The entire American labor movement is now in the cross hairs of the Trump administration and the GOP-controlled Congress. That's according to AFSCME Council 26 Executive Director Carl Goldman, responding to reports that the incoming administration is drawing up plans to take on federal workers.
Goldman says he believes "this war has little to do with the canards that it is too hard to fire federal workers or that they don’t work hard enough. Rather, it is about defunding the parts of the federal government that have the most progressive missions." Trump, says Goldman, "wants to eliminate any government regulations or programs that affect the profits of corporate American and/or strengthens the 99%." The threat was a major focus of discussion at last week's Metro Washington Labor Council Executive Board and Delegate meetings and plans are in the works for further discussion. Goldman says that AFSCME Council 26 is "now going full steam ahead with our development of a grass roots fight back." Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1828, National Labor Union founder William Sylvus was born. In 1908, 154 men died in a coal mine explosion at Marianna, Pennsylvania. Engineer and General Superintendent A.C. Beeson told the local newspaper he had been in the mine a few minutes before the blast and had found it to be in perfect condition. And in 1953, some 400 New York City photoengravers working for the city’s newspapers, supported by 20,000 other newspaper unionists, began what was to become an 11-day strike, shutting down the papers. Today's labor quote comes from my old boss, Jim Hightower American syndicated columnist, progressive political activist, and author Jim Hightower, who said: "What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us."
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