1912: In what may have been baseball’s first labor strike, the Detroit Tigers refuse to play after team leader Ty Cobb is suspended. Cobb was reinstated and the Tigers went back to work after the team manager’s failed attempt to replace the players with a local college team.
1917: Amalgamated Meat Cutters union organizers launch a campaign in the nation’s packinghouses that brought representation to 100,000 workers over the following two years.
1928: Big Bill Haywood, a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies), dies in exile in the Soviet Union.
1950: Atlanta transit workers, objecting to a new city requirement that they be fingerprinted as part of the employment process, go on strike.
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