On September 15, 1933, a young, New York labor organizer by the name of Rose Pesotta landed in Los Angeles. Pesotta once worked in Southern California where she had been discharged from a garment factory and blacklisted for union activity. Now Pesotta was returning at the request of garment workers to organize their industry. Within […]

Few who have seen the movie, Norma Rae, could forget the powerful image of Sally Fields as she stood on her workstation with a sign that read “union,” moments after her character was terminated for organizing. This moment would inspire anyone whose natural tendency is to fight for dignity and respect. Some, however, may be […]

For two days in December of 1946, the streets of Oakland were host to a worker’s holiday. Nearly 130,000 workers refused to work, shutting down commerce in the East Bay, and instead they flooded the streets in a show of solidarity against union busting. What started off as a small retail clerk strike grew into […]

On August 24, 1939, three men stood above a small metal trashcan with a copy of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath in hand. As a newspaper photographer snaps a shot, Clell Pruett, a local sharecropper, tosses the book into the trashcan, which was then followed by a match. Pruett, along with his boss, the […]

In the early hours of a hot August morning in 1917, the body of a young union organizer hanged off a railroad trestle near Butte, Montana. The body, beaten and bloody, was that of Frank Little, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Pinned to the body was a note that cautioned, […]