LOCAL 1060

Communications Workers of America                          AFL-CIO, CLC

595 Somerset Street  North Plainfield, NJ 07060-4908 (908) 561.8806

CWA 1060 wishes you and yours a    and a blessed 2010

2010 MEETING DATES FEBRUARY                   8 APRIL                          12   JUNE                            14 AUGUST                        9 OCTOBER                   11 DECEMBER               13   Alfredo's Delicatessen 1800 E. 2nd Street Scotch Plains

Early 1886
Hundreds of thousands of American workers,  poured into a fledgling labor organization, the Knights of Labor. Beginning January 1886, they took to the streets to demand the universal adoption of the eight hour day.

 Workers there had been agitating for an eight hour day for months, by May 1, 50,000 workers were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. Fears of violent class conflict gripped the city.  On Monday, May 3, a fight involving hundreds broke out at McCormick Reaper, between locked-out unionists and the non-unionist workers McCormick hired to replace them. The Chicago police, swollen in number and heavily armed, quickly moved in with clubs and guns to restore order. They left four unionists dead and many others wounded.

January 8, 1904
A battle between the Colorado Militia and striking miners at Dunnville ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later.

January 2 1920
The U.S. Bureau of Investigation began carrying out the nationwide Palmer Raids. Federal agents seized labor leaders and literature in the hopes of discouraging labor activity. A number of citizens were turned over to state officials for prosecution under various anti-anarchy statutes.

January 12:

Novelist Jack London's  birthday, in 1876. This excerpt is ascribed to the author:

"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles."

January 15:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jrs birthday, in 1929. In addition to his contribution to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, King was an earnest crusader for labor, particularly municipal and hospital workers.

January 27:

Samuel Gompers , the first president of the AFL, was born in 1850 in London, England. He emigrated to the US as a youth. A cigar maker by trade, Gompers received some of the education that shaped his approach to unionsim through his work on the shop floor. The core leadership of the trade union movement built in the 1880s came from similar groups of politicized workers.