Post navigation

Prev: (02/06/19) | Next: (02/07/19)

City marks 100 years since the Seattle General Strike

Attention young labor agitators, the Seattle City Council’s committee on Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers’ Rights Thursday morning will include a session on the city’s labor history and the 100th anniversary of the great Seattle General Strike of 1919.

“Never before had the nation seen a labor action of this kind. Many in Seattle were expecting revolution — and a few wanted it — but when 65,000 laborers walked off the job that day, the result was more an eerie calm,” Historylink.org writes of the February 6th, 1919 start of the strike.

 

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.

 

 

“Initially, the strike demonstrated the power of union solidarity, but it soon fizzled. For labor, the Seattle General Strike was a glorious folly that led to government crackdowns and to the distrust of the public and the press for a decade to come.”

The committee will also be taking up a resolution related to the “misclassifications of workers as independent contractors when they should be designated as employees.”

Slides from Thursday morning’s presentation before Teresa Mosqueda’s committee are below.

You’ll note that Seattle circa 1919 had a pro-labor news outlet of its own. Sorry to tell you, but somebody already beat you to registering the URL for seattleunionrecord.com.

Subscribe and support CHS Contributors -- $1/$5/$10 per month

Comments are closed.