13-04-2010, 04:52 AM
Wow, it's just like the days of Matewan, which is both a May 19, 1920 massacre and a--great great--movie about the massacre.
From IMDB:
"Mingo County, West Virginia, 1920. Coal miners, struggling to form a union, are up against company operators and gun thugs; Black and Italian miners, brought in by the company to break the strike, are caught between the two forces. Union activist and ex-Wobbly Joe Kenehan, sent to help organize the union, determines to bring the local, Black, and Italian groups together. Drawn from an actual incident; the characters of Sid Hatfield, Cabell Testerman, C. E. Lively, and Few Clothes Johnson were based on real people."
Haven't we come a long way? Backwards.
Union busting costs lives.
Unions were formed in response to loss of life, e.g., the Triangle Shirtwaste Company fire of March 25, 1911 wherein 146 employees died a hideous death. It was then that the public finally realized that supporting unions was a matter of life and death.
http://www.csun.edu/~ghy7463/mw2.html
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/hi...g_fire.cfm
"The Life of a Shirtwaist Maker The shirtwaist makers, as young as age 15, worked seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a half-hour lunch break. During the busy season, the work was nearly non-stop. They were paid about $6 per week. In some cases, they were required to use their own needles, thread, irons and occasionally their own sewing machines. The factories also were unsanitary, or as a young striker explained, “unsanitary—that’s the word that is generally used, but there ought to be a worse one used.” At the Triangle factory, women had to leave the building to use the bathroom, so management began locking the steel exit doors to prevent the “interruption of work” and only the foreman had the key."
That's why the employees were locked in the building (like Walmart does to employees in this era). And they burned to death because the building was locked.
From IMDB:
"Mingo County, West Virginia, 1920. Coal miners, struggling to form a union, are up against company operators and gun thugs; Black and Italian miners, brought in by the company to break the strike, are caught between the two forces. Union activist and ex-Wobbly Joe Kenehan, sent to help organize the union, determines to bring the local, Black, and Italian groups together. Drawn from an actual incident; the characters of Sid Hatfield, Cabell Testerman, C. E. Lively, and Few Clothes Johnson were based on real people."
Haven't we come a long way? Backwards.
Union busting costs lives.
Unions were formed in response to loss of life, e.g., the Triangle Shirtwaste Company fire of March 25, 1911 wherein 146 employees died a hideous death. It was then that the public finally realized that supporting unions was a matter of life and death.
http://www.csun.edu/~ghy7463/mw2.html
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/hi...g_fire.cfm
"The Life of a Shirtwaist Maker The shirtwaist makers, as young as age 15, worked seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a half-hour lunch break. During the busy season, the work was nearly non-stop. They were paid about $6 per week. In some cases, they were required to use their own needles, thread, irons and occasionally their own sewing machines. The factories also were unsanitary, or as a young striker explained, “unsanitary—that’s the word that is generally used, but there ought to be a worse one used.” At the Triangle factory, women had to leave the building to use the bathroom, so management began locking the steel exit doors to prevent the “interruption of work” and only the foreman had the key."
That's why the employees were locked in the building (like Walmart does to employees in this era). And they burned to death because the building was locked.