As news surfaced that the beleaguered DC Streetcar will not be ready this year and an exposé showed that the project has drained more than $200 million in taxpayer funds, the National Labor Relations Board has now ruled that the private contractor charged with operating the streetcar engaged in illegal anti-union activity, including threatening workers who wanted to join a union. The Amalgamated Transit Union says the decision is a legal victory, but that more must be done by DC Mayor Bowser’s office to improve wages and working conditions for streetcar employees. Even with all of the problems, the ATU would rather see WMATA run the streetcar project directly, and called on the mayor “to remove these rogue contractors, recognize the workers’ right to join ATU Local 689, and begin the process of integrating this into a publicly-operated and publicly-accountable transit system.”
Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1886, a small group of Black farmers organized the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union in Houston County, Texas. They had been barred from membership in the all-White Southern Farmers’ Alliance. Through intensive organizing, along with merging with another Black farmers group, the renamed Colored Alliance by 1891 claimed a membership of 1.2 million. In 1951, just ten days after an Illinois State mine inspector approved coal dust removal techniques at New Orient mine in West Frankfort, the mine exploded, largely because of coal dust accumulations, killing 119 workers. And in 2012, Michigan became the 24th state to adopt right-to-work legislation. The Republican-dominated state Senate introduced two measures—one covering private workers, the other covering public workers—by surprise five days earlier and immediately voted their passage; the Republican House approved them five days later (the fastest it legally could) and the Republican governor immediately signed both bills. Today’s labor quote is by historian Howard Zinn: “If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”
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