McKees Rocks Strike of Nineteen Oh Nine
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
On July tenth, nineteen oh nine, unskilled immigrant workers walked off the job at the Pressed Steel Car Company in McKees Rocks, refusing brutal conditions and a confusing pooled-wage system that routinely shorted their pay. The strikers were a polyglot force, Croatians, Poles, Ukrainians, and others, united by shared exploitation. Tension with replacement workers and state police mounted through August until it erupted into a riot near this footbridge on August twenty-second.
Eleven men were killed. The Industrial Workers of the World stepped in to help organize the strikers, and the workers ultimately won significant concessions. The McKees Rocks strike is remembered as one of the first major victories for unskilled immigrant labor in American industrial history.
