Michael: Kevin, quick, when I say 'American labor history,' what's the first image that pops into your head? Kevin: Honestly? A black-and-white photo of a guy in a flat cap and a dusty coat, looking grim. Maybe a textbook I was forced to read in high school that put me to sleep. It feels… distant. And very, very male. Michael: Exactly. Stern-faced men, maybe some soot. But what if I told you the real story, the one in Kim Kelly's incredible book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, starts with teenage girls throwing rocks at their boss's mansion? Kevin: Okay, now you have my attention. That is definitely not in the textbooks. That sounds less like a history lesson and more like a punk rock show. Michael: It's not, and that's Kelly's whole point. What’s amazing is her background. She's a third-generation union member who started as a heavy metal editor at VICE. She only became a full-time labor journalist after she helped unionize her own workplace. She has real skin in the game. Kevin: So she’s not just an academic looking back. She’s part of the story she’s telling. That explains the book's reputation. I’ve heard it described as more of an inspirational call to arms than a dry history, and it was named a Best Book of the Year by outlets like The New Yorker and Esquire. Michael: It’s absolutely a call to arms. And it starts by completely demolishing that dusty, grim-faced image of who a union worker is.

Michael: Kelly takes us back to the very beginning, to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1824. The textile industry is booming, and the workforce is mostly young women, some as young as fifteen. The mill owners decide to slash their wages and add two hours to their already grueling twelve-hour day. Kevin: And they just assumed these young women would take it? Michael: They assumed they’d be docile. They bet wrong. One hundred and two of these women weavers launched the country's very first factory strike. They didn't even call it a 'strike' yet; the term they used was a 'turnout.' Kevin: A 'turnout'? Wow. So they were literally inventing the playbook as they went. What did that look like? Michael: It was chaos. They blockaded the mill entrances, and they were joined by hundreds of male coworkers and townspeople who supported them. They marched through the streets, shouted insults, and yes, they threw rocks at the mansions of the mill bosses. At one point, someone even set fire to one of the mills. Kevin: This is incredible. It’s a full-blown rebellion, led by teenage girls. Did it work? Michael: It did. The fire and the relentless protest forced the owners to the negotiating table. The women of Pawtucket won. They forced the bosses to back down. And this wasn't an isolated incident. This spirit spread to places like Lowell, Massachusetts, where the 'mill girls' took it a step further. Kevin: How so? What’s a step up from setting a mill on fire? Michael: They started a media company. A woman named Sarah Bagley, who was a weaver, became a firebrand activist. She and her fellow workers founded the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association and started their own newspaper, the Voice of Industry. Kevin: A newspaper! That's brilliant. It's not just about direct confrontation; it's about controlling the narrative. They’re building a media strategy. Michael: Precisely. Bagley used the paper to expose the horrific conditions, which she called a 'slow and legal assassination.' She published poetry and essays from the workers themselves. They were fighting for a ten-hour workday and used the paper to organize, build solidarity, and even get anti-labor politicians voted out of office. Kevin: It seems like the core idea here is that the people with the least formal power often have to be the most creative and courageous. They couldn't just rely on existing structures, because those structures were built to exclude them. They had to build their own. Michael: They had to build everything from scratch. And that courage, that creativity, often came at a horrifying price.

Kevin: What do you mean by 'price'? It sounds like they were winning. Michael: They were, but not every battle. And some losses were catastrophic. This brings us to what is probably the most infamous and heartbreaking story in the book: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Kevin: I’ve heard of it, but I feel like I don't know the real story. Michael: Kelly lays it out in visceral detail. The factory was on the top three floors of a building in Manhattan, employing around 500 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women. Just a year before, in 1909, these same women had been part of a massive strike called the 'Uprising of the 20,000.' Kevin: An uprising of 20,000 women? Michael: Led by a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant named Clara Lemlich. They were demanding better pay, shorter hours, and safer working conditions. Most factories gave in, but the owners of the Triangle factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were notoriously anti-union. They refused to make any meaningful safety improvements. Kevin: So the stage was set for disaster. Michael: Tragically, yes. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out. It spread instantly through the piles of fabric scraps. The workers ran for the exits, but they found the doors were locked. Kevin: Hold on. The doors were locked? From the outside? Why on earth would the doors be locked? Michael: To prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks or stealing scraps of fabric. It was a deliberate policy. The workers were trapped. The fire escape collapsed. The fire department's ladders only reached the sixth floor. Eyewitnesses on the street below watched in horror. A reporter named William Shepherd wrote, 'Down came the bodies in a shower, burning, smoking-flaming bodies... These dead bodies were the answer' to the workers' demands for safety. Kevin: That’s absolutely sickening. It’s not just a tragedy; it’s a direct consequence of corporate greed. They were killed for the price of a few scraps of fabric. Michael: 146 workers died. And that's what made it a catalyst. The public outrage was immense. A young social reformer named Frances Perkins witnessed the fire, and it changed her life. She said, 'I had to do something.' Kevin: And did she? Michael: Did she ever. Perkins went on to become Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor—the first female cabinet member in U.S. history. She was the architect of the New Deal. She spearheaded Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage and banned child labor. Kelly includes this stunning quote where Perkins essentially says the New Deal began on the day of the fire. Kevin: Wow. So our entire social safety net, the very fabric of modern labor law, has its roots in the ashes of that factory. That's an incredibly powerful, and devastating, connection. It makes you wonder, though... did we learn the lesson? Are those fights really over?

Michael: That's the most urgent question Kelly poses in the book. And her answer is a resounding 'no.' She draws a direct, chilling line from the past to the present. For example, a 2016 UCLA study of garment factories in Los Angeles found conditions eerily similar to the Triangle factory. Kevin: You're kidding. What did they find? Michael: Widespread wage theft, poor ventilation, and in 42% of the factories, the exits and doors were regularly blocked. Kevin: Blocked exits? After everything we know about the Triangle fire? That's infuriating. It feels like history is just stuck on a loop. Michael: And Kelly makes it even more personal in the epilogue. She spent months in 2021 on the picket lines with striking coal miners in Alabama. The Warrior Met strike. Here you have this multiracial union, the UMWA, on strike for a fair contract against a company backed by Wall Street giants like BlackRock. Kevin: And I'm guessing the company played nice? Michael: Not at all. The book details how company men drove trucks into the picket lines, hospitalizing strikers. The state police escorted 'scabs' across the line. And a local judge eventually issued an order completely banning the miners from picketing. It's the same playbook: corporate power, state-backed suppression, and worker resilience. Kevin: It’s wild that a strike that significant got so little media attention compared to, say, the Amazon union drive. Michael: Kelly has a theory about that. She suggests that coal miners from rural, conservative Alabama were 'unsympathetic protagonists' for some audiences, while a multiracial union was a 'no-go' for others. It shows how media and politics can obscure these vital struggles. Kevin: Which makes a book like this even more important. It’s praised for being so timely, and it makes sense. With the recent wave of labor activism—'Striketober,' the Starbucks union drives—it feels like people are rediscovering this history and this power. Michael: Exactly. Kelly shows that this isn't just history. It's a living, breathing struggle that's happening right now, on picket lines and in warehouses all across the country.

Kevin: So when you pull it all together, this book isn't just a collection of sad or inspiring stories. It's a powerful argument that the progress we all take for granted—the 40-hour workweek, weekends, basic safety standards—wasn't given to us. It was taken, by force, by the very people history chose to forget. Michael: Precisely. And it was taken by teenage girls, by immigrant women in garment factories, by Black sharecroppers, by queer activists, by disabled miners. The book's real power is in showing that the engine of change has always been the collective action of the most marginalized. They are the ones who have always had to fight like hell. Kevin: It reframes history not as something to be memorized, but as a toolbox for the present. It makes you look around and ask, who are the invisible architects of our world today? Who is being ignored? Michael: And Kelly's final message is a direct call to action, reminding us of the United Farm Workers' iconic slogan: 'Sí, se puede!' If they could do it, with everything stacked against them, then so can we. Kevin: 'Yes, we can.' That’s a hopeful note to end on. It makes you want to go out and find a fight. Michael: That's the idea. And on that note, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Who are the unsung labor heroes in your community or your industry? The people whose stories aren't being told? Let us know on our social channels. We're always listening. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.