News: More than 500 union members and leaders lobbied on the Hill last Wednesday during the National Lobby Day to Defeat Fast Track, meeting with members of Congress to voice labor’s opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. A new AFL-CIO report revealed that four nations that would be major players under the TPP are out of compliance with international labor standards. Workers in Mexico, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei face ongoing and systematic abuse and violations of their rights with the complicity or direct involvement of the governments, according to the report, which you’ll find on our website at dclabor.org.
Here's today's labor history: In 1912, the Westmoreland County Pennsylvania Coal Strike—known as the "Slovak strike" because some 70 percent of the 15,000 strikers were Slovakian immigrants—began on this date and continued for nearly 16 months before ending in defeat. Sixteen miners and family members were killed during the strike. In 1933, spurred by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the U.S. Congress began its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation. The Civilian Conservation Corps, which put 2.5 million young men on the government payroll to help in national conservation and infrastructure projects was just one of many programs established to help Americans survive the Great Depression. On this date in 1974, work began on the $8 billion, 800-mile-long Alaska Oil pipeline connecting oil fields in northern Alaska to the sea port at Valdez. Tens of thousands of people worked on the pipeline, enduring long hours, cold temperatures and brutal conditions. At least 32 died on the job. Today's labor quote is by Ray Verdon, former CEO of Nabisco: “Use free trade as a catalyst to mobilize employees to cut costs…Nothing clears the mind so much as the specter of being hung in the morning.”
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