POTW: April 1, 1949: A Day in Brooklyn Labor History

On April 1, 1949, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was full of news of workers on strike. The headline for the day announced that a taxi strike was on and "90% tied up," meaning that all but 701 of the city's 11,510 taxicabs had refused to start their engines. Meanwhile, CIO radio operators at Pan-American Airways had launched a strike over deadlocked contract negotiations, and in a slim article further down the page, readers learned that 7,000 brewery workers from Brooklyn's 14 major breweries--still at the top of its game in '49--had also organized and begun picketing. On the brewery workers' list of demands were an increase in pay, a shorter workweek, a pension plan, and a new, mandatory two-person model for deliveries. Famously, the strike lasted over 3 months—81 days, in fact—finally resolving on June 21st with a new contract that met the workers' demands. Though it was a win for organized labor, a major shortage of beer and high demand from thirsty Brooklynites meant larger, national competitors began shipping across state lines—by some accounts with the encouragement of brewery officials as a union busting tactic.

The demands of the brewery workers, radio operators, and taxi drivers in the 1940s echoed the calls for better working conditions that animated the labor movement in eras past. The first Labor Day Parade was held in New York City in 1882, but it was not an official holiday until Grover Cleveland, concerned about losing votes from workers, signed it into law in 1894. 

Still, workers went on parading, despite spotty closure of businesses (not unlike today, when essential businesses such as grocery stores remain open). An 1889 account from the Eagle proudly reports that "nearly every branch of trade" was represented in the morning's Labor Day procession, and goes on to claim it as a more essentially patriotic holiday, "of and by the people...To the rich man and the capitalist it means simply the closing of his bank and the stoppage of his factory machinery, but to his employees it means the public acknowledgment by the State government of the mightiness and dignity of labor." 

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