STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES: Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

1.        Analyze and describe changes to American occupations and industries in the pre-colonial, 17th, through early 21st century, including work systems, through independent research into events, organization, or individuals who contributed to the historical development of Unions in America.

2.       Discuss strategies and tactics workers have used during different periods of US History to improve working conditions, achieve social change, and effect the development of American democracy.

3.       Reflect on unfolding current events effecting workplace issues and identify what strategies from labor history that could be applied.

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?

In the books you will find the names of kings.

Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

And Babylon, many times demolished

Who raised it up so many times? In what houses

of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?

Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished

did the masons go? Great Rome

Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom

did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song

only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis

the night the ocean engulfed it.

The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.

Was he alone?

Caesar beat the Gauls.

Did he not even have a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada

went down. Was he the only one to weep?

Frederick the Second won the Seven Years’ War.

Who else won it?

Every page a victory.

Who cooked the feast for the victors?

Every ten years a great man.

Who paid the bill?

So many reports.

So many questions.

.                                      —Bertolt Brecht (1935)

California Labor History Map: calpedia.sfsu.edu/calabor/
     Online  map enables users to explore over 1200 events in the state's  labor history. Searchable by date, location, and text. A printed version of the map was first commissioned by the State Librarian after seeing a 1991 Laney College map of the walking tour we made for the 1946 Oakland General Strike. It is on exhibit at the State Capitol in Sacramento. Copies are also available for sale from Fred Glass at CFT. Prepared by the California  Federation of Teachers, San Francisco State University, and  others.

Was the Boston Tea Party America’s First
Anti-Globalization Protest?