As Spain and Argentina meet in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, Labor History Today looks beyond the action on the pitch to explore soccer's deep roots in working-class communities and labor struggles.

British labor journalist and trade unionist Simon Sapper traces the history of "the people's game," from its origins in factory towns and mining communities to today's battles over billionaire ownership, rising ticket prices, and the commercialization of the world's most popular sport.

Then we revisit one of the most important—and least remembered—labor struggles of the Progressive Era. While the 1912 "Bread and Roses" strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts is well known, a similar uprising unfolded just months later in Little Falls, New York. In an interview from our friends at the Green and Red Podcast, historian James Cheney, author of Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York, 1912–1913, tells the story of the immigrant women textile workers who launched a spontaneous strike that drew support from the Industrial Workers of the World and became a landmark in labor history.

Finally, on Labor History in 2:00, we remember the 1969 Charleston Hospital Workers Strike, when more than 400 Black hospital workers walked off the job, forging a powerful alliance between the labor and civil rights movements in the fight for dignity, equality, and union rights.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On this week’s Labor History Today: The FIFA World Cup is once again captivating fans around the globe as the 2026 tournament heads into the semifinal round, with France facing Spain on July 14 and England taking on Argentina on July 15. While soccer is often viewed as a relatively recent arrival in the United States, the game actually has deep roots here, thanks to immigrant workers from Britain and Europe who brought football to mining towns, factories, and mill communities in the late nineteenth century. This week's Labor History Today – originally released during the 2022 World Cup -- explores the long—and often overlooked—history of soccer as a workers' game.

From 1927 to 1935, the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) established the Labor Sport Union, a coalition of worker athletic clubs, primarily located in the urban Northeast and Midwest. The CPUSA’s 1925 sport manifesto emphasized that sports should be used as a medium for class struggle and even to create “proletarian fighting units against militarism and fascism.”

One of their successful sporting accomplishments was the Workers’ Soccer Association, or WSA, which organized leagues in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. This communist soccer league played two seasons per year and competed for city, regional, and national championships.

On today’s show, Gabe Logan recounts the history of the Workers’ Soccer Association and explains an overlooked aspect of U.S. soccer that intersected political ideology, labor, and athletics.

On this week’s Labor History in Two: No Justice, No Bagels!

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On this week's Labor History Today: As the nation reflects on Independence Day, we turn from the "Great Men" of history to the voices of the people. We begin with Frederick Douglass's searing 1852 speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, performed by James Earl Jones, then hear from the Labor and Working-Class History Association's People's 250 project, where workers, historians, and activists share stories that place working people at the center of the American story. Plus, on Labor History in 2:00: July 4 Freedom to Join a Union

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Thanks to Democracy Now for the James Earl Jones clip. 

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This week on Labor History Today: Silk stockings were all the rage in the 1920s, but the workers who made them paid the price. When the H.C. Aberle Hosiery Company in Philadelphia imposed wage cuts and harsher working conditions in 1930, more than a thousand workers walked out, setting off one of the city's most dramatic labor struggles.

As tensions escalated between strikers, strikebreakers, police, and company management, 22-year-old Carl Mackley was killed in a confrontation that galvanized Philadelphia's labor movement. Tens of thousands attended his funeral, and his legacy lived on in the pioneering Carl Mackley Houses, a union-sponsored cooperative housing project built during the New Deal.

Labor Jawn’s Sam James and Gabe Christy trace the origins of the strike, the violence that engulfed Kensington, the fight for arbitration, and how one young worker's death became a lasting symbol of labor solidarity.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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This week on Labor History Today (originally broadcast 1/11/2026), Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of British Labor, 1780–1924. The book traces the rise of the world’s first modern labor movement through banners, boxes, coins, tools, and images created by working people during the Industrial Revolution and beyond—right up to the moment labor stood on the brink of political power in the 1920s.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On this week’s Labor History Today (Originally released October 12, 2025): A visit to the Donora Smog Museum, where a six-day inversion in 1948 trapped toxic fumes over a Pennsylvania mill town and changed how the U.S. thinks about work, health, and accountability.
And, on Labor History in 2:00: The Mother Jones Monument is Dedicated.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Labor History Today visits Old Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, widely considered the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.

In this excerpt from The Manufacturing Report, host Scott Paul tours the historic mill with National Park Service Ranger Allison Horrocks. Together they explore how Samuel Slater brought Britain's closely guarded textile technology to the United States, the role of Moses Brown and early investors, the rise of the Rhode Island mill system, and the transformation of work from home-based production to factory labor.

The conversation also examines the human costs of industrialization, including child labor, the commodification of workers, the emergence of wage labor, and the first worker resistance to the factory system.

Plus: Labor History in Two remembers the 1929 Gastonia textile strike and the struggle of Southern textile workers to organize.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On Labor History Today: What happens if the labor laws that have governed workplace organizing since the 1930s simply disappear? Historian Leigh Campbell-Hale joins Labor Exchange host Robert Lindgren to discuss the 1927 Columbine Mine Strike, the stories labor history remembers—and forgets—and why those narratives matter for workers today.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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This week on Labor History Today: Hazel Dickens remembered. The Mine Wars Forum talks with Hazel’s nephew Buddy Dickens about the legendary labor singer’s deep roots in the West Virginia coalfields, her fierce commitment to miners and working people, and why her music still resonates today. From picket lines and black lung fights to the new Fly Away Home festival honoring her legacy, Buddy shares personal stories about one of labor’s most beloved voices.

Plus: Labor History in 2:00 on the 1946 coal strike and the first Chicago Teachers Union strike; new stories from the People’s 250 campaign about steelworkers, civil rights, and shop-floor struggles; and reflections on labor memory, justice, and organizing from Appalachia to Baltimore.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On this week’s edition of Labor History Today: the People’s 250 campaign asks whose stories belong in America’s history, from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to today’s fights for worker dignity and democracy. Then historian Eric Bernardino joins America’s Work Force Radio to discuss the massive 1938 San Antonio pecan shellers strike led largely by Mexican women workers and fiery organizer Emma Tenayuca. Plus: the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum’s “Courage in the Hollers” labor history trail, Birmingham unionists who stopped a Klan church bombing, and this week’s Labor History in Two on the historic 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike.

Questions, comments, or suggestions? Contact us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation in partnership with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

On Labor History Today: What do Chicago’s three Haymarket monuments reveal about labor history, public memory, and who gets to shape the story of the past? Labor historian Peter Cole explains. Plus: Australia’s early fight for the eight-hour day, and Labor History in 2:00 on the 1934 West Coast Maritime Strike.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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