U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez brought hundreds of D.C. homecare workers and their supporters to their feet at an exuberant town hall meeting on March 18th when he urged the workers to organize and fight for a living wage, benefits and respect on the job. “No one who works a full-time job should have to live in poverty,” said Perez at the town hall held by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. “You are not babysitters, you are professionals doing some of the most important work…unless home care workers receive higher pay, we won’t be able to meet the long-term needs of either caregivers or our aging population,” Perez added. Read more at dclabor.org
On today’s labor calendar, there’s a free lunchtime screening of “Love and Solidarity: Reverend James Lawson and Nonviolence in the Search for Workers’ Rights” today at noon at the AFL-CIO; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details. In this week's Labor Quiz, which significant labor event is generally considered the origin of May Day observances for workers? Is it the Lawrence Textile Strike, The Haymarket Massacre, the Pullman Strike, the Battle of Cripple Creek or the Triangle Shirtwaist Strike? Go to unionist.com and click on Labor Quiz and you could be this week’s winner! Here's today's labor history: In 1947, some 300,000 members of the National Federation of Telephone Workers, soon to become CWA, struck AT&T and the Bell System. Within five weeks all but two of the 39 Federation unions had won new contracts. In 2000, fifteen thousand union janitors went out on strike in Los Angeles. Today's labor quote is by Victor Gotbaum: “Our people always ask, ‘What have you done for the worker lately?’ I hope we always have that attitude, that workers are never satisfied. We tell them never to be.” Victor Gotbaum, a longtime labor leader in New York City, was Executive Director of AFSCME District Council 37, the nation’s largest municipal employees’ union. He died on Sunday night, aged 93, after a heart attack.
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