Workers shortchanged by companies under contract with Montgomery County for cleaning and other services have received over $300,000 in unpaid wages, county officials announced late last week and reported in the Washington Post. About a third of the money came from the settlement of a lawsuit filed against the county by some of the workers and one of the contractors. Four other contractors paid the rest after county audits showed they were not complying with Montgomery’s “living-wage” law, which requires contractors hired by the county government to pay a minimum hourly rate, adjusted annually based on the consumer price index.
Read the rest of the Post report on our website at dclabor.org On today's labor calendar, UFCW 1994's Gino Renne will discuss the proposed bill undercutting bargaining rights for county workers in Montgomery County on today's "Your Rights at Work" at 1 pm here on WPFW. AFL-CIO Director of Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Carmen Berkley will also be on, previewing tomorrow's talk entitled “PLEASE DON'T TOUCH MY HAIR: A CONVO ON BLACK HAIR IN THE WORKPLACE.” And starting this Friday, the Labor Heritage Foundation's annual Great Labor Arts Exchange brings together labor musicians and artists from across the nation, with a free concert Saturday night honoring LUCI MURPHY. For more info, visit LaborHeritage.org and for the latest local labor calendar, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1914, Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, went to Butte, Montana in an attempt to mediate a conflict between factions of the miner’s local there. It didn’t go well. A gunfight in the union hall killed one man; Moyer and other union officers left the building, which was then leveled in a dynamite blast. In 1947, Congress overrode President Harry Truman's veto of the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. The law weakened unions and let states exempt themselves from union requirements. Twenty states immediately enacted open shop laws and more followed. And in 1999, a majority of the 5,000 textile workers at six Fieldcrest Cannon textile plants in Kannapolis, North Carolina voted for union representation after an historic 25-year fight. Today’s labor quote is by President Harry Truman, from his June 20 1947 radio address to American people after vetoing the Taft-Hartley bill: "The bill is deliberately designed to weaken labor unions. When the sponsors of the bill claim that by weakening unions, they are giving rights back to individual workingmen, they ignore the basic reason why unions are important in our democracy. Unions exist so that laboring men can bargain with their employers on a basis of equality. Because of unions, the living standards of our working people have increased steadily until they are today the highest in the world." Click here for the entire speech
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