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.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1959.

That was the day half a million steel workers walked off the job in a historic, 116-day strike to defend work rules.

It was the largest industry-wide strike and also the last.

The strike affected 12 steel companies and shut down more than 85% of steel production. Mill owners refused to grant wage increases unless the union agreed to changes in the contract.

Specifically, they were looking to eliminate Section 2 (b), titled “Local Working Conditions.”

The bosses wanted the ability to change the number of workers assigned to any given task.

They also wanted to introduce machinery and rules that would reduce labor hours and cut the work force.

USWA members understood this as an assault on workplace safety and a move to break the union.

Mill bosses hoped that a long strike would provoke the membership to abandon their union.

But, according to Jack Metzgar, author of Striking Steel, members had grown used to walkouts every 3 years and planned accordingly.

As well, the USW had a “well-oiled machinery including an internal welfare system for hardship cases and also reached out to merchants, banks, charitable agencies, and local and state governments” to organize relief.

By the end of August, the Defense Department stoked anxieties that national security was at risk.

Three months into the strike, union funds dwindled. Strikers felt the pinch.

President Eisenhower invoked a Taft-Hartley injunction, hoping to force strikers back to work.

As the union rose to challenge Taft-Hartley’s constitutionality, solidarity among the mill owners crumbled.

Kaiser Steel broke ranks and settled separately.

Their contract granted wage increases and preserved section 2(b).

It set the precedent for the contract that was eventually signed industry-wide.