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.

Despite last year’s Republican takeover of the West Virginia legislature, UFCW Local 400 decided early on that that it was not going to let ‘right to work’ come to the state. Local 400 met early on with the state AFL-CIO and other allies to build a strong coalition to fight back. The local represents 35,000 workers in the retail, food, health care, law enforcement, food processing, service and other industries in Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Local 400 mobilized, organizing a lobby day in February, and “continued the fight through the end of the legislative session, educating members in the stores, getting them to make phone calls, write letters, and volunteer to fight back.” Joined by UFCW Local 23, Local 400 turned out for a massive rally on March 7 that provided the final push to defeat both ‘right to work’ and charter schools this year. Despite winning this battle, Local 400 warns that “the war on workers in West Virginia continues, and we will continue to take the lead in fighting back.”

In today’s labor calendar, check out a Panel Discussion on Gender-Based Violence in the Workplace at 3:30pm today at the Solidarity Center and then tonight at 7pm the Tri-County COPE meets in the American Legion Hall in La Plata; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details.

Today's labor quote is by Joseph Faherty:
“The merchandizers of ‘right to work’ are fond of packaging their proposal in the name of individual liberty. What right-to-work has meant wherever it has appeared is lower wages and benefits, a diminished standard of living and substandard legal protection for workers and their families.”
Joseph Faherty is a former president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO

Five delegates from OPEIU Local 2’s Rising Stars “Step Up” Committee are on their way to Chicago today. They're joining over a thousand young union activists and community advocates from all over the country at the AFL-CIO Next Up Young Worker Summit this weekend. At the largest gathering of young worker advocates this country has ever seen, these future union and community leaders are coming together to build a common middle-class agenda, provide young activists the tools they need to build power and begin mapping out the strategy they’ll need to claim the future they deserve.

In today’s labor calendar, Hexagon is performing the musical comedy "The Spoof, The Whole Spoof, and Nothing but The Spoof!" in a benefit for the Employment Justice Center, tonight at 8pm at Wilson High School; Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for details.

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1865, Michigan authorized the formation of workers’ cooperatives. Thirteen were formed in the state over a 25-year period. Labor reform organizations were advocating "cooperation" over "competitive" capitalism following the Civil War and several thousand cooperatives opened for business across the country during this era. Participants envisioned a world free from conflict where workers would receive the full value of their labor and freely exercise democratic citizenship in the political and economic realms.

Today's labor quote is by Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
“Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.”

Detective Tom Pyles used to be a DJ but he swapped the mic for a badge and Annapolis kids are better for it. A former foster child himself, Pyles – who’s a member of UFCW Local 400 at the Annapolis Police Department -- started collecting backpacks and filling them with supplies for children who are going into emergency foster care, a situation that often takes them away from their homes and school with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “Unfortunately you see children who are abused and neglected; they need hope, they need dignity." Pyles told ABC 2. When the children get their “backpacks of love” as Tom calls them, he said their reaction is “ten times greater than opening a Christmas present.” Go to ufcw400.org to read more and to see the interview.
On today’s labor calendar, you can check out NoVA Labor’s Common Sense Economics workshop today at 2:30pm in Annandale, Virginia; and then at 7 pm tonight, the NAACP DC Branch will hold its Community Labor Meeting at the NAACP Financial Freedom Center in DC; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details.

Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1970, five days into a strike by Post Office workers, President Richard Nixon declared a national emergency and ordered 30,000 troops to New York City to break the strike. The troops didn’t have a clue how to sort and deliver mail, and a settlement came a few days later.

In this week's Labor Quiz, who wrote this sentence in a famous short essay called "The Scab"? "Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas Iscariot was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a strikebreaker is a traitor to his God, his country, his wife, his family and his class.” Was it Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, Jack London or Wallace Stevens? Go to unionist.com and click on Labor Quiz and you could be this week’s winner!

Today's labor quote is by Frank Moore Colby, who said,
“I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.”

Maryland state workers rallied last night against cuts by Governor Hogan. The AFSCME Maryland Council 3 members were protesting Hogan’s $144 million dollar cut to education and pay cuts for Maryland state and University employees.

"We have a long road ahead of us," warned Teamsters Local 639 president Tommy Ratliff Saturday night as he accepted the 2014 Award for Outstanding Trades Unionist of the Year. "Everyone here knows what's going on around us; we see what's happening. We have a big fight on our hands. But," Ratliff pledged, "we'll all be in it together." Go to dclabor.org to see photos from the event.

In today’s labor calendar, catch a free screening of "Food Chains" with DC Fair Food at 4 pm at Georgetown University; Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for details.

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1968, staffers at San Francisco progressive rock station KMPX-FM struck, citing corporate control over what music was played and harassment over hair and clothing styles, among other things. The Rolling Stones, Joan Baez, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and other musicians requested that the station not play their music as long as the station was run by strikebreakers.

In 2000, Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace came to terms on a new contract, settling the largest white-collar walkout in U.S. history.

Today's labor quote is by Joan Baez:
“I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small.” Joan Baez, who said, “Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.”