UNION CITY RADIO FOR WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26

(audio: bagpipes) There were tears, and there was laughter. As ATU Local 726 president Danny Cassella joked, “This isn’t really a memorial service, it’s a training session. Larry finally figured out how to get you all in the same room. You can pick up your packets on the way out.”
Larry was Lawrence J. Hanley, the Amalgamated Transit Union president who died on May 7 at the age of 62. And the ATU’s Tommy Douglas Conference Center was packed to the rafters Monday with union leaders and members who came, “not just to mourn Larry’s loss, but to celebrate his life and legacy.”
“Just as he did as a bus driver,” said AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, “Larry was always taking people with him.” The list of distinguished speakers who memorialized Hanley all sounded the same common themes to his life: vision, commitment, fighting spirit, and perhaps most important of all, a sense of humor. Jeff Rosenberg, ATU’s Director of Government Affairs, recalled that Hanley would often break the ice with an audience by asking “Did anybody lose a stack of hundred-dollar bills wrapped in a rubber band? Here’s the rubber band.” Larry Hanley, rest in power. (audio: bagpipes)

​On today’s labor calendar, the locked-out BSO musicians will picket again this morning at 7:30 and UFCW Local 400 launches its Week of Action at the Shoppers supermarket in Coral Hills, Maryland at 4 this afternoon.
For complete details, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar.

In today’s labor history, on this date in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state and local public-sector unions cannot require nonunion members to pay anything to support the collective bargaining, grievance-handling and other costs of union work on their behalf. Voting with the 5-4 majority was Neil Gorsuch, who had just been named to the court by President Donald Trump.  

Today’s labor quote is by the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the "Wobblies," which were founded at a 12-day-long convention in Chicago on this date in 1905. The Wobbly motto is: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

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