Massachusetts

The nurses walked out on Thursday after negotiations throughout Wednesday night failed to deliver. During the five-hour picket, an agreement was made and the nurses have managed to fight off a series of contract concessions.

Despite talks yesterday between management and the Massachusetts Nurses Association, conflict remained over wage, healthcare, and pension demands, and the strike is set to begin today. UMass hospital has drafted in around 350 temporary nurses to be bussed across picket lines, to reduce the impact of the walk-out.

"Did you see what I did to those anarchist bastards?"
- Presiding Judge Webster Thayer

At the turn of the 20th century, Lawrence, Massachusetts was one of the most important textile manufacturing towns in the United States. The mills in the area were principally under the ownership of the American Woollen Company, which employed about 40,000 people. The Company's consolidation of thirty-four factories across New England had a yearly output of about $45,000,000.

It was the shoemakers of Lynn, Massachusetts, a factory town north east of Boston, who started the largest strike to take place in the United States before the Civil War. Lynn had pioneered in the use of sewing machines in factories, replacing shoemaker artisans. The factory workers in Lynn, who began to organise in the l830s, later started a militant newspaper, the Awl.

Goldner interviews Scott McGuire about the attempts of Boston Public Workers to resist the effects of proposition 2 1/2.