On this day in labor history, the year was 1917.

That was the day the Granite Mountain and Speculator Mines in Butte, Montana caught fire, killing 168 miners.

It is considered the worst underground hard-rock mining disaster in the nation’s history.

Just weeks after the United States had entered World War I, the demand for copper had surged.

Granite Mountain, like many of the nation’s mines, operated around the clock to meet war production needs.

In his book, Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917,Michael Punke notes the irony of the disaster, which began as an effort to improve safety.

A sprinkler system had just been installed.

The final task was the relocation of an electrical cable.

The cable was insulated with oil-soaked cloth, sheathed in lead.

Workers lost control of the three-ton cable as they lowered it into the mine and it fell to the bottom of the shaft.

Carrying a commonly used carbide-burning lamp, the night shift foreman accidently ignited the cable as he planned its removal.

The conflagration was virtually immediate and burned for more than three days.

At the time, 415 miners were at work on the overnight shift.

Smoke and gases quickly filled both mines.

With no alarm system in place, those that could not escape succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

In 1996, a memorial plaza was dedicated to those who lost their lives.

It details a slice of Butte’s mining and labor history that culminated in tragedy.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1912.

That was the day Boston Carmen of local 589 voted to strike.

Workers had been fighting to organize for years.

They now demanded union recognition.

In the months before the strike, union representatives had attempted to meet with management, with no success.

The President of the L, in the days before it was called the T, went so far as to summarily fire 282 employees, claiming the need to maintain discipline.

Incensed at the union-busting maneuver, workers walked off the job in the early hours of the morning.

They began cutting trolley ropes, smashing train windows and removing handles on controller boxes.

In an effort to bust the strike, management formed a company union.

They also brought in over 700 professional strikebreakers, and provided housing for the scabs.

Over the course of several weeks, dozens of strikers were arrested on charges that ranged from calling strikebreakers scabs to trumped-up felony charges.

AFL president Samuel Gompers visited the picket lines in a show of solidarity.

Area labor unions provided financial and legal support.

The union filed charges with the State Board of Arbitration.

They argued management had caused the strike by firing hundreds of workers for union activity and coercing workers against joining the union.

Once the Board confirmed the union’s charges, the Governor and Mayor both pushed for resolution.

As well, Boston’s Central Labor Union threatened a general strike.

Union recognition finally came on July 28thand the first contract was signed a year later.

Since that time, local 589 has weathered more than a century of anti-union storms as it continues to fight for better wages, hours, and working conditions.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1989.

That was the day the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Environmental Protection Agency raided a Department of Energy facility just outside Denver, Colorado.

Rockwell International operated Rocky Flats plutonium-processing plant on behalf of the federal government.

From 1952 until 1989, workers there made plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads.

They reported procedurally unsafe working conditions and rare forms of cancer.

Workers also worried about disposal of radioactive material and the potential public-health threat the facility posed.

Just after 9 am. 90 FBI and EPA agents executed Operation Desert Glow, beginning their raid and investigation into potential environmental crimes at the 6000-plus acre facility.

According to Kristen Iversen, author of Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Shadow of Rocky Flats, evidence collected over the course of 18 days indicated that “for more than 30 years, spills, leaks and waste disposal practices have contaminated dozens of sites around the facility. The most significant public health issue is groundwater pollution… and more than 2,640 pounds of plutonium is missing.”

The 21-month Grand Jury investigation revealed that the facility had been burning radioactive and toxic waste in an incinerator for decades, despite regulations requiring its shutdown.

It also revealed secret dumping of radioactive waste into officially closed waste ponds.

Infuriated jurors wrote their own grand jury report when they learned a plea deal had been cut, with millions in fines, but that there would be no indictments.

Their report remains sealed.

Rocky Flats was eventually declared a Superfund site and years of clean up began.

In 2001, congress decided to turn most of the acreage into a wildlife refugee, with park trails for hiking and horseback riding.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1998.

That was the day GM workers in Flint, Michigan walked off the job.

9200 workers with UAW locals 659 and 651 had shut down a company, which at the time, accounted for one percent of the country’s economic output.

Production at GM plants throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico all came to a screeching halt.

Many noted that what began as a localized walkout became the most significant strike against GM since 1970.

Management had moved dies out of the Metal Center and shipped them to operations in Canada.

In an act of international solidarity, brothers and sisters in the CAW refused to handle the dies.

The seven-week strike was solid against a Wall St. attack on one of the last closed shops in the country.

The strike was also popular with autoworkers elsewhere, who confronted assembly line speedup, mandatory overtime and constant fear of plant closures.

It inspired GM workers in Indiana, Ohio and California to strike.

Even workers at the Tennessee-based Saturn plant, touted as a model in labor-management relations, voted to strike in response to threatened outsourcing.

But the strike essentially ended in a standoff.

The union had stopped GM from closing plants in Flint and Dayton, Ohio, at least for a while.

And GM agreed to invest millions in modernizing the Flint facilities.

But, weeks after the strike ended, GM bosses avowed more union-busting attacks.

They declared a two-pronged strategy: First, they intended to spin off the Delphi parts division as an independent operation.

Then, GM announced they planned to close existing U.S. plants in favor of new facilities that assembled pre-made parts, fabricated at non-union suppliers.

The war against the UAW had begun.

On this day in labor history the year was 1946.

That was the day the Detroit Free Press reported that a Grand Jury had been convened to investigate the severe beatings of four Briggs UAW local 212 officers over the previous 15 months.

Recording secretary Ken Morris had been the latest victim. He was brutally beaten May 31 behind his home.

Arthur Vega, leader of Local 212’s Flying Squadron was viciously attacked by thugs in March 1945 and suffered a broken arm and other injuries.

Next, Local 212 Sergeant-At-Arms Roy Snowden was clubbed on two separate occasions, suffering permanent injuries.

Then, in October 1945, Genora Dollinger, heroine of the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike and founder of the Women’s Emergency Brigades, was beaten so severely as she lay sleeping, that she was hospitalized in critical condition for weeks.

Since her Flint years, Dollinger had become active with Local 212.

She served as a leading member on the union committee established to investigate the earlier beatings.

Both the local and the international led investigations into the beatings and offered sizable rewards. Union militants noted the beatings benefited the company to be sure.

Briggs had fired all four victims at one point or another for union activity.

And strike preparations were underway when Morris’ wife found him with his head cracked open.

The UAW waited for the Grand Jury’s findings.

By years’ end, another local 212 shop steward had been beaten.

By 1951, union officials demanded a second Grand Jury investigation.

They accused Briggs of awarding a lucrative scrap contract to local mob boss Carl Renda in exchange for anti-union thuggery.

No charges were ever brought against the company, which insisted the violence stemmed from intra-union disputes.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1934.

That was the day striking Toledo Auto-Lite workers ratified an agreement, securing a number of first gains.

Workers won union recognition, wage increases, mechanisms to arbitrate grievances and demands, and the rehiring of all workers.

National Guard troops were withdrawn two days later.

It was truly a breakthrough in industrial organizing. Victory was ensured by a number of factors

Certainly, the six-day running battles that killed two strikers and injured hundreds had a profound impact.

But by the end of May, 85 of the 103 unions affiliated with Toledo’s Central Labor Union had voted in favor of a general strike.

As well, the powerful Edison workers demanded raises and union recognition with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Their business agent led the Committee of 23 that sought to organize the general strike in Toledo.

On June 1, 40,000 trade unionists amassed for a rally at Lucas County Courthouse Square, ready to strike.

By then the AFL had already appealed to President Roosevelt to intervene.

Edison workers won big the next day with a 22% raise and union recognition.

And then the tentative agreement was reached between Auto-Lite and UAW local 18364.

Historian Bryan Palmer notes, “These victories wrote finis to any mobilization for a general strike, but they paved the way for ongoing union victories in the automobile industry.

Before the year was out, 19 more auto-parts plants in Toledo would fall to union organizers.

A General Motors plant was rocked with the first successful strike in the history of this corporate giant, the opening blow in what proved to be a long and taxing effort to establish trade-unionism in the open shop bastions of the automobile industry.”

On this day in labor history, the year was 1952.

That was the day 650,000 steel workers walked off the job in an industry-wide strike.

The Supreme Court had just handed down a 6-3 ruling in the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer.

The court decided that the President had no authority to seize private property on the grounds of national security without prior authorization from Congress.

On April 4, President Harry Truman had issued Executive Order 10340, ordering Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer to seize the nation’s steel mills to ensure the continued production of steel, ostensibly for the war effort.

Seizure of the mills came after months of wrangling over wage increases and work rules between mill owners, the United Steelworkers and the Wage Stabilization Board.

Steel workers walked out just hours after the decision.

The impact was felt immediately. Lay-offs began at a number of steel-dependent industries.

By the end of the month, most defense industries and auto plants nationwide were completely shut down.

Consumer inventories of steel were almost totally depleted and exports ceased entirely.

The union’s ultimate goal was a master contract and the union shop.

They hoped to jump start negotiations by signing with the smaller companies first and forestall invoking of Taft-Hartley.

By July, the railroads began to suffer financial losses, as did California growers who lacked tin to can their crops.

After 53 days, mill owners and the union agreed to terms that were less than what the Wage Stabilization Board had recommended, far less than what the union had originally demanded, but much more than what the mill owners had been willing to concede.

More importantly, after 15 years of struggle, the United Steelworkers had finally won the union shop.

On this day in labor history, the year was 2000.

That was the day meatpackers at Dakota Premium Foods in St. Paul, Minnesota staged a seven-hour sit-down strike for health and safety.

They protested assembly line speed-up, being forced to work while injured and the dreaded “gang-time,” supervisors used to avoid paying overtime.

Remarkably, the organizing drive came after the workers took action on their own behalf.

The United Food and Commercial Workers had organized the plant briefly in the early 1990s.

They quickly lost ground when the company pressed a successful decertification campaign after refusing a first contract.

This time, workers found that as the assembly line pace increased, so did the rate of injuries.

Workers came into the plant that morning, resolved to make a stand.

Management bullied them for hours throughout the day to give up.

Finally they were forced to concede to many of the workers concerns, including observation of line speed changes and uniform hours of work.

Workers eagerly signed UFCW cards, while the company unleashed its propaganda campaign to scare workers away from the union.

Management claimed workers would have to pay outrageous sums in union dues, that they’d lose their medical benefits and that their names would be turned over to the federal government.

The undocumented among the workers, some of whom were the best union fighters in the plant, were unshaken by these threats.

Then the company began targeting the strike leaders with firings and endless job transfers.

Workers stood intransigent and the UFCW overwhelmingly won the NLRB election a month later.

The union successfully weathered years of continued harassment, threats and decertification campaigns, but could not survive the closing of the plant in 2014.