On this day in labor history, the year was 1918.
That was the day workers at Wagner Electric in St. Louis ended their twelve-day walkout, in exchange for promised negotiations regarding union recognition, higher wages and fewer work hours.
Wagner held defense contracts to provide detonators and firing pins for munitions.
With the U.S entrance into World War I, the orders increased, as did the labor shortage.
In this instance, more women entered the workforce.
Wagner was no exception.
During this period, nearly a quarter of the St. Louis factory workers were female.
Yet the unionized industries made no attempt to organize them.
Amid a strike wave that rocked the city, about 1000 men and women struck Wagner on March 6.
They demanded the reinstatement of coworkers who had been fired for attending a Machinist’s Union meeting.
A week later, close to 2700 workers were on strike.
The male workers at Wagner made less than half of their counterparts in the unionized industries, while their women coworkers made half of that!
Workers contended that Wagner violated federal contracts by refusing to honor the eight-hour day and equal pay for equal work.
Historian Rosemary Feurer notes the Ordnance Department reached a tentative deal to get workers back to the job and then spiked negotiations by smearing strikers as unpatriotic.
The company refused to address longstanding grievances.
According to Katharine Corbett, Wagner Electric also “required workers to sign loyalty pledges to the company.”
Over half the workforce would walkout the following month, with the support of Mother Jones.
Workers appealed to a more sympathetic War Labor Board, but found they could not get the agreements they demanded until the years of industrial organizing in the 1930s.
November 23 - The Thibodaux Massacre
November 22 - Uprising of the 20,000
November 21 - Autoworkers Join the Postwar Strike Wave
November 20 - Birth of the Time Clock
November 19 - Joe Hill’s Final Words
November 18 - Accident or Murder?
November 17 - Resisting Impressment
November 16 - NFL Players End Strike
November 15 - The IWW is Raided
November 14 - The Origins of CWA
November 13 - The Holland Tunnel Opens
November 12 - Striking Against Privatization
November 11 - Haymarket Martyrs are Executed
November 10 - Suicide or Murder?
November 9 - Remembering Philip Murray
November 8 - Dorothy Day is Born
November 7 - Eisenhower Wields Taft-Hartley
November 6 - The Fight for Equality
November 5 - The Everett Massacre
November 4 - Will Rogers is Born
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