Take Action Virginia, a coalition of low-wage workers and immigrants, yesterday called on Virginia legislators to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour and provide access to driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants working in the Commonwealth.
“These are common-sense issues for working families and to promote public safety,” said Gustavo Torres, president of CASA in Action. Mark Federici, president of UFCW Local 400, said that “It’s time for legislators to recognize that immigrants are a huge part of the overall economy in Virginia and we must take steps to ensure they can fully participate in our community.” On today's labor calendar, tune in to the "Arise!" show at 9 this morning here on WPFW when Jennifer Bryant and I interview Tiffany Loftin on this weekend's AFL-CIO Civil Rights conference, Todd Brogan on the labor contingent at the J20 anti-Trump march and Sheva Diagne on the labor contingent at the January 21 Women's March. The AFL-CIO's MLK Labor Economic Policy and Advocacy Summit is today from 12:30 – 4:30pm; the event is free and open to the public and there are events over the weekend as well. And there are two pickets today supporting fired worker Julia Flores, one at the I Street Whole Foods, the other at the P Street Whole Foods; both start at 3p and as always, for all the latest local labor calendar listings, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1874, the original Tompkins Square Riot took place. As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York City's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children with billy clubs. In 1919, Latino citrus workers struck in Covina, California. And in 1924, as the nation debated a constitutional amendment to rein in the widespread practice of brutally overworking children in factories and fields, U.S. District Judge G.W. McClintic expressed concern, instead, about child idleness. Today’s labor quote is by American social worker Grace Abbott “Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.”
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