Two years after their previous contract expired, Metro workers have been awarded annual wage increase of 1.6 percent over a four-year period ending in July 2020. The decision was made by an arbitration board after contract negotiations stalled; members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 have been working without a contract since July 2016. The union accepted what it called a “rational decision,” adding that “We look forward to Metro’s timely implementation.” The award -- which also left the current pension system in place -- is effective retroactively to July 1, 2016. The award does not eliminate the issues that provoked Local 689 members to authorize a strike last month, including disciplinary policies, elimination of jobs and open positions, and Metro’s push to privatize some services. In a related action, over 100 Local 689 members and their supporters rallied at noon at Metro Center last Friday to call for WMATA GM Paul Wiedefeld’s firing in the wake of the special Metro train provided for the “Unite the Right” participants the previous Sunday, despite assurances by the transit agency that this would not be the case.
In today's labor history, on August 19, 1983, Phelps-Dodge copper miners in Morenci and Clifton Arizona were confronted by tanks, helicopters, and hundreds of state troopers and National Guardsmen brought in to walk strikebreakers through picketlines in what was to become a failed three-year fight by the Steelworkers and other unions. Today’s labor quote is by Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, who wrote in her autobiography, about her #1 hit “Respect”: “It was the need of the nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect.”
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