Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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This storied labor action, widely known as the “Bread and Roses” strike, succeeded despite phenomenal ruling-class unity and the workers’ extreme deprivation. It deserves to be remembered every year, for its namesake slogan (“The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too”) and for its stirring example of collective action.
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Like many legendary protests, the Bread and Roses strike has often been misremembered as a spontaneous moment of anger. Much like Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955, the Lawrence strike was the product of extensive organizing. Socialists were crucial to that work. The Italian Socialist Federation led their own members off the shop floor and into the streets, helped organize the entire workforce, and connected the strikers to overseas socialist networks. About twenty chapters of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) — each organizing in a different language — had been active in Lawrence for about five years; they, too, provided critical organizing and solidarity.
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The workers also had support from collective institutions in their community, modeled on those in their home countries. For example, Franco-Belgians ran a cooperative with a bakery, grocery store, and meeting hall. The latter was often used as meeting place for worker organizing in the years leading up to the strike. Franco-Belgians also ran a soup kitchen that fed strikers and their families.
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Though a pay cut had sparked the action, they accomplished far more than simply reversing it. They came away with a 15 percent increase in wages, double pay for overtime, and a pledge of no retaliation against workers who participated in the strike. The big pay hike rippled across the regional labor market as well, boosting wages for many other workers.