“We had our first class in a year this week,” tweeted IATSE Local 22’s training fund yesterday. “Fork recertification. Virtual classroom time & then a physically distanced outside practical. Felt great to finally be back. Thank you @kencen for the equipment & space. #iatraining #iatse #SafetyFirst #WearAMask” Local 22 is the stagecraft union in Washington D.C. AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler and CLUW President Elise Bryant joined women union leaders from Colombia, Ghana, Palestine, Ukraine and the United States who shared their experiences defending the rights of women workers to equality, good jobs and an end to violence and abuse. Nearly 200 participants joined the virtual panel, sponsored by the Solidarity Center and CLUW. “Women are carrying the burden. But we are not remaining silent,” said Shuler. Read more at the Solidarity Center.
The campesinos knew his name throughout El Salvador He gave a voice to those who were not heard From Seeds of Change, about Óscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador who spoke out against social injustice, assassinated by the right-wing military on March 24, 1980 while celebrating mass. Pope Francis canonized Romero as a saint in 2018. This week’s Labor History Today podcast: We Were There; Pins and Needles; Dust for Blood. Last week’s show: Bootlegged Aliens; UPPER CASE WOMAN. March 26 San Francisco brewery workers begin a 9 month strike as local employers follow the union-busting lead of the National Brewer’s Assn. and fire their unionized workers, replacing them with scabs. Two unionized brewers refused to go along, kept producing beer, prospered wildly and induced the Association to capitulate. A contract benefit since having unionized two years earlier, certainly worth defending: free beer - 1868 March 27 Mother Jones is ordered to leave Colorado, where state authorities accuse her of “stirring up” striking coal miners - 1904 U.S. Supreme Court rules that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired - 2002 March 28 Members of Gas House Workers’ Union Local 18799 begin what is to become a four-month recognition strike against the Laclede Gas Light Co. in St. Louis. The union later said the strike was the first ever against a public utility in the U.S. - 1935 Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. Violence during the march persuades him to return the following week to Memphis, where he was assassinated - 1968 |