The 2020 Evening with Labor , rescheduled for November 12, honors those who have gone above and beyond to support and fight for the local labor movement. We’ll be featuring them this week in Union City. This Friday, October 29, is the deadline to reserve your ticket(s) and/or ad in the EWL program book; Get your ad and ticket orders in now! For ticket credit card purchases, CLICK HERE. For check payments or to avoid additional online fees, register using this google form. Note that an option to attend virtually is available this year.
DC COPE Award Andrew Washington Andrew (top right), the former Executive Director of AFSCME Council 20 who died of COVID late last year , built an outstanding relationship with the Mayor of the District of Columbia and the members of the DC City Council, helping to advance the agenda of the city’s working men and women and their unions. He Co-Chaired the District’s Labor Management Partnerships and Co-Chair of the Metro Washington Council’s DC Committee on Political Education (COPE). During his tenure at Council 20, Andrew created a member-to-member-driven Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort and implemented the use of iPads to cut turf and assess members in real time, helping move District Council 20 to the forefront of the political realm in the District of Columbia. Laura Fuchs Chair of the Washington Teacher’s Union (WTU) COPE, Laura (bottom photo) has been an active member of the DC COPE and in 2019 did amazing work to organize COPE members in both her local and the Metro Council to support the election of two new school board members around the issues of greater equity and transparency around school funding throughout the District. Suburban Maryland COPE Award Tom Killeen, Business Agent, SMART Sheet Metal Division Local 100 Tom has volunteered his time and energy throughout the year to support and elect our labor-endorsed candidates. He spearheaded an educational effort to get his members to register to vote and to understand the endorsement process and who our endorsed candidates were. He participated in labor campaign activities through phone banking, door knocking and other legislative activities and the GOTV program. He has volunteered in our organizations program to help out in communities. From doing maintenance projects for the needy and elderly to raising funds to purchase book bags for school children his efforts have been spread wide. Tom is union through and through and is dedicated to improving the labor movement, thereby improving the lives of all Marylanders. photo (top left): Tom at work for the SMART Army, painting the fire lane curb at the Saint Ann’s Children & Family Center in Hyattsville, Maryland. “The Company did not want to give anything this time, but we stood our ground and got everything we could.” Owens is a UFCW 400 member at Lipton Tea-Unilever in Suffolk, VA, which recently ratified a new contract. This week’s Labor History Today podcast: This week's show: Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery. Last week's show: “It Didn’t Start with Amazon: A Conversation About the History of Organized Labor in the South.”
The Gateway Arch, a 630 ft high parabola of stainless steel marking the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial on the waterfront of St. Louis, Missouri is completed after two and one-half years. Although it was predicted 13 lives would be lost in construction, not a single Ironworker died - 1965 - David Prosten. photo courtesy Riverfront Times and the State Historical Society of Missouri, where there are 49 more photos. UFCW Local 400 members working at Lipton Tea-Unilever in Suffolk, Va., voted 67-9 to ratify a strong new two-year collective bargaining agreement on Wednesday, October 20th. The new union contract provides wage increases for all bargaining unit members, increased time off, and no health and welfare cost hikes. “The Company did not want to give anything this time, but we stood our ground and got everything we could,” said Terrell Owens, a Local 400 member and Lipton employee who served on the bargaining committee. “They wanted to freeze wages and not give annual raises, but the committee stood strong and didn’t flinch. We got everybody a raise. They also wanted to give us Juneteenth as a replacement for one of our other holidays, but we said we wanted Juneteenth as a new holiday along with the others and that’s what we got.” The more than 200 workers at the Suffolk Lipton plant, which makes most of the brand’s tea sold in North America, organized with Local 400 and won their first union contract in 2017. This is their second collective bargaining agreement.
NOTE: UFCW 400 workers at Shoppers are still fighting for a contract: they have three local actions scheduled today and tomorrow; see Calendar above or click here for details. |