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Progressive Action Roundtable: A forum for progressive groups in the Greater New Haven Area where actions and ideas may be publicized so that others are aware of peace, health, justice, energy, environmental and other issues for the common good.

Posts Tagged Greater New Haven Labor History Association

Last Call For Winchester Stories

Jan 29

Posted by Progressive Action Roundtable in Workers | No Comments

By Joan,Cavanagh, Archivist/Director, GNH Labor History Association

The Greater New Haven Labor History Association is producing its exhibit entitled “Our Community at Winchester: An Elm City Story” for a planned opening in May. It will incorporate selections from many of the interviews that have been conducted with retired Winchester workers and their family members over the past year.

Our hope is to provide a broad picture of the impact of the Olin/ Winchester Repeating Arms Company on its workers, our community and greater New Haven until it closed in 2006—and perhaps beyond. We are particularly seeking reflections about the nature of the work and what was produced; and any information or direct experience that individuals may have about nuclear subcontracting work that was done there in the 1970s.

If you or someone you know worked at the plant and would like to share thoughts and experiences, please contact us at info@laborhistory.org or leave a message at the office at (203) 777-2756, ext. 2. You can also write to: GNH Labor History Association, 267 Chapel Street, New Haven CT 06513.

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CT Humanities Council Awards Grant To Labor History Association For First Phase Of Winchester Workers Exhibit

Oct 3

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By Joan Cavanagh, GNHLHA Archivist/Director

The Connecticut Humanities Council has awarded a $6000 planning grant to the Greater New Haven Labor History Association (GNHLHA) to prepare images for its upcoming exhibit on workers at the old Olin-Winchester Plant in the Newhallville section of New Haven.

The images, including photographs and newspaper articles, will be digitized and re-mastered to exhibit quality by internationally acclaimed new media artist Cynthia Beth Rubin.

The plant closed in 2006, but the stories of its workers throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries have yet to be told. These stories–of labor struggles, workers’ culture within the plant, and the impact of the plant on the larger community–will form the raw material for the exhibit.

GNHLHA Board members Lula White, Dorothy Johnson, James Hoffecker and Mary Johnson have been conducting oral histories with retired Winchester workers since the early spring of this year. Information from those interviews will help create the text of the exhibit, which will be produced by the end of 2010.

The core of the exhibit will be based on photographs and documents from the International Association of Machinists Local 609 collection held in the Labor History Association’s archives. Local 609 represented workers at the plant from 1956 until its closure. Images from earlier years as well as from workers’ lives in the community will be culled from personal memorabilia.

The Association encourages anyone with relevant photographs, documents or newspaper articles to be in contact sending an email to joan@laborhistory.org or by calling (203) 777-2756, Ext. 2. Please be in touch as soon as possible as we are currently in the process of digitizing the images and writing text for the exhibit. GNHLHA’s website is www.laborhistory.org

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Remember The UFW Boycott Actions In New Haven?

Aug 31

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by Mary Johnson, GNHLHA

The Greater New Haven Labor History Association (GNHLHA) hopes that you do.

In the 1960s, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) launched a grape boycott that inspired New Haven area residents (as well as people throughout the world) to join and help win good contracts in most of California’s vineyards. In the mid to late 1970s, a UFW Boycott staff person came to New Haven to organize boycott committees in Connecticut.

Almost immediately, the New Haven committee began picketing and leafleting at supermarkets urging customers to boycott fruits and vegetables grown by producers who refused to negotiate contracts with the UFW. All of these were successful.

Most memorable was the Gallo Boycott. The efforts of the New Haven Committee not only attracted a great deal of community support but received a very negative response, including physical violence, unfortunately initiated by some members of a rival union.

The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which became law in 1975, guaranteed farmworkers the right to bargain collectively. Gallo Wineries decided that it preferred its known adversary, the Teamsters, to the more militant, independent UFW. Gallo collaborated with the Teamsters to suppress the UFW.

The UFW called for a nationwide boycott of Gallo Wines. The New Haven UFW Boycott Committee, after months of picketing liquor stores on Orange Street, convinced three owners to remove Gallo Wines from their shelves.

When the picket lines moved to a liquor store on Whitney Avenue, Gallo salesmen as well as groups of men wearing jackets identifying themselves as supporters of a Teamsters Local, began observing us for several weeks. This culminated in the brutal beating of a 16 year UFW advocate. That incident and a tremendous show of community support for the boycott resulted in nationwide news coverage.

If you remember any of these and later activities, please call Mary at (203) 387-7858 or send your stories to info@laborhistory.org. GNHLHA would like to share them on its website. New Haven’s UFW boycott activities were part of a powerful and inspirational social change movement and we cannot afford to lose that history.

Please help. Thank you.

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