Two reports from the building trades today, one happy, the other sad. The good news is that Ron Borza of Iron Workers Local 5, was inducted into the Washington Building Congress Hall of Fame on March 20. Ron was recognized for his “truly outstanding” work by the Hall of Fame, which recognizes the "best of the best" in the DC-area construction industry.
In sad news, Brad Geiger of Plumbers Local 5 passed away unexpectedly on March 8. Brad was the blueprint reading instructor for the Community Services Agency’s Building Futures program, where he had taught for the last four years. He died just two days before his son was born. "Brad was always very patient with the students yet at the same time he was tough about learning the material and attendance so they would be prepared for the real world of work," said CSA client services coordinator Sylvia Casaro Dietert. "His loss is tragic for his family and for the Building Futures program,” she added. “We will miss him terribly." Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1904, union organizer Mother Jones was ordered to leave Colorado, where state authorities accused her of “stirring up” striking coal miners. And in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired. Today's labor quote is by Mother Jones: “Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit.”
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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.” |
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