FEBRUARY 27
1875 – Legendary Labor leader and socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs becomes charter member and secretary of the Vigo Lodge, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. Five years later he is leading the national union and in 1893 helps found the nation’s first industrial union, the American Railway Union.
1932 – Thirty-eight miners die in a coal mine explosion in Boissevain, Va.
1937 – Four-hundred-fifty Woolworth’s workers and customers occupy store for eight days in support of Waiters and Waitresses Union, Detroit.
1939 – The Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes, a major organizing tool for industrial unions, are illegal.
1943 – Mine disaster kills 75 at Red Lodge, Mont.
FEBRUARY 28
1898 – U.S. Supreme Court finds that a Utah state law limiting mine and smelter workers to an eight-hour workday is constitutional.
1938 – A 15-week strike in San Francisco by 108 members of the ILGWU’s “Chinese Ladies Garment Workers Union” was started against a National Dollar Stores factory and three retail stores on Feb. 26, 1938. Two weeks after white retail clerks struck in support, the strike was won. Workers received a pay increase, enforcement of health and safety regulations, and guarantees of work. Although the company closed a year later, the union later helped Chinese workers get positions in previously white-only shops, and some moved into leadership positions in the ILGWU.
1948 – (Actually leap year Feb. 29) Screen Actors Guild member Hattie McDaniel...
stage at the Ninth Circuit, where pharmaceutical companies say a momentous new ruling "illustrates perfectly" the constitutional concerns of U. S. Supreme Court justices regarding FCA enforcement. ...