School Blog
Looking for the inside scoop on Guild School Courses? Take a look through our School Blog to meet students, hear about what they’re learning, and get a glimpse of school nights at the Guild! Want to add your own thoughts or be featured? Let us know by emailing sean@laborguild.com.
Guild Concludes Virtual Parliamentary Procedures and Bylaws Workshops
by Sean Lundergan, Fr. Boyle Fellow The Guild’s first ever virtual workshop series concluded on Tuesday. Once a week four weeks Patti Legault-Frank, our longtime parliamentary procedure and bylaws instructor, ran her usual workshop over Zoom for an average of 25...
This Week in Labor History, vol. 8: The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
by Sean Lundergan, Fr. Boyle Fellow 143 years ago, on July 16, 1877, workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia went on strike in response to wage cuts imposed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. They blockaded the railway, disabled the cars and announced that no train...
Guild Welcomes New Executive Board Member
The Guild is proud to announce our newest Executive Board member, Rob Manchester of Teamsters Local 25. Rob, who’s 27, has been a member of Local 25 for three years, and he credits both the Teamsters and the Guild with a vast improvement in his quality of life...
This Week in Labor History, vol. 7: Founding of the IWW
by Sean Lundergan, Fr. Boyle Fellow The Industrial Workers of the World was founded 115 years ago today. The IWW, whose members are known as Wobblies, has played an essential role in American labor history, including in the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence,...
Equality among Us All: A Statement from Executive Director Dave Kowalski
Over the door at the old Guild facility in Weymouth was a sign with the words of Fr. Mortimer Gavin that read, “YOU ARE ALL WELCOME TO THIS HOUSE.” The Labor Guild’s mission is to promote good order in the workplace, to teach workers to act in good conscience and to...
This Week in Labor History, vol. 6: James Connolly
by Sean Lundergan, Fr. Boyle Fellow James Connolly, the Irish socialist, nationalist and labor leader, was executed 104 years ago, on May 12, 1916. His death helped transform a failed, week-long rebellion into a rallying cry for Irish independence from the...
This Week in Labor History, vol. 5: May Day and the Haymarket Affair
By Sean Lundergan, Fr. Boyle Fellow In a 1929 issue, Time magazine felt the need to clarify to its readers: “To old-fashioned people, May Day means flowers, grass, picnics, children, clean frocks. To up-and-doing Socialists and Communists it means speechmaking,...
This Week in Labor History, vol. 4: The Secessions of the Plebs
by Sean Lundergan, Fr. Boyle Fellow Working class agitation has a long history. Over two centuries in Ancient Rome, a series of struggles known as the Conflict of the Orders took place between the elites, the patricians, and the commoners, the plebeians. From the...
This Week in Labor History, vol. 3: Martin Luther King, Jr., the Mountaintop speech, and the Memphis Sanitation Strike
by Sean Lundergan, Fr. Boyle Fellow This week in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was fatally shot in Memphis, Tennessee. The night before he was killed, King delivered his famous “Mountaintop” speech, in support of the sanitation workers’ strike that had begun two...
A message from the Guild’s President and Executive Director, Dave Kowalski
“Those who do not heed the lessons of history are destined to repeat it.” In this case, it is the history of our fellow man and the recycling of our basic instincts. The entire world is experiencing a situation we hoped would never happen, especially in the era of...