 members maintained a spirited picket line at the SASSCO warehouse, a division of Leslie Fay, in Secaucus, New Jersey.
Ouber Lizano, a SASSCO striker, said, “We did not choose to strike — the company forced us to.” Leslie Fay was trying to get a separate, one year contract in Secaucus, he said. The company is offering a 21 cent raise. “We can’t make separate deals with the company and sell out the workers in Georgia or Pennsylvania,” Lizano stated.
June 13, 1969
The Argentinian military dictatorship headed by General Juan Ongania is in deep trouble. A series of student demonstrations were met with extreme police violence. This in turn engendered widespread sympathy for the students. The workers sought to demonstrate their solidarity through action. So powerful was this upsurge that the unions, in defiance of threats that they would be crushed by military force and strikers would be liable to the death penalty. staged a one-day general strike May 30 that shut down the entire country.
On May 29, Argentina was placed under martial law and special military tribunals were set up, empowered to hand down death sentences to those who refused to obey the dictates of the military regime. The workers and their allies appear to have remained firm against the government assault.
June 10, 1944
American labor was dramatically aroused last week by the militant sit-in demonstration of the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation workers, who refused for two days to vacate the company’s plants at Long Island City, N.Y., and Johnsville, Pa., when the Navy Department abruptly terminated its contract and forced the mass lay-off on three days’ notice of the bulk of 13,500 Brewster employes.
This action of CIO United Automobile Workers Local 365, whose members, in accordance with the militant traditions of the local, would not take their dismissal lying down, focused a glaring spotlight on the lengths Wall Street and the government are prepared to go in order to smash militant unionism and gave a sharp warning to the American workers of the fate in store for them under the “post-war-plan” of Big Business.