Today in Labor History: May 21  
Nearly 100,000 unionized SBC Communications Inc. workers begin a four-day strike to protest the local phone giant’s latest contract offer - 2004
Also on this date: Italian activists and anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, widely believed to have been framed for murder, go on trial…The “Little Wagner Act” is signed in Hawaii, guaranteeing pineapple and sugar workers the right to bargain collectively… click here for complete postings.
[Every Employee’s Guide to the Law (3rd edition) goes into solid, useful detail about the federal and state laws that, together with union contracts, are designed to assure fairness and justice in the workplace. The book discusses issues that have become a larger part of the national consciousness over the past decade, including privacy and e-mail, sexual harassment, age discrimination and the confidentiality of medical records. In the UCS bookstore now.]

Labor Quiz: Non-union Drivers? 
Independent non-union drivers are known in the trucking industry as: scabs, pie-cards, or gypsies. Click here to submit your answer and you could be next week’s winner!
Last Week’s Quiz: A “nixie” was an unsortable or misaddressed letter; a “bum” was a damaged or empty mail sack (Before leaving a station, one clerk would signal another to toss out the empty mailbags by exclaiming, “Throw the bums out.”); the hook used to snag the sacks held aloft at the cranes standing outside train stations is a real thing but we’re not sure if it had a special name. Click here for Mail by Rail and other great labor history on the APWU’s website. Congrats to Leslie Dawe of the Postal Police Officers Association, Dedham, MA, this week’s quiz winner!

Labor Quote: Just Wrong
“(T)he judge’s ruling is flat-out wrong.”
-- AFL-CIO General Counsel Lynn Rhinehart, commenting on a federal judge’s decision that an NLRB rule speeding up union recognition elections was conducted improperly  The judge cited a technical flaw in the vote but said the vote can be held again.
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