![]() Welcome to The Labor Press Project. This site brings together information about the history and ongoing influence of newspapers and periodicals published by unions, labor councils, and radical organizations in the Pacific Northwest. Labor newspapers have been a critical part of American labor movements since the early 19th century and an equally critical, if largely unacknowledged, part of the history of American journalism. Today more than a hundred periodicals serve the labor movement. Thousands more have done so in the past. The History of Labor Journalism The history of labor journalism in the United States is a huge but relatively unexplored topic. Karla Kelling Sclater surveys 180 years of labor journalism and discusses key books and articles about labor journalism in her essay:
Union Newspapers![]() The Seattle Union Record is one of the most famous examples of labor journalism in the Pacific Northwest. It has a fascinating double history. A daily newspaper with a circulation that sometimes reached 80,000, it was the voice of labor from 1900-1928. It became so again in the fall of 2000 when it was resurrected by members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild during their seven week strike against the Seattle Times and Seattle Post Intelligencer.
The Industrial Worker was the principal newspaper of the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World. Published initially in Spokane, the Industrial Worker moved to Seattle in 1916. Here is a detailed report:
Washington State Labor News, a monthly, was published by the Washington State Labor Council from 1924 until 1965. Distributed to hundreds of AFL local unions and the county labor councils, WSN reported on political issues of importance to labor and publicized campaigns, strikes, and boycotts. We have compiled a year-by-year database of more than 500 articles from the Washington State Labor News from 1930 to 1937.
The Northwest Labor Press of Portland is the oldest continuously published labor newspaper in the region. Since 1900, the Portland Central labor Council and Oregon State Federation of labor have made sure that the Labor Press remains a strong and active voice for unionism. We report on the early years of the newspaper when it was called: (1905-1915) by Kristin Peasley
Protective service workers (police and fire) also have a long history of unionism. Seattle Firefighters Local 27 (International Association of Firefighters was formed in 1918. The Third Rail is its monthly newspaper.
The Bellingham Labor News was established in 1939 as the paper of the Bellingham Labor Council. The paper not only sheds light on the Bellingham labor movement, but as "the official paper of Bellingham," it also provides insight into the history of this important Northern Puget Sound city.
Radical Newspapers
Five Socialist newspapers were published in Everett:
Two Socialist newspapers were published in Tacoma:
Ethnic Community Newspapers
Here are reports on other newspapers serving various ethnic and racial communities:
Several dozen other historical labor newspapers from the Pacific Northwest have been collected and preserved by the University of Washington library and the public libraries of Seattle and other area cities. Here is a list of these holdings. About the Project: This site has been developed through the contributions of many people. Special thanks to the students in HSTAA 353 (Class and Labor in American History) who wrote the research reports; to Steve Beda who collected and digitized the newspaper pages with help from Jessica Albano, Glenda Pearson, and Suzi Freelund at the UW Library; to Brian Grijalva who designed an earlier version of this web site, to Fred Bird for much useful advice. This site is one of a collection of Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights Projects directed by Professor James Gregory and sponsored by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington. See below for copyright and citation information. |