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Vol. 74/No. 24      June 21, 2010

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
June 21, 1985
The monthlong strike by some 6,000 members of the social security workers union (STISSS) in El Salvador ended June 6 in a victory for the union when the government was forced to free two jailed union leaders.

The STISSS officials had been arrested on June 2 when military police and National Guardsmen stormed 5 hospitals and 20 clinics across the country in an attempt to crush the strike. The strike began on May 6 and hospital personnel had occupied their work places.

The most dramatic indication of the increased level of fightback by El Salvador's labor movement was this year's May Day march. More than 15,000 workers marched through the streets of San Salvador behind a banner that read, "For a new society." Many other workers who supported the march lined the sidewalks.  
 
June 20, 1960
U.S. foreign policy of global cold-war suffered a stunning setback with the announcement today that President Eisenhower's visit to Japan had been cancelled. The last-minute decision to call off the trip confirmed that the great majority of the Japanese people are firmly opposed to being dragged down the road to war through a military alliance with the U.S. Even if the treaty is forced upon the Japanese people there is little prospect that Washington can look to Japan as a "reliable" ally.

In Tokyo, 25,000 demonstrators cheered wildly at the news of their great victory. They danced in the streets, hugged each other, and shouted, "We've won, we've won!"

In Washington, Associated Press news analyst John Hightower described the trip cancellation as a "humiliating and costly defeat."  
 
June 29, 1935
The strike of 40,000 lumber workers in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California continues despite the open provocation of the militia. Friday the police fired on a crowd in Eureka, Cal. killing one and wounding several. Many more are ill as a result of gas attacks by the police.

During the last week the mill owners have mobilized an army of strikebreakers, thugs, police and National Guard in an attempt to open the mills at any cost.

The strike is led by a committee as a subsidiary section of the Brotherhood of Carpenters. So far the men have resisted all attempts to put over empty "arbitration" settlements and to break the backbone of the strike by settling one plant at a time.

The strikers demand a thirty hour week, seventy five cents an hour and union recognition.  
 
 
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