Miller is a local author, professor at San Diego City College, and vice president for the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931. He lives in Golden Hill.
Labor is hip again. With unions gaining new attention through last fall’s strike wave and ongoing high-profile organizing drives at Amazon warehouses, Starbucks and elsewhere, perhaps it’s time people took labor history seriously.
California officially promotes labor history in May as part of Labor History Month, something Fred Glass, author of “From Mission to Microchip: A History of California Labor,” the first serious study of its kind in decades, has called the Golden State’s “best kept secret.” We need it because, as Glass insists, “Most people are vaguely aware that unions were behind such advances for the working class as the 8-hour day and 40-hour work week, minimum wage and child labor laws, and workplace safety and health regulations. However, most people also don’t know the history, or what it took in the way of collective effort and sacrifice to achieve them. Labor History Month provides us an opportunity to explore that history and honor those who came before us and put their bodies on the line.”
When I recently asked Glass what events stood out to him as particularly relevant for the average Californian to know, he picked three, beginning with one of the few general strikes in American history: “The 1934 San Francisco general strike —one of just 15 or so citywide general strikes in U.S. history —was a...
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