You..ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Wednesday June 10, 1903
Oxnard (Ventura County), California - AFL refuses charter on basis of race.
A strike took place here in April which led to the forming of the Sugar Beet and Farm Laborers Union of Oxnard. The strike was fought with a great deal of unity between Mexican and Japanese workers, and they desired to be united together in the same union organization. But when they applied for a charter from the American Federation of Labor, J.M. Larraras, the Mexican secretary of the union, received this reply from Samual Gompers, "Your union must guarantee that it will under no circumstances accept membership of any Chinese or Japanese."
J.M. Larraras recently sent this reply to Gompers:
..Our Japanese brothers here were the first to recognize the importance of cooperating and uniting in demanding a fair wage scale...They were not only just with us, but they were generous when one of our men was murdered by hired assassins of the oppressors of labor, they gave expression to their sympathy in a very substantial form. In the past we have counseled, fought and lived on very short rations with our Japanese brothers, and toiled with them in the fields, and they have been uniformly kind and considerate.
We would be false to them and to ourselves and to the cause of unionism if we now accepted privileges for ourselves which are not accorded to them We are going to stand by men who stood by us in the long, hard fight which ended in a victory over the enemy. We therefore respectfully petition the A.F. of L. to grant us a charter under which we can unite all the sugar beet and field laborers of Oxnard without regard to their color or race. We will refuse any other kind of a charter except one which will wipe out race prejudices and recognize our fellow workers as being a good as ourselves.
SOURCE
History of the Labor Movement in the United States Vol III
The Policies and Practices of the American Federation of Labor 1900-1909
-by Philip S. Foner
International Pub, 1981
Tuesday June 10, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia - First Session of the Senate Investigating Committee
The Senate Investigating Committee began taking testimony this morning in Charleston. Five U.S. Senators make up this committee: Senator Swanson, the Chairman, and Senators Maritine, Shields, Borah, and Kenyon. Together they are more formally known as the Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor of the United States Senate. They are here to investigate conditions in the Paint Creek District of West Virginia. Also present were the attorneys representing the United Mine Workers and the coal operators. Bonner S. Hill, Sheriff of Kanawha County was also represented by counsel.
SOURCE
Conditions in Paint Creek District. West Virginia
Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on
Education and Labor of the United States Senate
Part 1
http://books.google.com/...
Monday June 10, 2013
Cost Rica - Labor Unions Planning General Strike
This news comes from InsideCostaRica.com:
Costa Rica’s largest public and private labor unions and social organizations are planning a nationwide general strike in protest of labor reforms made by the government of President Laura Chinchilla, which they say seek to remove workers’ “human right” to strike.
The national general strike is planned for Tuesday, June 25th, according to Franco Benavides of the Labor Ministry workers’ association, known as AFUMITRA.
Read full article here:
http://insidecostarica.com/...
A Miner's Life
"Union miners stand together, do not heed the coal boss tale.
Keep your hand upon your wages, and your eye upon scale."