DC fire fighter Jason Woods was among those honored in this year’s Cafritz Awards, which honors District government workers who exemplify public service. Woods, a Fire Fighters Local 36 member, also serves as president of the DC Firefighters Burn Foundation, which has raised over $1 million dollars for much-needed equipment for The Burn Center at Med Star Washington Hospital Center and Children’s National Medical Center and organized a community-wide support network to help burn survivors through the process of recovery. “While many people today see their job as a paycheck, it’s my passion,” says Woods. “I eat, sleep and breathe my career as a fire fighter of this great city.” Go to dclabor.org to see a video about Woods and read more about the other award-winners.
On today’s labor calendar, Jobs with Justice’s Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Awards will be held tonight starting at 5pm at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for details. Here’s today’s labor history: Agnes Nestor, president of the International Glove Workers Union and longtime leader of the Chicago Women's Trade Union League was born on this date in 1880. She began work in a glove factory at age 14 and helped organize unions in other industries, campaigned for women’s suffrage, a minimum wage, and maternity health legislation, and against child labor. Today’s labor quote is by Eleanor Roosevelt: We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot. Eleanor Roosevelt, who said: “I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.”
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The Fast Track battle has now shifted back to the US Senate where there will be a vote today. There's a rally at Senator Ben Cardin's district office at 10a this morning to urge him to “say no to ‘fast track!’” To reach Cardin, call 1-855-712-8441. “Make no mistake, all workers, public and private sector, teachers and building trades, will be hurt by this legislation,” warns the AFL-CIO. “This bill will kill jobs, drive down wages, hurt the environment, threaten food safety, and give corporations sweeping power. Don’t let the U.S. Senate pull a fast one on America’s working people!”
On today’s labor calendar, in addition to the 10a Fast Track rally at Senator Cardin’s office, there’s a discussion about the Loss of Citizenship and Mass Deportation of Families of Haitian Descent from the Dominican Republic at 10a at the AFL-CIO. Then at 12:15 find out more about Worker Justice in the Global Apparel Industry at the United Methodist Building; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for details. Here’s today’s labor history: In 1914, Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, went to Butte, Montana in an attempt to mediate a conflict between factions of the miner’s local there. It didn’t go well. Gunfight in the union hall killed one man; Moyer and other union officers left the building, which was then leveled in a dynamite blast. On this date in 1947, Congress overrode President Harry Truman's veto of the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. The law weakened unions and let states exempt themselves from union requirements. Twenty states immediately enacted open shop laws and more followed. And in 1999, a majority of the 5,000 textile workers at six Fieldcrest Cannon textile plants in Kannapolis, North Carolina voted for union representation after an historic 25-year fight. Today’s labor quote is by Harry Truman, after vetoing the Taft-Hartley bill: “I am convinced it is a bad bill. It is bad for labor, bad for management, and bad for the country...The bill is deliberately designed to weaken labor unions. When the sponsors of the bill claim that by weakening unions, they are giving rights back to individual workingmen, they ignore the basic reason why unions are important in our democracy. Unions exist so that laboring men can bargain with their employers on a basis of equality. Because of unions, the living standards of our working people have increased steadily until they are today the highest in the world.” Welcome to Union City Radio for Monday, June 22. This is Chris Garlock, with the Metro Washington Council’s round-up of local labor news, updates and history.
After the House voted last week to grant President Obama “fast track” authority to negotiate trade deals, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said that “Workers’ resolve is firmer than ever,” and pledged that “We will fight at every level and in every way to protect American workers and our economy by rejecting Fast Track and this corporate trade deal.” The vote was the first in a complicated series of moves by Obama and Republicans to reverse the previous week’s overwhelming vote against the president’s trade agenda. The DC Nurses Association and Children’s School Services have settled a new contract that includes a 3% across the board wage increase, increases in education benefits, and a commitment to address shared nursing leadership issues. On today’s labor calendar, Caroline Fredrickson discusses her book “Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over” today at 12:30pm at the AFL-CIO; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for details. In this week's labor quiz; how much more were weekly median earnings for a two-income, union family in 2014 than for a nonunion family? Is the union difference $12, $23, $66, $400, or $727? Go to unionist.com and click on Labor Quiz and you could be next week's winner! Here’s today’s labor history: 86 passengers on a train carrying members of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus were killed, and another 127 injured in a wreck near Hammond, Indiana in 1918. Five days later the dead were buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, in an area set aside as Showmen’s Rest, purchased only a few months earlier by the Showmen’s League of America. On this date in 1922, violence erupted during a coal mine strike at Herrin, Illinois; 36 were killed, 21 of them non-union miners. Today’s labor quote is by John L. Lewis: “The union miner cannot agree to the acceptance of a wage principle which will permit his annual earnings and his living standards to be determined by the hungriest unfortunates whom the non-union operators can employ.” Lewis led the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960. Organized labor’s stunning defeat of Fast Track headlined Monday’s meeting of the Metro Washington Council. AFL-CIO staffer Maya Goines updated Council delegates on the continuing fight against Fast Track and the TPP, which will probably be brought up for another vote soon. Saying “the fight is not over yet,” Goines urged delegates to call Maryland Congressional representatives Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards to thank them for their votes, and to stay tuned for more updates. Delegates also approved the Council’s new strategic plan, which includes a change to a full-time Executive Director and a volunteer President, effective early next year when current president Jos Williams retires.
On today’s labor calendar, ONE DC is holding a Marriot Accountability Report Press Conference today at 10am, there’s a Justice for Janitors Rally at 4pm and thentonight the Maryland State and DC AFL-CIO hosts their annual “Salute to Leadership” Awards Dinner starting at 6pm. Tomorrow there’s a conversation with workers of the occupied RR Donnelly factory in Argentina at Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse in Baltimore. For complete details on all these great events, go to dclabor.org and click on calendar. Here’s today’s labor history: In 1912 the eight-hour work day was adopted for federal employees. On this date in 1934, a pioneering sit-down strike was conducted by workers at a General Tire Company factory in Akron, Ohio. The United Rubber Workers union was founded a year later. The tactic launched a wave of similar efforts in the auto and other industries over the next several years. And in 1937, The Women’s Day Massacre took place in Youngstown, Ohio, when police used tear gas on women and children, including at least one infant in his mother's arms, during a strike at Republic Steel. One union organizer later recalled, "When I got there I thought the Great War had started over again. Gas was flying all over the place and shots flying and flares going up and it was the first time I had ever seen anything like it in my life..." Today’s labor quote is by Jeremy Brecher, author of “Strike”: “The sit-down idea spread so rapidly because it dramatized a simple powerful act, that no social institution can run without the cooperation of those whose activity make it up.” |
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