Pennsylvania coal miners, 1942

Reclaiming a Coal Town

When the coal business tanked in the 1930s, the company town of Pardeesville, Pennsylvania, briefly transformed itself through collective action.
the picket line outside Eaton’s during the 1984-85 strike

The Working Class Roots of Canadian Feminism

The increased participation of women in labor helped create the Canadian feminist movement.
Acland servants in 1897 by Sarah Angelina Acland

Who Does the Drudge Work? Answers from Edwardian Britain

In 1909, Kathlyn Oliver called for the creation of a servants' trade union that was “as important to the community as the worker[s] in any other sphere."
Sitdown strikers in the Fisher body plant factory number three. Flint, Michigan, 1937

The Flint Sit-Down Strike, From the Inside

Americans in "The Great Resignation" and "Strikevember" are the heirs of the 1936-1937 sit-down strike by auto workers in Flint, Michigan.
The cast and crew of a 1950's film at work on a sound stage

How Show Business Went Union

Since the nineteenth century, the IATSE union has organized behind-the-scenes workers, first in theater, then in the movies.
Jessie Maple (left) and Louise Tiranoff (right)

Black Camerawoman Jessie Maple’s Fight to Join a Union

Her climb into filmmaking began with programs designed to train African Americans. But to succeed, she needed to break into a mostly white male union.
A teacher teaches her young pupils how to spell, 1930.

The Woman Teacher Documents a Feminist Labor Union’s Victory

The UK’s National Union of Women Teachers went from splinter group to union in its own right, winning on equal pay—as The Woman Teacher shows first-hand.
Harry Gottlieb's Artists' Union membership card, 1935

How the Artists Union Shook Up the New Deal

When artists showed solidarity with one another and the larger labor movement, they won federal patronage.
Superbarrio

Superbarrio: The People’s Superhero

Defender of the poor tenants and evictor of the voracious landlords, a masked lucha libre wrestler rose from the ruins of Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake.
this photograph likely depicts one of the classrooms where migratory workers passing through Chicago obtained practical and academic educational experience.

The Hobo College of Hobohemia

Vagrancy laws targeted hobos at a time when there were few jobs for them. They responded by forming a union and helping to create Chicago’s Hobo College.