Today in Labor History March 25, 1947: A coal mine exploded in Centralia, Illinois killing 111. American folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded a song about the Centralia disaster called “The Dying Miner.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4pShnMe6Rk
#workingclass #LaborHistory #centralia #coal #mine #disaster #woodyguthrie #mining #coal #WorkplaceDeaths #folkmusic #miners #illinois
On this day, 6 March 1974, UK coal miners called off their four-week strike after accepting a 35% pay offer in a massive victory, which had already brought down
On this day, 5 March 1984, the great UK miners’ strike began when miners at Cortonwood colliery walked out in response to the Conservative government’s anno
Today in Labor History March 3, 1985: Arthur Scargill declared an end to Britain’s National Miners’ Strike. The miners returned to work without winning any major demands. After the strike, most of Britain's coal mines closed, supposedly because they weren’t profitable. Consequently, the union shrunk from 170,000 members down to 100 by 2015. Margaret Thatcher declared the miners the “Enemy Within.”
#workingclass #LaborHistory #strike #miners #britain #MargaretThatcher #union
"I came looking for history. Instead, it began asking something of me. Not remembrance—that was easy—but response."
Masha Hamilton traces her great-grandfather's escape from the 1917 Bisbee Deportation: https://longreads.com/2026/02/19/bisbee-deportation-vigilantes-miners/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
#Longreads #Essay #History #Deportation #Bisbee #Arizona #Strike #Miners
Today in Labor History February 19, 1990: After a 10-month strike, rank-and-file miners at the Pittston Coal Co. ratified a new contract. Ninety-eight miners and a minister occupied a Pittston Coal plant in Carbo, Virginia, inaugurating the year-long strike. While a one-month Soviet coal strike dominated the U.S. media, the year-long Pittston strike received almost no media coverage in the U.S. The wildcat walkouts involved 40,000 miners in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. Over 2,000 people occupied Camp Solidarity. Miners and their families engaged in Civil Disobedience, pickets, work stoppages and sometimes sabotage, vandalism and violence. Over 4,000 were arrested.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #pittston #coal #strike #union #miners #sabotage #vandalism #picket #CivilDisobedience #solidarity #soviet #wildcat
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