List of worker deaths in United States labor disputes

The list of worker deaths in United States labor disputes captures known incidents of fatal labor-related violence in U.S. labor history, which began in the colonial era with the earliest worker demands around 1636 for better working conditions. It does not include killings of enslaved persons. According to a study in 1969, the United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world, and few industries were immune from that blot.Philip Taft and Philip Ross, "American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome," The History of Violence in America: A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, ed. Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, 1969.

This list is not comprehensive. Several factors including multi-sided conflicts, physically remote locations, company-controlled locations, and exaggerated or biased original reporting make some of the death and injury counts uncertain. In all, the number of deaths documented total over 1,100.

The table below has three sections: violence perpetrated by law enforcement and companies' militia, armed detectives and guards; executions by the state; violence perpetrated by vigilantes, strikers, mobs and hate groups.

By holders of authority

Law enforcement, companies' militia, armed detectives, owners, and guards {| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:left; font-size:87%; border:1; cellpadding:5; cellspacing:0;" !scope="col" data-sort-type="date"|Date !scope="col" |Location !scope="col" style="text-align: center;"|Industry !scope="col" style="text-align: center;"|Type of dispute !scope="col" style="text-align: center;"|Workers killed by authorities !scope="col" class="unsortable" |Notes

|August 8, 1850 |Manhattan, NYC, NY | style="text-align: center;"|Garment | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|2 |At least two tailors died as police confronted a street mob of about 300 strikers, with clubs.Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, by Sean Wilentz, 2004, pages 380–381, citing the New York Herald for August 6 and 7, 1850, and the New York Tribune for August 5 and 6, 1850 These were the "first recorded strike fatalities in U.S. history".Civil War America, 1850 to 1875, by Richard F. Selcer, 2014, page 88

|July 20, 1877 |Baltimore, MD | style="text-align: center;"|Railroad | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|10 |During the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, first national strike in United States, National Guard regiments were ordered to Cumberland, Maryland, to face strikers. As they marched toward their train in Baltimore, violent street battles between the striking workers and the guardsmen erupted. Troops fired on the crowd, killing 10 and wounding 25.

|data-sort-type="date" data-sort-value="July 21, 1877"|July 21–22, 1877 |Pittsburgh, PA | style="text-align: center;"|Railroad | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|40 |Great Railroad Strike of 1877: As militiamen approached and sought to protect the roundhouse, they bayoneted and fired on rock-throwing strikers, killing 20 people and wounding 29.The next day, the militia mounted an assault on the strikers, shooting their way out of the roundhouse and killing 20 more people.

|data-sort-type="date" data-sort-value="July 21, 1877"|July 21–28, 1877 |East St. Louis, IL and St. Louis, MO | style="text-align: center;"|Railroad, then general | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;" data-sort-type="number" data-sort-value="18"|up to about 18 |1877 St. Louis general strike part of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877: The first general strike in the United States was ended when 3000 federal troops and 5000 deputized police had killed at least 18 people in skirmishes around the city.

|July 23, 1877 |Reading, PA | style="text-align: center;"|Railroad | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|10 |In the Reading Railroad massacre, part of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a unit of the Pennsylvania State Police ventured into the Seventh Street Cut (a man-made railway ravine) to address a train disabled by rioters. They were bombarded from above with bricks and stones, and fired a rifle volley into the crowd at the far end, killing ten.Anthracite's Demise and the Post-Coal Economy of Northeastern Pennsylvania, by Thomas Keil, Jacqueline M. Keil, 2014, page 39

|August 1, 1877 |Scranton, PA | style="text-align: center;"|Coal Mining, Railroad | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|4 |Scranton General Strike, part of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877: The day after railroad workers conceded and returned to work, angry striking miners clashed with a 38-man posse partly led by William Walker Scranton, general manager of the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company. When a posse member was shot in the knee, the posse responded by killing or fatally wounding four of the strikers.

|May 4, 1885 |Lemont, Illinois | style="text-align: center;"|Quarry | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;" data-sort-type="number"|2 |Illinois state militia, pitted against "the most desperate and howling mob" of immigrant quarrymen and their women, throwing cobblestones, fired into the crowd. They killed two Polish strikers, Jacob Kugawa and Henry Stiller, and wounded several others with bayonets.

|data-sort-type="date"|May 3, 1886 |Chicago, IL | style="text-align: center;"|Machinery mfg. | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;" data-sort-type="number"|2 | Striking workers held a rally outside a McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant on the West Side of Chicago. When the end-of-the-workday bell sounded, workers surged to the gates to confront strikebreakers. Police fired on the crowd. Two McCormick workers were killed; some newspaper accounts said there were six fatalities.

|May 5, 1886 |Milwaukee, WI | style="text-align: center;"|Building trades | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|15 |Bay View Massacre: As protesters chanted for an 8-hour workday, 250 state militia were ordered to shoot into the crowd as it approached the iron rolling mill at Bay View, leaving 7 dead at the scene, including a 13-year-old boy. The Milwaukee Journal reported that eight more died within 24 hours.

|November 5, 1887 |Pattersonville, LA | style="text-align: center;"|Sugar | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;" data-sort-type="number" data-sort-value="20"|as many as 20 |10,000 sugar workers (90% of whom were black), organized by the Knights of Labor, went on strike. A battalion of national guardsmen supporting a sheriff's posse massacred as many as 20 people in the black village of Pattersonville, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

|November 23, 1887 |Thibodaux, LA | style="text-align: center;"|Sugar | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;" data-sort-type="number" data-sort-value="37"|37 or more estimated |Thibodaux Massacre: Louisiana Militia, aided by bands of prominent citizens, shot at least 35 unarmed black sugar workers striking to gain a dollar-per-day wage and lynched two strike leaders. "No credible official count of the victims was ever made; bodies continued to turn up in shallow graves outside of town for weeks to come."

|July 6, 1889 |Duluth, Minnesota | style="text-align: center;"|Laborers | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|2 |Several days of street riots and strikes by unorganized city laborers climaxed with an hour-long gun battle on Michigan Street with municipal police. Two Finnish strikers, Ed Johnson and Matt Mack, later died of their wounds. Another estimated 30 were wounded, and another young bystander was killed by a stray bullet.

|April 3, 1891 |Morewood, PA | style="text-align: center;"|Coal mining | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|9 |Morewood massacre: Miners struck the coke works of industrialist Henry Clay Frick for higher wages and an 8-hour work day. As a crowd of about 1000 strikers accompanied by a brass band marched on the company store, the 10th Regiment of the National Guard fired several volleys into the crowd, killing 6 strikers and fatally wounding 3.

|June 9, 1893 |near Lemont, Illinois | style="text-align: center;"|Construction | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;"|4 |Dozens were injured and five were killed when quarrymen and canal workers clashed with replacement workers, local law enforcement, and the Illinois National Guard during construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Four of the five were strikers: Gregor Kilka, Jacob (or Ignatz) Ast, Thomas Moorski, and Mike Berger

|May 23, 1894 |Uniontown, PA | style="text-align: center;"|Coal mining | style="text-align: center;"|Strike | style="text-align: center;" data-sort-type="number" data-sort-value="5.1"|5+ |The Bituminous coal miners' strike of 1894 was organized by the United Mine Workers in multiple mid-Western states on April 21, ending in late June. Among many other violent incidents in Illinois, Ohio, and elsewhere, five strikers were killed and eight wounded by guards near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on May 23.W. T. Stead, Incidents of Labor War in America, The Contemporary Review, Vol. LXVI, No. 1, July 1894; pages 65–74.

List of worker deaths in United States labor disputes

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