Stagehands at the Kennedy Center have ratified a new 4-year contract that includes an 8% wage increase, maintains the line on severance pay and includes additional funding for training and education.
Discipline, knowledge, and high standards are stressed from Day 1 at Steamfitters Local 602. Building Futures Pre-Apprenticeship students learned that lesson at last Saturday’s orientation. The class meets twice a week and "You can't miss any nights,” Apprenticeship Director Gary Murdoch told the applicants. “(This is) a 5-year contract where I commit to train you and you commit to work and come to school." The program is designed "to graduate the best mechanics in the industry," Murdoch said. Read more – and see photos of the Steamfitters students -- on our website at dclabor.org On today's labor calendar, our guests on "Your Rights At Work" – 1pm here on WPFW – with be Lane Windham on the anti-worker track record of Transportation Secretary nominee Elaine Chao, and Leslie Tolf, author of “When The Rules Aren’t Right,” her new “rollicking, radiant, and radical graphic novel primer on labor rights, activism, and people power.” At 6 tonight, Pride at Work will hold its 7th annual Celebrating Solidarity reception at the Newspaper Guild CWA. For the complete calendar and more details, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1886, twenty-five unions founded the American Federation of Labor in Columbus, Ohio; Cigarmaker’s union leader Samuel Gompers was elected president. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. NAFTA promoters – including many of the world's largest corporations – promised it would create hundreds of thousands of new high-wage U.S. jobs. But in 2014, a report by Public Citizen found that instead, millions had suffered job loss, wage stagnation, and economic instability. And in 2009, faced with a national unemployment rate of 10 percent, President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals, saying the country must continue to "spend our way out of this recession" until more Americans are back at work. Joblessness had soared in the final two years of George W. Bush’s presidency. Today’s labor quote is from the American Federation of Labor’s founding document’s preamble in 1886: “A struggle is going on in all of the civilized world between oppressors and oppressed of all countries, between capitalist and laborer...”
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More than 500 Fairfax Connector bus drivers and mechanics are now working without a contract after their previous contract expired at midnight last Wednesday. Their union, ATU 1764, will hold a press conference this afternoon to outline next steps.
Montgomery County's Coalition for $15 is urging turnout for this morning's meeting of the County Council’s Committee on Health and Human Services, which will be taking up a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage bill. The Washington Teachers' Union has asked the DC City Council to "censure" Mayor Muriel Bowser over her process for choosing new schools chief Antwan Wilson. Bowser introduced Wilson at a hastily convened press conference on November 22, less than an hour after she informed a statutory review panel of her selection. Complete details on all these stories are on our website at dclabor.org On today's labor calendar, The Montgomery County Minimum Wage Hearing starts at 9:30 this morning at the Montgomery County Office Building; Good Jobs Nation is holding a major rally to “Hold Trump Accountable to America's Workers” with Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison and Danny Glover; the rally starts at 10am on Freedom Plaza at 13th and Penn NW; Then at 11 this morning, help deliver petitions with over a million signatures demanding that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell keep their hands off Medicare; that’s at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. For complete details, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1888, Heywood Broun (BROON) was born in New York City. The journalist was the co-founder, in 1933, of The Newspaper Guild, now part of the Communications Workers of America and known as The NewsGuild, to reflect today’s multimedia news organizations. In 1931, more than 1,600 protesters staged a national hunger march on Washington, D.C., to present demands for unemployment insurance. And in 2009, delegates to the founding convention of the National Nurses United in Phoenix, Arizona, unanimously endorsed the creation of the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in U.S. history. The 150,000-member union is the product of a merger of three groups. Today’s labor quote is by Heywood Broun “Brotherhood is not just a Bible word. Out of comradeship can come and will come the happy life for all.” "I sometimes imagine how my life would be different if my mom had the option of paid family leave." So said Travis, a District of Columbia resident who was born prematurely. Because his mother could not get the time off from work to make necessary hospital visits to care for her fragile son, Travis said, "She had to give me up to be raised in Florida by other family members."
Travis and his fellow District residents may no longer face those wrenching choices, thanks to the Universal Paid Leave Act, a proposed paid-leave law that will be formally introduced this morning in the D.C. City Council. Among the most progressive of such paid-leave laws in the nation, the program includes 11 weeks of gender equal parental leave, eight weeks of paid family caregiving leave and up to 90% pay replacement for low-income workers on leave. The D.C. Paid Family Leave Coalition said it was "extremely pleased to see the council affirm the need for paid family leave and move toward creating a program that works for everyone," but called for strengthening the bill. On today's labor calendar, the Universal Paid Leave Act Markup starts at 9:30am at the John Wilson Building; at noon, catch a book discussion of "The Jackson Project" with organizer Phil Cohen at the AFL-CIO; and at 5:30 there will a release of the "No Piece of the Pie" Report at the Teamsters by Food Workers Organizing for Justice in the U.S. and Globally For details, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1869, African-American delegates met in Washington, D.C., to form the Colored National Labor Union as a branch of the all-White National Labor Union created three years earlier. Unlike the National Labor Union , the Colored National Labor Union welcomed members of all races. Frederick Douglass became president in 1872. In 1884, the Washington Monument was completed in Washington, D.C. On the interior of the monument are 193 commemorative stones, donated by numerous governments and organizations from all over the world; one of them is from the International Typographical Union, founded in 1852. In 1986 the ITU merged into the Communications Workers of America. In 1907, 361 coal miners died at Monongah, West Virginia, in the nation's worst mining disaster. Today’s labor quote is by Frederick Douglass Former slave Frederick Douglass, who said "No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened around his own neck." Community organizations and labor unions last week applauded the news that the Universal Paid Family Leave Act will move to a vote in the D.C. Council on December 6th and said they’re looking forward to it passing by the end of the year. But those same groups and unions expressed shock and dismay at D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s announcement that he’ll support a two-year moratorium on the adoption of similar bills. The move was apparently designed to placate businesses the Council Chair said “may be unhappy that this bill establishes a new tax on them.” “My bills don’t stop for two years,” said Ward 7 resident and retail worker Kimberly Mitchell. “My family’s needs don’t stop for two years. My neighbors can’t stop worrying about being pushed out for two years. Why should the Chairman stop doing his job for two years?” Carol Joyner, Director for the Labor Project for Working Families, said, “We live a tale of two cities’ reality in DC and a moratorium on improvements to job quality only legislates that reality.”
On today’s labor calendar, the Albert Shanker Institute hosts “The Challenge of Precarious Labor” today starting at 8:30 at the Washington Court Hotel. The conference proceedings are also being streamed; details on our website at dclabor.org, click on Calendar. Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1955, ending a 20-year split, the two largest labor federations in the United States merged to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million. Membership peaked in 1979, when the AFL–CIO had nearly twenty million members. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations is now made up of fifty-six national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million active and retired workers. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that employers slashed 533,000 jobs the month before—the most in 34 years—as the Great Recession surged. The unemployment rolls had risen for seven months before that and were to continue to soar for another 10 months before topping 10 percent and beginning to level off late the following year. Today's labor quote is by John Sweeney In 1999, Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, welcomed the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, declaring, "No deal is better than a bad deal." |
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