On this day in labor history, the year was 1951.
That was the day New York City was struck by the Great Bagel Famine.
Three hundred members across thirty-two bakeries, of the Bagel Bakers of America, local 338 walked off the job over wages and working conditions.
Morris Siegal, business agent for the local, stated that the Bakers Association had been “lax in living up to the welfare-fund payments and sanitary provisions of the contract.”
The bagel bakers produced 1.2 million bagels weekly for New York City consumers.
The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle noted “the only ones welcoming this respite are the salmon.”
Diners, delicatessens, and Teamster delivery drivers were all rocked by the strike, which lasted for six weeks.
The two sides were so deadlocked that a mediator who had effectively settled a smoked salmon dispute three years earlier, was brought in to help settle the conflict.
The bagel bakers won a $3 day wage increase and we're ready to return to work.
But the Teamsters would not begin deliveries until they were paid for lost wages due to lack of deliveries made during the strike.
The bagel bakers would engage in job actions effectively over the course of the next fifteen years until they too suffered the fate of many an industrial worker, that of automation.
Their labor would eventually be replaced by labor-saving bagel making machines by the late 1960s.
October 29 - Alice Doesn’t Day
October 28 - The Pony Express
October 27 - The 1948 Donora Smog
October 26 - America’s Florence Nightingale
October 25 - NY Daily News On Strike!
October 24 - Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!
October 23 - John Sweeney is Elected
October 22 - Pretty Boy Floyd Is Gunned Down
October 21 - Through Rain, Sleet, Snow & Anthrax
October 20 - Remembering Debs
October 19 - Tragedy on the Tracks
October 18 - Voice of an Era
October 17 - Fighting to End Poverty
October 16 - Thank A Farmer
October 15 - Too Little, Too Late for Radiation Sickness
October 14 - Marching for Equality
October 13 - We Whipped the Ivy League and You Can Too!
October 12 - Workers Begin to Come Together
October 11 - Remembering Mary Heaton Vorse
October 10 - With a Push of a Button, Oceans Are Joined
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