Union City Radio for Friday, June 28

Service workers at National Airport walked off the job yesterday, on strike against their employer, Eulen America, a Delta contractor at DCA. The workers, members of SEIU 32BJ, who are protesting health and safety concerns and belittlement by supervisors, joined other Eulen workers on strike yesterday at four of the nation’s busiest airports including Miami, JFK and Fort Lauderdale.
The Spanish-owned contractor has an alarming history of claims filed against it by it’s almost exclusively immigrant workforce for wage theft, discrimination and sexual harassment.

On today’s labor calendar…
Today’s the final picket line – for now -- by the locked-out BSO musicians; it starts at 7:30 this morning at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore;
UFCW Local 400’s Week of Action continues today with actions at 4 pm in Franconia, Alexandria and Dumfries;
and the DC Just Pay Coalition’s Outreach Blitz starts today – also at 4 pm – in Anacostia.
Complete details at dclabor.org, click on Calendar.

In today’s labor history, on this date in 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed legislation declaring Labor Day an official U.S. holiday. Don’t give him too much credit, though: 23 states had already established the holiday and Cleveland was no friend of labor: a few weeks after the Labor Day declaration he sent in the U.S. Army to crush the historic Pullman Strike. Thirty workers were killed, labor leader Gene Debs was arrested on trumped-up charges of conspiracy, and all the strikers were fired and blacklisted.

Today’s labor quote is by Gene Debs, who said:
“The strike is a weapon of the oppressed, of men capable of appreciating justice and having the courage to resist wrong and contend for principle.”

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