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Slaves from Africa were first imported to colonies
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Bacon’s Rebellion of servants and slaves in Virginia
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Throughout 1860s Chinese Americans were exploited for cheap labor on the transcontinental railroad
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African American workers organized their labor collectively on a national level. Like other labor unions in the United States, the organization created the union to help fight for better working conditions for Black workers.
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Eugene V. Debs leads the newly formed American Railway Union in the first industry-wide national strike and Boycott against the Pullman Company. Beginning in Chicago on May 11, the strike and boycott eventually involved some 250,000 workers in 27 states and shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit. But the strike and the union were finally broken by a court injunction and the intervention of federal troops.
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Triangle Shirtwaist factory in fire in New York kills nearly 150 workers
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Bread and Roses strike begun by immigrant women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, ended with 23,000 men, women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line
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President Roosevelt signed an executive order in February 1942 ordering the relocation of all Americans of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps in the interior of the United State
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President George W. Bush pledges to strip collective bargaining rights from 170,000 civil servants in the new Transportation Security Administration and denies bargaining rights to airport-security screening personnel
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President Barack Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored the rights of working women to sue over pay discrimination