Just before 8 on the last morning of her 2,604th week on the job, a nurse in a kaleidoscopic scrub top hobbled across the lobby’s cream-colored tile and switched on the lights. At a computer in the back of the D.C. neighborhood health clinic, Clydia Lavenia McAbee — “Miss McAbee” to most — adjusted her black-rimmed Ray-Ban reading glasses to review the day’s list of patients, almost all of whom she knew well. To read the rest of this inspirational Washington Post profile of a dedicated SEIU 722 member, go to dclabor.org.
OPEIU Local 2's Caniesha Seldon is featured in a report on last weekend's historic Next Up Young Workers Summit in Chicago. Seldon is Local 2's chief steward at the American Federation of Government Employees and staffperson at their young worker program, and we’ll be hearing more from her soon about the summit. Meanwhile, go to dclabor.org for that report.

In today’s labor calendar, catch former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse and his [email protected] Talk today at 1pm at the AFL-CIO; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details.

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1918, Chicago stockyard workers won the 8-hour day.

In 1930, at the height of the Great Depression, 35,000 unemployed workers marched in New York’s Union Square. Police beat many of the demonstrators, injuring 100.

In 1990, Harry Bridges, Australian-born dock union leader, died at age 88. He helped form and lead the International Longshore and Warehouse Union for 40 years.

Today's labor quote is by Harry Bridges:
“The most important word in the language of the working class is ‘solidarity’” 

A recent Facebook post by Washington Post reporter Lydia DePillis about why she joined the Newspaper Guild explores the challenge of “free riders,” or workers who are represented by a union but don’t have to join. Although DePillis at first felt no strong motivation to join the union, harsh demands by contract negotiators at the Post got her thinking “Suddenly, management seemed like something that needed to be defended against.”  Then, in her job as the Post’s labor reporter, she says that “writing about people who are fighting hard for the right to join a union at all…I gained a greater appreciation for the history of worker organizing, and how collective bargaining has kept so many people in the middle class.” When DePillis joined the Newspaper Guild, she says she “felt suddenly unburdened, and more a part of the place where I work.” Go to dclabor.org to read the rest of her thoughtful post.

Today’s labor calendar is jam-packed, beginning with a noontime talk about the 1877 Railroad Strike in Baltimore. Then at 6, there’s a benefit for the Restaurant Opportunity Center; also at 6, ATU Local 689 will hold a Public Hearing on Safety at Metro, and there’s also a DC Labor FilmFest Promotion Planning Meeting at the same time. Then at 6:30 the GU Women's Center is hosting a screening of "Paycheck to Paycheck." Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details on all these events.

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1894, populist Jacob Coxey led the first “Poor People’s March” on Washington, in which jobless workers demanded creation of a public works program.  

In 1911, 146 workers were killed in a fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a disaster that launched a national movement for safer working conditions.

Today's labor quote is by Jacob Coxey:
“We have come here through toil and weary marches, through storms and tempests, over mountains, and amid the trials of poverty and distress, to lay our grievances at the doors of our National Legislature and ask them in the name of Him whose banners we bear, in the name of Him who plead for the poor and the oppressed, that they should heed the voice of despair and distress that is now coming up from every section of our country, that they should consider the conditions of the starving unemployed of our land, and enact such laws as will give them employment, bring happier conditions to the people, and the smile of contentment to our citizens.”
This speech was delivered on the steps of the US Capitol in 1944, fifty years after Coxey, leading his “Poor People’s March,” was arrested there in 1894 for walking on the grass.