TODAY’S LABOR HISTORY
Harold Phillips | Published on 3/13/2026
1830: The term “rat,” referring to a worker who betrays fellow workers, first appears in print in the New York Daily Sentinel. The newspaper was quoting a typesetter while reporting on replacement workers who had agreed to work for two-thirds of the going rate.
photo: Scabby protesting with members of Construction & General Building Laborers’ Local 79 at a construction site on the West Side of Manhattan in 1998. Image credit: Ángel Franco/The New York Times.