Topic: Labor
Today's labor union for Seattle's professional musicians is the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Local 76-493, and that cumbersome name reflects perfectly the organization's tangled and sometime...
Seattle visual artist, writer, and researcher Don Fels was loaned a trove of historical photographs depicting airplane building at The Boeing Company in the 1920s and early 1930s. The photographs ...
Gary Ewing (1942-2000) died on October 5, 2000, one week past his 58th birthday. This extraordinary, courageous, funny man was a passionate champion of working people and a loyal friend of many. Gary ...
Dave Beck was a key leader of the Teamster's Union on the West Coast for some 40 years, from the late 1920s to the early 1960s. He moved to Seattle at age 4 and began his career as a child delivering ...
Bennie Paris worked for City Light for 39 years, beginning as a clerk in September 1956 and (with about three years out to have children) retiring as Senior Finance Analyst in January 1998. This file ...
Bill Newby (b. 1935) was born in the Seattle City Light community of Newhalem on the Skagit River. He worked for City Light starting in 1955 as a laborer, digging ditches. He retired in 1996 as Direct...
On April 22, 1948, the Aeronautical Machinists Union, IAM District Lodge 751, struck the Boeing Company. William Allen was then president of Boeing. For the Machinists the issues were preserving longs...
Homer T. Bone, a Democratic senator representing Washington in the United States Congress (1932-1944) and later a Judge in the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (1944-1956), has been dubbed...
The opening of Seattle's Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1917 spurred the development on Lake Union of a number of boat-building yards that for more than 40 years used traditional methods and materials ...
John E. Campbell of Everett served as a member of the Washington State House of Representatives in the 1909 and 1911 sessions. He was elected to the state Senate in 1912, representing the 38th Distric...
This is an excerpt from a HistoryLink interview by Heather MacIntosh with Dotty DeCoster in April 2000. DeCoster was an outspoken member of the Women's Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s in Seattle....
In the late 1960s, the Mexican-American civil rights movement flourished throughout the United States, in 1967 making its presence known in Washington's Yakima Valley. A dramatic shift occurred in the...
In the late nineteenth century a few Chinese immigrants found work in the San Juan Islands in domestic service, on farms, or in mining and logging camps, but most Chinese laborers came to the islands ...
Through the middle of the twentieth century, when hundreds of coal miners worked the coal mines of eastern King and Pierce counties, the annual Coal Miners' Picnic was a highlight of the summer for mi...
On a Friday morning in early July 1873, Mary Montgomery (1846-1942) leaves a Northern Pacific Railroad construction camp in present-day Thurston County on horseback, the beginning of a two-day dash to...
On June 3, 1876, miners drive 40 Chinese mineworkers from the from the Newcastle mines. Newcastle is located in the Puget Sound region in east King County. As of January, 300 miners were employed ther...
On October 11, 1882, Seattle printers organize the Seattle Typographical Union Local 202.
On September 7, 1885, in the eastern King County community of Squak (later renamed Issaquah), white and Indian hop pickers gang up on Chinese workers brought in by the Wold Bros. to pick hops at a che...
On March 22, 1886, longshoremen on the Tacoma waterfront cease loading lumber onto ships, and demand a 10-cent-an-hour raise. The strike continues for five days while employers attempt but fail to hir...
In 1886, striking miners cause coal shipments from Seattle to fall to less than a tenth of coal shipped the year before. Job actions are led by the Knights of Labor and mine owners respond by firing a...
On June 12, 1886, longshoremen working on ships docked on the Seattle waterfront walk off the job, leading to negotiations and then acceptance of the Stevedores, Longshoremen and Riggers Union of Seat...
On April 15, 1887, seven Seattle cigar makers form Local 188 of the Cigar Makers International Union of America.
On August 17, 1888, Roslyn miners strike for an eight-hour day, and the Northern Pacific Coal Company brings in trainloads of Black miners as strikebreakers. To protect the strikebreakers and to intim...
On February 15, 1889 Seattle tailors organize Tailors' Union Local No. 71. Wages in 1889 are about $2.85 per day.
During March 1889, stone cutters from Seattle organize a union, a branch of Journeymen Stone Cutters Association of America. Stone cutters earn $4.50 per 9 hour day and work five or six days per week...
On or near March 3, 1890, a woman, Mrs. S. R. Keenan, addresses a Spokane labor meeting, the first time a woman has ever done so in that city.
On April 13, 1890, the Seattle Brewers and Malters Union Local 142 forms with about 65 members.
On May 21, 1890, the City of Hoquiam is incorporated. The move to incorporate is driven largely by lumber capitalists, men like George H. Emerson (1846-1914) seeking to increase outside investment and...