This site explores the controversial history of the Communist Party in the Pacific Northwest from 1919 to the present. The project is sponsored by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington and is one of the Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights Projects directed by Professor James Gregory.
One of the most significant struggles for workers’ rights began on January 12, 1912, in Lawrence, Mass., when thousands of textile workers began a walkout that would come to be known as the Bread and Roses Strike, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and the Singing Strike. Read an overview and find teaching resources below.
A report covering salary, class size & staffing, academic freedom, shared decision making, assignments and more.
In 1820 Lowell, known as East Chelmsford, MA at the time, had a population of 200 and was a farming community. Thirty years later, the population had grown to 33,000 and one could find 32 textile mills in existence there. Lowell was an ideal location for these mills because it was located near the Merrimac River. The river supplied the water necessary to run these factories.
APWU remembers the Great Postal Strike of March 1970. For more background on the successful wildcat strike that earned postal workers the right to bargain collectively for better pay and benefits.
In the early 19th century the United States of America began to experience many changes. In parts of the country there was a shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
In 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) issued the groundbreaking report, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve. The report provided a counter-narrative to ideas popular among corporate education reformers (or de-formers, as some like to say).
Women Have Always Worked: Fighting for Equality: 1950–2018.
An exploration from an online edX course.
On November 23, 1909, more than 20,000 Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and early twenties, launched an eleven-week general strike in New York’s shirtwaist industry. Dubbed the Uprising of the 20,000, it was the largest strike by women to date in American history.
The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Postal Service began on March 18, 1970, with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan who were demanding better wages.
