It’s getting harder and harder to find affordable housing in the District of Columbia. Large commercial operators, like AirBnB and other online platforms, are making the affordable housing crisis worse by converting thousands of residential housing units into short-term tourist rental units and driving up DC rents 30 percent in the last few years, creating one of the worst housing shortages in the nation. The Sharebetter DC Coalition is circulating an online petition to send a message to the Mayor and D.C. City Council that our access to affordable housing is not for sale. You can sign the petition – and find out more about this issue – on our website at dclabor.org
With affordable housing in DC at stake, this is a fight we can’t afford to lose. For the latest local labor calendar listings, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1936, an article in the March edition of the magazine Popular Science listed what it called “the world’s craziest jobs,” all of them in Hollywood. These included: Horse-tail painter (to make the tails stand out better in the movies); bone-bleacher (for animal skeletons in Westerns); and chorus-girl weigher, whose function the article did not make terribly clear. In 1936, sailors aboard the S.S. California, docked in San Pedro, California, refuse to cast off the lines and allow the ship to sail until their wages are increased and overtime paid. The job action lasts three days before the secretary of labor intervenes and an agreement is reached. The leaders were fined two days’ pay, fired and blacklisted, although charges of mutiny were dropped. The action marked the beginnings of the National Maritime Union. And in 1937, CIO president John L. Lewis and U.S. Steel President Myron Taylor sign a landmark contract in which the bitterly anti-union company officially recognized the CIO as sole negotiator for the company's unionized workers. The deal included adoption of overtime pay, the 40-hour work week, and a big pay hike. Today’s labor quote is by John L. Lewis: “Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.” Union City Radio is supported by UnionPlus. UnionPlus is committed to improving the quality of life of working families; find out more at unionplus.org.
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