| Event date: February 02, 1902 |
Displays: 5932 |
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Created: |
Aug 01, 2007 at 05:13 PM |
Modified: |
Aug 01, 2007 at 09:42 PM |
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Founding of the Unión Obrera Democrática (UOD).
On 2 February 1902, some 150 voting delegates, in the presence of an even larger number of non-delegates, from the printers’ unions and other workers’ organizations (proto-unions called gremios) of barbers, cigar-makers, tobacco workers, clerks, carpenters, woodcutters, lithographers and other laborers met in Manila to form the UOD with Isabelo de los Reyes as president and Hermenigildo Cruz as secretary.
A few months later, UOD led a series of strikes in the different factories to press for higher wages and better working conditions. These militant actions snowballed into the first general strike on August of 1902. The UOD quickly grew from 33 to more than 150 unions. By 1903, the federation, then renamed as Unión Obrera Democrática de Filipinas (UODF), led a march of more 100,000 workers in front of Malacañang (seat of the American colonial administration) to mark the first May Day rally in the country. |
