The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center reports that domestic workers in Jordan have formed the country's first-ever worker rights network, one that includes migrant workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The more than 2.4 million migrant domestic workers in the Arab region often toil 12–20 hour days, six or seven days a week cleaning homes, preparing meals and caring for children and the elderly. Migrant workers in Jordan, like in many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, cannot form unions to improve their working conditions. Find out more at solidaritycenter.org
In this week's Labor Quiz, independent non-union drivers in the trucking industry are known as what? Are they scabs; pie-cards; yellow-bellies or gypsies? Go to unionist.com and click on Labor Quiz and you could be next week's winner! Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1892, a total of 29 strike leaders were charged with treason—plotting "to incite insurrection, rebellion & war against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania"—for daring to strike the Carnegie Steel Company in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Jurors refused to convict them. In 1899, seventy-year-old Mother Jones organized the wives of striking miners in Arnot, Pennsylvania to descend on the mine with brooms, mops and clanging pots and pans. They frightened away the mules and their scab drivers, and the miners eventually won their strike. In 1919, black farmers met in Elaine, Arkansas to establish the Progressive Farmers and Householders Union to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices. They were shot at by a group of whites, and returned fire. News of the confrontation spread and a riot ensued, leaving at least 100 blacks dead and 67 indicted for inciting violence. And in 1962, Cesar Chavez, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later was to become the United Farm Workers of America. Today’s labor quote is by Dolores Huerta: “When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it's an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.”
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