Thursday, February 26, 2015

News: Airline catering workers will protest at Freedom Plaza this afternoon to call attention to the low wages paid to the food workers and unaffordable health care plans. According to UNITE HERE Local 23, nearly half of airline food workers currently make less than $10.10 an hour, which means they not only can’t afford the premiums of so-called “minimum value plans,” but are also ineligible to purchase more affordable options from health care exchanges. The 3 pm action at Freedom Plaza is an escalation of the workers’ “Nickel A Ticket” campaign, which calls on United, American and Delta Airlines to earmark five cents per passenger ticket toward affordable health care options for airline catering employees. Go to dclabor.org for complete details.

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1972, a coal slag heap doubling as a dam in West Virginia’s Buffalo Creek Valley collapsed, flooding the 17-mile long valley. 118 died and 5,000 were left homeless. The Pittston Coal Company claimed it was "an act of God."

In 2004, a 20-week strike by 70,000 Southern California supermarket workers ended, with both sides claiming victory.

Today's labor quote is by Gene Debs:
“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States