Workers, DC residents, employers, and City Council members packed the room at a Workers’ Rights Board hearing on “just hours” last week. Workers testified on the effect of constantly changing work schedules. “This used to be a respectable business,” said Kimberly Mitchell, a UFCW Local 400 member who works at Macy’s. “Now, it seems like we don’t mean anything to these big corporations when we are the ones who are there every day, on time, any time.” The problem of unfair scheduling practices affects workers’ ability to get childcare or go to school, and having to be on-call prevents them from getting other jobs. Parents, teachers, members of legal and aid organizations also spoke out about the negative effect of this issue on communities. Council members responded with a commitment to address the problem.
For more on the latest local labor news and updates, go to dclabor.org; for up-to-date listings for labor activities, click on calendar. Here’s today’s labor history: Local militiamen were called out against striking railroad workers in Pittsburgh on this date in 1877. The head of the Pennsylvania Railroad advised giving the strikers "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." In 1964, the IWW led a strike at Hodgeman's Blueberry Farm in Grand Junction, Michigan. In 1926, radio station WCFL, owned and operated by the Chicago Federation of Labor, took to the airwaves with two hours of music. The first and only labor-owned radio station in the country, WCFL was sold in 1979. And on this date in 1984, a die-cast operator in Jackson, Michigan, was pinned by a hydraulic robot and died five days later. The incident was the first documented case in the U.S. of a robot killing a human. Today’s labor quote is by Stanley Bing: “What about passion, dedication, loyalty? Can a robot provide those? No! On the other hand, it's easier to retire a robot when its day is done.” Stanley Bing is the pen name of Gil Schwartz, a business humorist and novelist.
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