Today in Labor History June 15, 1914: Westinghouse strike, Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Congenial Industrial Union (ACIU) struck against Westinghouse. They were demanding union recognition and protesting against the "scientific management" theories of Frederick Taylor. They also wanted an eight-hour day, reinstatement of fired workers, and higher overtime and holiday rates. Women played a major role in the strike and many of the striking workers were women. Bridget Kenny organized marches and recruited workers to join the ACIU and rose to become one of the main spokespeople for the union. She had been employed by Westinghouse but fired in 1913 for selling union benefit tickets on company grounds. The Pittsburgh Leader, one of the city’s newspapers and one that hired numerous women writers, including Willa Cather, nicknamed Kenny “Joan de Arc.” And the women in this strike provided some of the inspiration for the workingwomen characters in Willa Cather’s short fiction. The Westinghouse plant on Edgewood Avenue was one of three they possessed in the Pittsburgh region, and one of the main sights of strike activity. In late June, the company used armed thugs to intimidate the workers, leading to a violent exchange in which several workers, and the East Pittsburgh police chief, were injured.
The Israeli far-right government has circumvented Israeli laws to facilitate the closure and ban of any journalistic institution that exposes the atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation army in Gaza. Extremist ministers are also pushing for the expansion of this law to include the occupied West Bank.
Do not expect anything other than possibly some empty words from the "world leaders" against these outrageous fascist rules in the "only democracy in the middle east".
Today in Labor History June 9, 1843: Bertha von Suttner was born (d. 1914). She was an Austrian journalist, author, peace activist and Nobel Prize laureate. She was also a friend of Alfred Nobel, who famously told her that there would not be world peace until a weapon was invented that was so deadly it could annihilate countries in seconds. Some say that it was her activism and advocacy that inspired him to include a peace prize as part of his endowment. Von Suttner wrote “Lay Down Your Arms,” an anti-war novel that made her a leading figure in the Austrian peace movement. However, it was also considered a feminist novel for its characters resistance to accepting traditional gender roles. Tolstoy compared her favorably with Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Have any good investigative journalists done pieces on how the slant of donors, the power of large universities "strategic communications" departments, and the evisceration of newsrooms have affected how the public gets access to reliable scientific research and information in the public interest? #Science#Newstodon#Journalism@academicchatter
The winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced. The New York Times took three: One for its coverage of the war in Gaza and others in the Features and Investigative categories. The Washington Post tied with wins in Commentary, Editorial Writing and National Reporting. The Fiction Pulitzer went to West Virginia writer Jayne Anne Phillips for her novel, "Night Watch," while the Nonfiction prize went to "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy," by Nathan Thrall, which tells the story of a Palestinian father living under Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Here's the full list from NPR. This Poynter.org story has links to all the winning pieces of journalism.