Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO

AU Students Rally for Tenley Cafeteria Workers

2/27/2015

Students at American University are organizing to ensure that food service workers at the Tenley Campus in the American University Washington College of Law are covered under the same union contract as all other food service workers on campus. “The workers at Tenley cafeteria have been an important part of our community for many years, and have been part of the same union as other campus food service workers,” the students say in their online petition. “This did not change when Aramark took over.” The bargaining unit is part of UNITE HERE Local 23.
photo courtesy UNITE HERE Local 23

Weed Now Legal in DC, Just Not for Feds

2/27/2015

It’s now legal to smoke marijuana in DC. Unless you’re a federal worker. A federal worker who smokes weed in DC under the new law’s guidelines, “probably won’t be arrested by the DC police,” says Carl Goldman, executive director of AFSCME Council 26. “But if they were to be drug tested, they’d be subject to serious disciplinary action if the test came back positive.” As the Washington Post reports, it’s still considered an illegal drug by the federal government, and illegal to smoke on federal grounds. As such, federal workers are expected to abide by The Man’s guidelines. Sorry for the buzzkill.
graphic by Flickr user Mike Licht

Shuler Challenges Labor Movement on Lack of Women in Top Jobs

2/27/2015

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. labor movement, is challenging her colleagues to promote more women to top jobs. “We haven’t done a good job of selling ourselves as a movement that gets it,” Shuler told the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Atlanta on February 25. Shuler pointed out that women head only seven of the nation’s 51 state labor federations, and that women hold 31 percent of “secondary offices” in those bodies. Though she did not say so, few women head the federation’s unions…read more

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