Discontent was near universal in the face of the slow-motion inevitability of the deadly black lung disease and in the stunning horror of each recurrent coal mine catastrophe. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s and remember well the three-day week, electricity blackouts Most Popular Now | 56,514 people are reading stories on the site right now. In 1973, the union agreed to the Experimental Negotiating Agreement (ENA), a national no-strike pledge, that exchanged the right to strike in national bargaining for cash bonuses, cost-of living adjustments, and widened access to arbitration. UPSurge responded to the UPS settlement with wildcat strikes in eight Midwestern cities. This came, and it was decisive, not in 1974, and not in 1978, but in 1981, when the new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the striking air traffic controllers and decertified their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO). [3]Two nights later, the strike center began operations after one student phoned GordonFellman, a sociology professor who would provide guidance and assistance to the students as the strike grew, and asked to use Perlman Hall, the sociology building, as the strike headquarters. Then there was the heatwave in '76 when we had severe thunder storms, and water shortages. The Jackson State deaths did not result in a new surgeofprotestsand indeed did nothing to slow the decline in protests that was already noticeable by this time.[14]. How widely the NSIC demands were shared is unclear. This demonstration dramatically revealed the possibility of stopping Reagan, saving PATCO, and rescuing what remained of trade union strength and organization, still considerable in 1981. They re-flew, if just briefly, the tattered flags of workers control. WebThey were responsible for a number of bombings during the late 1960s and 1970s. Shut it Down: The May 1970 National Student Strike at the University of California at Berkeley, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin -Madison(Order No. The largest strike took place in the steel industry, in which nearly 350,000 workers went on strike in an attempt to gain the right to bargain. In addition to the four students killed by the National Guard at Kent State, two students were shot by Guardsmen at Jackson State on May 14 and nine were injured by Guardsmen wielding bayonets at the University of New Mexico on May 8. late engr. That is, they fought for control of their jobs. Despite the strikes overwhelming success in traditional strongholds of student activism on the coasts and in the major cities in the Midwest like Chicago and Minneapolis, the student strike was in no way restricted to these areas. The 1972 strike at the General Motors colossal plant at Lordstown, Ohio, was led by long-haired, unshaven workers. Steelworkers retained the right to strike on local issues, and in 1977, there were more than one hundred strike votes, compared to just seven in 1974. Also contributing to the violence was backlash from students and others who supported the war or otherwise opposed the strike. The miners were exhausted in 1978, but not defeated. The AFT was organized as a trade union, and its roots were in the cities, above all in New York City; it was affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The conflict was, in this sense, symbolic. WebStrikes increased, and in 1970 over 10 million working days were lost through strike action, including those of nurses and electricity workers. This was just the beginning. The majority of these new members were women, and many were black and Latino; tens of thousands of these new members attended university in the 1960s. In 1963, Tony Boyle, a nonentity from Montana handpicked by Lewis, inherited the leadership of the union. Among the millions of students who participated in the May 1970 strike wave, many and perhaps most had more limited concerns. I seem to remember contests of how to get along with tiny amounts of water - winners combined boiling food, washing dishes, bathing, washing clothes and finally, using the remains to water the garden, in about the same order with the same water. I was lucky enough to find a whole bag of used syringes! The rank and file accepted this, though only barely nearly half voted to stay out longer. Elsewhere, the impact of recession in 1974 was devastating, above all in the auto industry. High school participation was much more limited and was restricted to major hubs of student protest like eastern Massachusetts, New York City, and the Bay Area. They dominated the internal life of the machines, and looked to the Democrats and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for remediation. The operators wanted what miners called a 1930s-style contract, with the right to fire strikers, big health deductibles, and punitive absentee controls. My mother never forgave Labour or the trade unions for that.Carl Parry, Antalya, Turkey, Trafalgar Square was a mountain of black garbage bags twitching with rats. WebMonday, May 4, 1970. WebOf course, compared to half a century ago, there still arent many strikes in the U.S. The union officers were left to settle disputes behind closed doors in smoked-filled rooms. The trade union leaders had become increasingly wedded to collaboration with the employers in a sort of modus vivendi. [18]It is unclear if violent response from law enforcement and counter-protesters did anything to quell striking students protests or dampen their commitment to the strike. Candles and power cuts are my memories of the 70s. Nationally, hundreds of thousands worked in basic steel. Two movements in the Teamsters also illustrate that the rebellion continued. US flight delays: Severe storms batter airlines' schedules - CNN Eichsteadt,Shut it Down: The May 1970 National Student Strike at the University of California at Berkeley, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin -Madison(Ann Arbor: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, 2007), 3, [2]National Strike Information Center,Newsletter #7(Waltham: 1970), 1, [3]Mia Edelstein, Prof. In the Teamsters, then the largest industrial union in the country, the TDU set out to build a national rank-and-file movement within the union, a corrupt union, often with close ties to the mob (the gangsters who cut deals with the unions officers, national and local, and sought ways to slice up the unions highly lucrative pension fund). Though Nixon insisted that this was not an invasion of Cambodia, to many it signaled that the war in Southeast Asia was not ending; it was expanding. They were joined by teachers, who honored picket lines set up at the schools. At the same time, according to Murphy, teachers complained about over supervision, increasing bureaucratization, inappropriate assignments, and a lack of control over licensing, training and assignments. Out of these conflicts emerged what was soon to be the nations largest union demonstrating that, given the right circumstances and the willingness to act, trade unions, and above all progressive trade unions, could still grow and succeed. Trying times, but we managed to keep generating as long as we were needed.John Blackburn, Wetherby UK, I don't remember all the political chaos, but I do remember playing Scrabble by candlelight and the fact that we couldn't bury my deceased grandfather. In the years between 1976 and 1979, there were, again, strikes nearly everywhere that is, in every sector and throughout the country. 17,029 pages were read in the last minute. . Subscribe today to get it in print at a special discounted rate! . WebRace Relations Act 1968 1975 EEC Referendum Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1976 leadership election Cabinet LibLab pact Winter of Discontent 1979 Scottish devolution . In addition to this, the power station was picketed by miners so that we had extreme difficulty receiving coal supplies and getting rid of our waste product - ash. The worst strike for many was on throwaway nappies. b. It wasn't a great success. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) grew as well, though not nearly so dramatically. There were 5,716 strikes in 1971 alone, according to government data from when the Fellman, Gordon. No bread? Eichsteadt, J. E. (2007). Workers came from as far as Portland, Oregon, and Boston, Massachusetts, though overwhelmingly from the central states. However, this does not indicate that the strike had failed to make a lasting impact or achieve its goals, as it was never intended to be permanent. In 1974, it won a Supreme Court case striking down mandatory leave for pregnant teachers. Only an early settlement by the SEIU leaders prevented a much wider strike. Ten contract demands were chosen; they focused on the following areas: part-timers, appearance standards; supervisors working, unsafe equipment, sick days, holidays, and radios. Commonly, they called themselves radicals; they were defiant and courageous advocates of direct action to change their world. FLOC was founded by former student activist Baldemar Velsquez. In 1974, he received three life sentences. Eichsteadtargues that the Kent State killings ensured that the already historic protests across the nation would only get bigger because the war had literally come home.[13]That four students had been shot simply for protesting made the student strike personal for students, and for some superseded the importance of the invasion of Cambodia. An AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) strike in San Jose, California, in the late 1970s. [1]J.E. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its accounting of the year 1970, revealed an extraordinary statistic: there had been, in that year alone, 5,716 strikes, involving 3 million workers. There was more to the 1970s, such as music, fashion and long, hot summers. A full 200,000 steelworkers lost their jobs. These are just two examples in a history yet to be written. In September 1975, in Boston, 4,950 teachers, 90 percent of the workforce, struck in response to a bargaining impasse their strike also, however, crippled the districts two-week-old, court-ordered desegregation program. I got married in 1974 and when I went to rent a TV from the local Co-op was not allowed to in my own name as I was a woman. And, as their signs so often said, they fought for dignity, a central demand, of course, of the southern civil rights movement. In addition I remember the queues of cars at garages in Stevenage to get the little petrol that there was. Shut It Down! The nice thing about electricity shortages was that they were announced on the wireless, by area, beforehand. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) voted to shut down the state of Ohio. The miners, with their new leadership, struck for twenty-eight days, winning a package valued above 40 percent. In total, one hundred thousand coal miners were believed to have been killed in the mines in the twentieth century. Category:1970 labor disputes and strikes - Wikipedia The recession raced through US industry. This, then, was not the labor movement of the 1950 and 60s, though those decades, too, had been at times places of workplace turmoil. In these cases, protests were so impactful that administrators were forced to cancel classes for some length of time, whether it was a day, a week, or the rest of the school year, signaling students success in disrupting campus operations. The meeting was part business, part protest rally, part celebration and it was certainly unparalleled in UPS history. Already on our list? Candles could not be found in hardware stores, but were plentiful in Harrods. In Toledo, factory workers left their jobs to join truckers at the interchange of I-75 and the Ohio Turnpike. Subscribe today to get it in print! The New York Review of Books, October 8, 1970, Letters sec. The Municipal Railways mostly black motormen and conductors joined in, as did transit drivers. Get our print magazine for just $20 a year. U.S. postal strike of 1970 - Wikipedia Labour disputes in the UK - Office for National Statistics I believe in the profit system. In Chicago, a truckers strike a revolt against the union leadership, according to the New York Times spread nationwide, including to Los Angeles and Cleveland, where roving pickets fought with police and national guardsmen. In 1967, Elizabeth Koontz, an African American classroom teacher from North Carolina, became the NEAs first black president. . In bitter strikes of miners at Stearns, Kentucky, and factory workers in Elwood, Indiana, strikers were beaten, shot at, and arrested. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Native Americans, gay men, lesbians, and women organized to change discriminatory laws and pursue government support for their interests, Charlton, Linda. There, at a meeting of hundreds of people, the original plans for a student strike against the war were laid and the Brandeis students volunteered to make their campusstrike headquarters. At the same time, whatever the merits of this system, these were restricted to a core of union members, skilled workers, and the inheritors of the industrial wars of the 30s. National Strike Information Center,Newsletter #5,7 May 1970, National Strike Information Center,Newsletter #7,11 May 1970. The strike began in New York City and spread to some other cities in the following When defense production swelled the economy in the middle 1960s, the nation experienced a rash of strikes. This is well beyond the scope of this investigation. WebMore than 7,800 flights across the United States were delayed or canceled Monday after powerful storms ripped through the parts of the country, mainly in the Southeast and the The NEA was already a large organization in the 1960s. Nevertheless, in 1956, George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO for twenty-four years (195579), speaking to the convention of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), reassured the delegates assembled there: I never went on strike in my life, never ordered anyone else to run a strike, never had anything to do with a picket line . A Report on the First National Student Strike in U.S. History, May, 1970. "Prof.FellmanRecalls Campus Electricity during Vietnam Era." Steelworkers won recognition in the shipyards at Newport News, following a two-year strike. The origins of the black caucus movement were in these conditions. That campuses across the South, including Alabama, Arkansas, andMissippippi, joined the strike movement speaks to the importance of this singular moment. WebThe 1960s were a period when longheld values and norms of behavior seemed to break down, particularly among the young. The number of strikes remained high throughout the decade they amounted to tens of thousands and only fell off dramatically in 1982. Farmworkers joined substitute teachers to shut down school bus barns. ANS: E REF: p. 438 e. Why were there so many strikes in the year after However, if one were to list the issues that drovethe vast majority ofstudents to strike it would include the invasion of Cambodia, the shootings at Kent State, the presence of ROTC on campus, and the imprisonment of members of the Black Panther Party. Sources: National Strike Information Center newsletters from Kent State University Digital Archives and the Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections Library, Brandeis University. The union's grip was total, and the atmosphere was poisonous. Thus, there is no consistent definition for what it meant for a campus to be on strike beyond that students there engaged in at least one of the broad variety of potential protest actions available to them and that some students boycotted classes there for at least one day. "There Can Be No Business as Usual: The University of North Carolina and the Student Strike of May 1970." The Ford Motor Company shut down 22 of its 66 plants in the United States, idling 55 percent of its hourly paid work force of 155,000. In an industry still dominated by small and medium-size firms, UPS became an innovator it specialized in Taylorism, a form of scientific management that took control of every detail in work, producing, in Harry Bravermans words, the disassociation of the labor process from the skills of the worker. UPS introduced new technologies, added airfreight, and brought in students and young workers as part-timers. Long lines at unemployment offices became the norm, as did free food distribution in industrial centers. The growth of US public sector unions in the 50s and 60s was, according to Mark Maier, analogous to the expansion of private sector unions during the 1930s. Women entered the service and public-sector sections of the labor force in millions; they became the backbone of the new teachers movements, in particular of the NEA, now transformed into a union. WebDuring the 1970s, most workers were part of a union, battling for higher pay and better working conditions. Film and TV writers are now in their 8th week of a strike against the major film studios. There is no compatibility between the NEA commitment and the AFT laissez-faire attitude on this issue. From the first, the NEA enthusiastically supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for women. A Report on the First National Student Strike in U.S. History, May, 1970 (Chicago: Urban Research Corporation, 1970); New York Tmes, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Atlanta Constitution digital copies from ProQuest Historical Newspapers. In another setting, Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), complained that these hundreds of thousands of young workers . Several points might be made here. The NEA was highly decentralized, certainly in comparison to the top-down unionism of the AFT. These statistics are not particularly surprising, given the geography of other progressive student movements and organizations of the 1960s and 1970s and suggest the strikes ties to the New Left. Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, responded to the new Reagan administrations aggressive anti-union stance by organizing Solidarity Day in Washington, DC: September 19, 1981 though, to his shame, the defense of PATCO was not the central demand. In addition, this recession was accompanied by inflation hence the term stagflation and with it increasing pressure on workers to resist. They flew in bread from France until that was stopped and, if there was flour in the house, one had to bake (or not). The first was in 1975, when 80,000 miners struck for the right to strike. "Brandeis Building Is Center for Student Strike Data." In the 60s and 70s, there were continuous conflicts strikes, official and unofficial, including, in 1973, the Pittsburgh wildcat strike with roving pickets that shut down UPS operations in Western Pennsylvania and much of Ohio. Governor Ronald Reagan threatened to send in the National Guard, but the strike continued to spread. Why From the beginning, the national student strike, as its founders imagined it, was deeply connected to the civil rights movement and racial justice. In addition, it was based on a steadily expanding economy of the postwar boom the years of prosperity fueled by war and war production which came to an end in the late-60s crisis of profitability and the employers response to it. Inevitably, however, the unions still reflected the institutions in which they developed.