On Friday, local transit workers drew attention to the growing number of transit assaults in the Washington area by wearing bracelets with the hashtag TransitLivesMatter. Labor and community allies showed their support by tweeting throughout the day in a “Twitter-rally” that set the stage for a meeting Saturday when Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 sat down with Metro management to discuss solutions to the epidemic of transit assaults in the region. As one tweet put it: "The safety of Metro workers and riders is one and the same. When one of us is at risk, we are all at risk!"
For the latest local labor events and happenings, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1941, the Ford Motor Company signed its first contract with the United Auto Workers. In 1947, Jackie Robinson, the first Black ballplayer hired by a major league team, played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbetts Field. In 1980, some 34,000 New York City Transit Authority workers, eleven days into a strike for higher wages, ended their walkout after winning a 17 percent raise over two years. Also in 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors in the workplace. In 1986, police in Austin, Minnesota tear-gassed striking Hormel meatpacking workers. Seventeen strikers were arrested on felony riot charges. And on this date in 1997, some 25,000 marchers in Watsonville, California turned out to show support for the United Farm Workers organizing campaign among strawberry workers. Today’s labor quote is by Cesar Chavez “We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.” Cesar Chavez was an American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist, who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farm Workers union.
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