 The role of area union trades in building new local landmarks is featured in the latest editions of the IBEW 26 and Plumbers 5 newsletters. Since March 2015, several hundred members of IBEW Local 26 have been among over 800 area trades workers building the MGM Hotel and Casino at National Harbor. IBEW 26 members have been responsible for over 3 million square feet of lighting and over 600 volts of power distribution at the MGM (read more here). Local union construction workers have also been contributing to building the National Law Enforcement Museum, as featured in the latest issue of Plumbers and Gasfitters Local 5 (above; read more here). photo courtesy Chris Sedgwick
If you get your health care coverage through work, it's time to start paying attention to what’s going on in Washington, says the AFL-CIO. “Especially to the new plan to tax our health benefits.” Republican leaders in Congress are doing their best to keep this under wraps, but under the Republican plan being discussed, at least some of the cost of our health care benefits could be included in our taxable earnings. Employers may well react to this by cutting back on our health benefits through even higher deductibles and co-pays or even eliminating our health plans altogether. "Let your senators and members of Congress know what you think," urges the AFL-CIO. "Tell them not to tax your workplace health care benefits. You might even want to do that in person. They are at home this week, hosting town halls, public appearances and other events with their constituents." Click here to find an event near you.
 “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
 U.S. Supreme Court finds that a Utah state law limiting mine and smelter workers to an 8-hour workday is constitutional - 1898
(Actually Leap Year Feb. 29) The minimum age allowed by law for workers in mills, factories, and mines in South Carolina is raised from 12 to 14 - 1915 (Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor: Your heart will be broken by this exceptional book’s photographs of children at backbreaking, often life-threatening work, and the accompanying commentary by author Russell Freedman. Photographer Lewis Hine—who himself died in poverty in 1940—did as much, and perhaps more, than any social critic in the early part of the 20th century to expose the abuse of children, as young as three and four, by American capitalism.) Members of the Chinese Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in San Francisco’s Chinatown begin what is to be a successful four-month strike for better wages and conditions at the National Dollar Stores factory and three retail outlets – 1938 (Actually leap year Feb. 29) Screen Actors Guild member Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award, honored for her portrayal of “Mammy” in “Gone with the Wind” - 1940 In response to the layoff of 450 union members at a 3M factory in New Jersey, every worker at a 3M factory in Elandsfontein, South Africa, walks off the job in sympathy - 1986 Compiled/edited by Union Communication Services |