On this day in labor history, the year was 1969.

That was the day hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina won union recognition.

The 113-day strike reflected all the broader social issues of the day.

Led primarily by black women, the strike at the Medical College, Charleston County and several other hospitals intersected civil rights and racial and gender discrimination on the job.

Jewel Charmaine Debnam notes that women like Local 1199B president Mary Moultrie, Naomi White and others were “essential to the strike not only as daily participants on the picket line but also as leaders of the local movement establishment.”

For months, strikers marched, walked picket lines, clashed with police and held vigils demanding their right to organize.

They defied injunctions and endured hundreds of arrests, nightly curfews and confrontation with the State National Guard.

Governor McNair and the hospital boards had initially refused to concede to the workers’ demands for union recognition.

They claimed workers paid with public funds could not engage in collective bargaining. But the women were steadfast.

They pointed to the wage disparities between black and white workers and between male and female workers.

They also protested the blatant disrespect and discrimination meted out daily by management.

Local longshoremen solidarized with the strikers and threatened a walkout in support if their demands were not met.

Coretta Scott King and many other Civil Rights leaders also played a supportive role.

Finally, the new union won reinstatement of fired workers, which had touched off the strike, a solid grievance procedure, a minimum wage raise and access to the credit union.

Victory would be short lived however when the State almost immediately refused to hold up its end of the agreement.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1917.

That was the day 50,000 lumber workers across the Pacific Northwest participated in an industry-wide strike, called by the Industrial Workers of the World.

The IWW had been organizing loggers for years around wages, hours, working conditions and camp sanitation.

The IWW began building for the strike in the aftermath of the Everett Massacre the previous fall.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn started touring camps in Idaho.

By March, the Wobblies established Local 500 of the Lumber Workers Industrial Union in Spokane to organize actions across the region.

In his book, Empire of Timber, historian Erik Loomis details the chronology of events that led to the momentous walkout.

In Idaho, loggers began walking off the job in April, when demands for improved bunkhouses and food, higher wages and the eight-hour day were refused.

The strike spread to Washington State, the rest of Idaho and into Montana and Oregon.

Loomis notes that by August, “they made employers feel their wrath.” The strike cut production by over 80% and threatened war materiel.

Infuriated timber bosses demanded federal troops be sent in to crush the strike and IWW leaders be prosecuted for treason and sabotage.

Raids and arrests were orchestrated throughout the Pacific Northwest and the strike began to stall.

After 10 weeks, the IWW called off the strike but instructed workers to quit work after eight hours.

They continued to lead sanitation-related job actions that would substantially change conditions for the better.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1934. That was the day fatalities on Bloody Thursday touched off a four-day general strike in San Francisco.

It was the first time a general strike had shut down a major U.S. port city. The strike had been raging since May. Workers battled with police days earlier as the shipping bosses tried to force open the docks. Two workers were killed. More than 40,000 poured into Market Street to march silently in their funeral procession.

Outrage fueled plans for a general strike. Twenty-one unions across the city voted to walk. In his book Strike!, Jeremy Brecher notes the momentum for a general strike was unstoppable, despite attempts by AFL leaders to prevent it.

By 8 a.m. on this day, the San Francisco General Strike began. Over 150,000 workers including teamsters and butchers, restaurant and transit workers joined longshoremen and seafarers in shutting down the ports, the city and the highways.

But as Brecher points out, the strike was met with a powerful counter-attack. Hundreds of special deputies were sworn in. The National Guard was called out, “complete with infantry, machine guns, tank and artillery units; state officials were poised on the edge of declaring martial law.”

Vigilante raids began on the 17th, with assaults on the Marine Workers Industrial Union and the offices of the Western Worker newspaper and strike bulletin. Many other gathering places and homes where strikers regularly met were also busted up. Hundreds were rounded up, beaten and arrested.

The city’s Central Labor Committee authorized exceptions that eroded the strike’s power. In the face of violent raids and opposition from AFL leaders, the General Strike Committee voted to end the strike.