Monday, March 2, 2015

News: The last in our series of Black History Month Labor Profiles honors Bill Lucy. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Bill Lucy was a materials and research engineer in California when he joined AFSCME in 1956.  A decade later, he was elected president of the Local and the next year, went to work full time for the union.  He worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968 until King was assassinated later that year. The strike continued and the union won recognition. Lucy was elected Secretary-Treasurer of AFSCME in 1972, the same year he became the first president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. He was also instrumental in the anti-apartheid movement, as one of the founders of the Free South Africa Movement, that eventually led to Nelson Mandela's release from prison and to the first democratic elections in South Africa. “Though his name is not as well-known as King and Mandela, Lucy has carved out a legacy based on living wages, health care benefits, and job safety,” said the N-double A-CP. “And like these famous men, Lucy's legacy lives on through the lives of hundreds of thousands of working families around the world every day.” You can find links to all our Black History Month Labor Profiles at dclabor.org

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1913, postal workers were granted the 8-hour day.

In 1990, more than 6,000 drivers struck Greyhound Lines; most lost jobs to strikebreakers after the company declared an “impasse” in negotiations.

Today's labor quote is by Bill Lucy, on the occasion of his retirement from AFSCME in 2010:
“We’ve always known that there’s a crisis. It may be more intense now, but there’s always been a crisis for millions of people not as lucky as we are in this room. There’s a daily crisis in their lives, as they struggle to put bread on their tables, to put clothes on their backs, to have a roof on their heads. We have a responsibility to help them out.”