The national wave of teachers' successful strikes, referred to as Red for Ed Strikes because the striking teachers often wore red shirts to show solidarity; and the "Red States Revolt" because of a majority of the strikes being in predominantly Republican Party-controlled, conservative states. Beginning in West Virginia between February 22 and March 7, when local activists compelled the leadership of the state branches of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association into taking a strike vote. The West Virginia teachers staged "walk-ins" at schools and protests at the West Virginia Capitol.

Similar, statewide strikes were waged in Oklahoma (April 2-12) and Arizona (April 26- May 3) and protests by school staff in Kentucky, North Carolina (May 1 and May 16), Colorado (April 27- May 12), including a school bus driver strike in Georgia.

UNITE HERE is formed by the merger of UNITE (the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union), creating a mreged national union with 400,000 active members.

April 5, 10,000 Public school teachers and 3000 state university faculty in Hawaii shut down all public education in the State in the nation's first state-wide education strike.

June 15, LAPD officers attacked a group of 400 non-violent demonstrators in the SEIU "Justice for Janitors" campaign in the Century City strike against that high-rise commercial office area of Los Angeles.

July 30, former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red fox Restaurant in suburban Detroit. Although presumed dead, his remains have never been found.

September 2, Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

November 13, Karen Gay Silkwood, a lab tech at the Cimeron plutonium plant and officer of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union local in Oklahoma City dies mysteriously en route to a union meeting with a newspaper reporter.

December 23, Jimmy Hoffa's prison sentence is commuted by President Richard Nixon on the condition he not participate in union activities for ten years.

Under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, United Farm Workers start boycott of 25 major growers in California.

November 20th, a gas explosion at Consolidated Coal Company's No. 9 mine at Farmington, West Virginia trap 81 men, 78 of whom are killed in the mine.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act makes it illegal to discriminate against people 40 to 65 years old.

October 22, Service Contracts Act.

Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa succeeds in bringing virtually all North American over-the-road truck drivers under a single national master freight agreement.

September 14, Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (aka Landrum-Griffin) regulating union elections and finances.

AFL-CIO expels the Teamsters, Bakery Workers, and Laundry Workers for "unethical conduct."

Louisiana Sugar Cane Workers' Strike

Child labor is finally prohibited through an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Previous attempts had not been successful.

5-week animators' strike at Walt Disney Studios to end the paternalistic relation between Disney and his animation staff, cemented the studio's derogatory nickname of "the mouse factory."

John L. Lewis, seeking to organize steelworkers, secures a labor contract with the president of the world's largest steel company, United States Steel, but the smaller companies that collectively were known as "Little Steel" brutally fought steelworkers. Scores of deaths and injuries occurred as the United Steelworkers of America struck at Little Steel plants across the industrial northeast.

The Memorial Day Massacre: Chicago police attack three hundred men picketing Republic Steel, killing ten and brutally maiming many others.

In Harlan County, Kentucky, Sheriff Deputies in the pay of the coal operators shoot unionists in a violent effort to break the United Mine Workers.

June 30, the Walsh-Healey Act sets safety standards, minimum wage, overtime pay and child labor provisions on all federal contracts.

The Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor votes to expel all labor members who claim affiliation with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, which was being led by the UMW president John L. Lewis.

Six affiliated unions of the AFL form a Committee for Industrial Organizing to expand the scope of the AFL beyond its craft-union orientation.

August 14, the Social Security act is approved.

The strike of 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and all over the southeastern United States and lasting twenty-two days. The strike's ultimate failure and the union's defeat left the southeastern portion of the United States an unorganized and anti-union region for the next 50 years.

July 16, Minneapolis Truckers Strike, 5000 men go out in a strike that established the Teamsters as a nationally significant labor union. Four men are killed--two on each side--and martial law is declared before an agreement is reached.

Workers at George A. Hormel and Company stage the first sit-down strike in the U.S., taking over the Austin meat-packing plant for three days. The tactic works: Hormel agrees to submit wage demands to binding arbitration

Wisconsin enacts the nation's first unemployment insurance law.

September 1, Clara Holden, National Textile Workers' Union organizer is abducted and beaten by vigilantes in Greenville, South Carolina.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that nothing in the Clayton Anti-trust Act protected unions from injunctions brought against them for conspiracy in constraint of trade. (Duplex Printing Press v. Deering)

Baldwin-Felts guards invade Matewan, West Virginia to break up a coal miners strike. The mayor, a small boy, a miner and four guards were killed in a show-down.

John L. Lewis is elected president of the United Mine Workers of America, at the age of 40, taking control of the largest labor union in the nation.

August 26, United Mine Workers' organizer Fannie Sellins, a widowed mother of four, is shot to death by coal company guards while leading strikers in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania.

September 9, A strike by 1,100 police in Boston is the first ever by public safety workers. It was broken when Governor Calvin Coolidge summoned the entire Massachusetts Guard.

The Great Steel Strike against U.S. Steel Corp. led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. Starting in Chicago, it spread to 350,000 workers throughout Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and lasted from September 1919 to January 1920. It was broken by massive use of scabs.

Palmer Raids: on November 7 Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered raids by the Federal Department of Justice in 30 cities across the United States to arrest and deport suspicious immigrants (so called "alien reds") many of whom were involved in US labor unions. The raids were coordinated by a young J. Edgar Hoover, Palmer's chief investigating officer. In all, he rounded up about 10,000 and deported many as foreign agitators, anarchists, communists.

Ludlow Massacre: on April 20th a small army of goons hired from the Baldwin-Felts agency backed up by the National Guard lay down a barrage of machine gun fire on a strikers' tent village at Ludlow, Colorado, killing men, women and children.

Connecticut Supreme Court holds that a boycott by hatters' union is a restraint of trade. Union and strikers are sued.

The International Typographical Union successfully strikes for an 8-hour day.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones leads a protest march of mill children, many of whom were victims of industrial accidents, from Philadelphia to New York.

November 14, at the AFL convention in Boston, women unionists unite to form the National Women's Trade Union League and elect Mary Morton Kehew president and Jane Addams vice-president.

Big Bill Haywood leads the Western Federation of Miners (WMF) through a terrible and bloody series of conflicts spanning two years in what became known as the Colorado Labor Wars.

Cripple Creek Strike, Colorado gold miners, represented by the Western Federation of Miners are confronted by strikebreakers who were sworn into the State militia and furnished with arms. Many men are killed and wounded on each side.

Integrated general strike of 42 unions in New Orleans, broken when Governor Foster sends in the State Militia to use military force against the strikers.

Mary Kenney O'Sullivan of the Bindery Workers is appointed the AFL's first female national organizer.

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Silver miners declare a strike against mine operators after a wage cut and increased work hours. The strike turns violent when union miners discover they had been infiltrated by a Pinkerton agent who was spying on the union for the mine owners. A pitched battle ensued between the union miners and a large force of strikebreakers. Although the miners drove out the blacklegs The Governor declared martial law and secured Federal troops from President Harrison. The Army moved swiftly and ruthlessly to smash the strike. All known union men were arrested. Several hundred strikers were imprisoned for months in a barbed-wire concentration camp, or bull pen, where they were starved and mistreated. Afterwards, strikers were blacklisted thoughout the industry.

Haymarket Tragedy: May 1, in Chicago's Haymarket Square a bomb went off in the middle of a protest rally against the killing of 4 strikers who had been on strike for the 8-hour day.

December 28, The American Federation of Labor is formed at a convention in Columbus, Ohio, representing 140,000 workers grouped in 25 national unions. Sam Gompers is elected President.

The Foran Act bans immigration of laborers brought in under contract to break strikes.

On June 21, "Rope Day" ten leaders of the Molly Maguires were hanged.

July 28, women shoemakers form the Daughters of St. Crispin, the first national union of women workers, at Lynn, Massachusetts.

Members of the Philadelphia Journeyman Cordwainers were tried for criminal conspiracy after a strike for higher wages.

The Typographical Society was formed by printers in New York City.