From tasty Thanksgiving recipes featuring union-made ingredients to beers and ales made by union members, union-made wine or champagne and union-made sweet treats, you can count on Union Plus for “Tips for serving a union-made Thanksgiving dinner" and the DC edition of Labor411 for the area union grocery stores where you’ll find these union-made products. Go to dclabor.org for links to Union Plus and Labor411.
 
Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1875, led by Samuel Gompers, who would later found the American Federation of Labor, Cigarmakers’ International Union Local 144 was chartered in New York City.
In 1995, a general strike was called in France to protest Prime Minister Alain Juppe’s plan to increase premiums for healthcare, cut welfare to the unemployed, and make changes to the pension eligibility age for public sector workers. The widespread strike ended in mid-December, when the government agreed to abandon the pension reform part of its plan.

Today’s labor quote is by Samuel Gompers:
The trade unions are the legitimate outgrowth of modern society and industrial conditions. … They were born of the necessity of workers to protect and defend themselves from encroachment, injustice and wrong. … To protect the workers in their inalienable rights to a higher and better life; to protect them, not only as equals before the law, but also in their health, their homes, their firesides, their liberties as men, as workers, and as citizens; to overcome and conquer prejudices and antagonism; to secure to them the fight to life; the right to be full sharers in the abundance which is the result of their brain and brawn, and the civilization of which they are the founders and the mainstay; to this the workers are entitled. … The attainment of these is the glorious mission of the trade unions.”

Film or play, “Revolutionary Medicine” or "Joe Hill’s Last Will"; those are your choices for tonight’s labor calendar.

“Revolutionary Medicine: A Story of the First Garifuna Hospital” screens free at 5:30 today at the AFL-CIO.
The film tells the story of a project to build a free and holistic healthcare system in Ciriboya, Colon, on Honduras’ Caribbean Coast. The hospital - run on solar energy, in a community without paved roads or electricity - has provided nearly half a million free consultations and offers an alternative to the increasingly privatized national health system in Honduras. Built and defended by the communities it serves, and led by the inspirational Dr. Luther Castillo – who will speak at the screening -- the project has become a symbol of Garifuna self-determination.
 
And at 7:30 tonight, singer John McCutcheon performs the play "Joe Hill’s Last Will" at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church in Rockville; tickets are $29 at the door. This one-man show imagines labor martyr and folk hero Joe Hill's last night in prison, telling stories and singing as he awaits his execution 100 years ago.
Go to dclabor.com and click on calendar for complete details.

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in roughly 1170 BC, history’s first recorded strike took place. Egyptians working on public works projects for King Ramses the Third in the Valley of the Kings were protesting having gone 20 days without pay put their tools down. The strike so terrified the authorities that they gave in and raised wages, which were portions of grain.

In 1903, troops were dispatched to Cripple Creek, Colorado to control rioting by striking coal miners.

And in 1935, Mine Workers President John L. Lewis walked away from the American Federation of Labor to lead the newly-formed Committee for Industrial Organization. The CIO and the unions created under its banner organized six million industrial workers over the following decade.
 
Today’s labor quote is by John L. Lewis:
“You can’t dig coal with bayonets.”

In this week’s “Winners and Losers of the Week” feature, the winners are low-wage workers, who participated in strikes last week in 270 cities across the country in support of living wages and the protection of workers' rights on the job. The loser is Donald Trump, after saying that wages were too high in the latest contest to see which Republican hates workers the most or, as they call it, a GOP debate.
 
For the latest local labor events listings, go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details.

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1816, the term “scab” – referring to a strikebreaker – was first used by the Albany Typographical Society.
 
And in 1888, Willard Bundy, a jeweler in Auburn, N.Y. invented the time clock. Bundy’s brother Harlow started mass producing them a year later.
 
In 2008 the Great Recession hit high gear when the stock market fell to its lowest level since 1997. Adding to the mess: a burst housing bubble and total incompetence and greed—some of it criminal—on the part of the nation’s largest banks and Wall Street investment firms. Officially, the recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, though millions are still out of work, working part-time or forced to retire early.
 
Today’s labor quote is by writer Jack London:
“After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out...."

Union City Radio’s Chris Garlock and DCNA's Ed Smith discuss worker rights with local activists/organizers and take listener calls. 

Today's guest is Cathy Feingold, International Affairs Director at the AFL-CIO, discussing the impact of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal on worker rights in the US and the rest of the 12 nations involved. Plus this brand-new TPP video just released today by the AFL-CIO.