Topic: Labor
This People's History presents the full official investigative report prepared by the state chief coal mine inspector of an incident at the Elk Mine in King County in which miner John A. Wolti was res...
Seattle-born activist and musician Earl H. Robinson is remembered for writing some of the labor movement's most famous ballads, including "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night." Robinson attended West ...
Tyree Scott was a Seattle civil rights and labor leader who broke down barriers to women and minority workers in the construction industry and also worked to improve working conditions for low-income ...
Seattle-Tacoma (Sea-Tac) International Airport and its owner, the Port of Seattle, faced major challenges during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Foremost, their own successful investmen...
This file contains an undated, unsigned letter describing what it was like working at Seattle City Light in the early years, around 1910. The letter is held in the Seattle Municipal Archives. It descr...
The Seattle General Strike began at 10 a.m. on February 6, 1919, and paralyzed the city for five days. Never before had the nation seen a labor action of this kind. Many in Seattle were expecting revo...
This is a history of Seattle Goodwill, a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1923. The organization provides employment training and basic education to individuals experiencing significant barr...
More than a century ago, a debate about the ethics and authority of law enforcement began in Seattle as citizens, mainly women, voiced concerns about the abuses of power committed against women and gi...
From August 19 to November 29, 1936, 35 newspaper writers employed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went on strike. (The newspaper had about 70 employees on the news staff, including reporters, libra...
The Seattle Union Record, published from 1899 to 1928, was labor's voice in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 30 years, reaching a peak circulation of 80,000, and achieving its greatest fame during the...
Elmer Stuart Smith was a central figure in the Centralia Massacre that occurred on November 11, 1919. Smith had advised a group of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members that they had a right t...
Walker C. Smith was a leading member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union also known as the Wobblies, who wrote and edited socialist newspapers, philosophical tracts, pamphlets, satirica...
When Seattle was founded in 1851, Lake Union was the backwater of a backwater town. A natural dam at Montlake sealed it off from Lake Washington, while only a tiny stream through Fremont drained it in...
In early 1944, a few score engineers at the Boeing Company founded the Seattle Professional Engineering Employees Association. Although not quite a union in the traditional sense, the new group worked...
Anna Louise Strong remains one of the notable radicals in the history of the United States. During her Seattle years (1914-1921), she won her election as the lone woman on the School Board, only to be...
There have been about 75 teachers' strikes in the state of Washington since the first one, in Aberdeen, in 1972. The author of this People's History, Steve Kink, had a long career with the stateâ...
The fifth essay in the Turning Points series prepared by Walt Crowley and the HistoryLink staff for The Seattle Times focuses on leftwing and labor politics in Seattle and Washington state. The articl...
This is a transcript of an oral history by Megan Cornish and Henry Noble. Cornish was one of the first women hired by Seattle City Light as a light-pole climber. She eventually made it to senior power...
Florasina Ware was the quintessential activist, known for raising a strong and logical voice on behalf of children, the elderly, and the poor.
Along with every other major West Coast port, Seattle's harbor was paralyzed from May 9 to July 31, 1934, by one of the most important and bitter labor strikes of the twentieth century. The struggle p...
Randall E. Rydeen's (1906-1998) account of work and life at Cedar Falls was recorded on May 20, 1993 by Marian Arlin. The following is an excerpt from the Oral History Project of the Cedar River Water...
Walt Sickler (b. 1927) worked for Seattle City Light for 40 years. In 1989, he retired as the Director of Operations, in charge of all the dams, power transmission systems, and shops. His first job wa...
The Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held in Seattle from November 30 to December 3, 1999, brought together trade ministers and other officials from the WTO's 135 me...
Douglas Johnston shares his photographs of the WTO demonstrations from November 28 to December 2, 1999.