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AFL-CIO Leadership Institute Focuses on Building Power for Working People

6/29/2016

The Metro Washington Council (MWC) Staff and the AFL-CIO Community Services Agency were privileged to attend the 13th Annual AFL-CIO Leadership Institute, which ended last week in Columbia, Maryland. MWC Executive Director Carlos Jimenez said, “It was inspiring to spend time with other front-line leaders who are building power in their respective regions and states.” The Institute’s aim is to expand skills, knowledge, and leadership in order to overcome key challenges. Some topics included racial justice in our labor communities, strategic political action and community mobilization, and utilizing leadership styles. The institute provided a forum to network and share experiences with 40 other labor leaders from around the country. Carlos Jimenez said he “can’t wait to put a lot of the ideas and tools we received to use.” -Kathleen McKirchy
-photo: MWC staff, from left to right, David Dzidzienyo, Kathleen McKirchy, and Carlos Jimenez pose at AFL-CIO Leadership Institute

Unions Seek Answers to Maryland’s Payroll Debacle

6/29/2016

“Our members all have the same big three questions: Who was underpaid, for how long, and when will it be fixed?” said Patrick Moran, president of AFSCME Maryland Council 3. The Department of Budget and Management will conduct a new round of tests to better understand how many workers are affected and how much back pay is owed. The state promises to brief union leaders again in about two weeks. However, state officials say determining how much each employee is owed could take years, because they need to review thousands of old paper records, some of which may be discarded. Union officials say payroll mistakes have been commonplace for years, but the state never acknowledged a systemic problem until now. -Christian Berk
-Adapted from a report in the Washington Post

This Week's Labor Quotes

6/29/2016

June 28: Grover Cleveland
"The laboring classes constitute the main part of our population. They should be protected in their efforts peaceably to assert their rights when endangered by aggregated capital, and all statutes on this subject should recognize the care of the State for honest toil, and be framed with a view of improving the condition of the workingman."

June 29: Albert Einstein
"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."
Einstein was a member of the American Federation of Teachers.

June 30: Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington, who said “You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.”

This Week in Labor History:

6/29/2016

June 28
Birthday of machinist Matthew Maguire, who many believe first suggested Labor Day. Others believe it was Peter McGuire, a carpenter - 1850

President Grover Cleveland signs legislation declaring Labor Day an official U.S. holiday - 1894
-photo: An early Labor Day Parade, circa 1900

June 29
What is to be a 7-day streetcar strike begins in Chicago after several workers are unfairly fired. Wrote the police chief at the time, describing the strikers’ response to scabs: "One of my men said he was at the corner of Halsted and Madison Streets, and although he could see fifty stones in the air, he couldn't tell where they were coming from." The strike was settled to the workers’ satisfaction - 1885
-photo (left): illustrations of Chicago Streetcar Strike

An executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the National Labor Relations Board. A predecessor organization, the National Labor Board, established by the Depression-era National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, had been struck down by the Supreme Court - 1934
-photo: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the National Labor Relations Act. Looking on, from left, are U.S. Rep. Theodore A. Peyser, U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and U.S. Sen. Robert F. Wagner.

IWW strikes Weyerhauser and other Idaho lumber camps - 1936

Jesus Pallares, founder of the 8,000-member coal miners union, Liga Obrera de Habla Espanola, is deported as an "undesirable alien." The union operated in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado - 1936

The Boilermaker and Blacksmith unions merge to become Int’l Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers - 1954

The newly-formed Jobs With Justice stages its first big support action, backing 3,000 picketing Eastern Airlines mechanics at Miami Airport - 1987

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in CWA v. Beck that, in a union security agreement, a union can collect as dues from non-members only that money necessary to perform its duties as a collective bargaining representative - 1988

June 30
Alabama outlaws the leasing of convicts to mine coal, a practice that had been in place since 1848. In 1898, 73 percent of the state's total revenue came from this source. 25 percent of all Black leased convicts died - 1928
-photo: Convict Miners, Alabama, circa 1900

The Walsh-Healey Act took effect today. It requires companies that supply goods to the government to pay wages according to a schedule set by the Secretary of Labor - 1936

The storied Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, a union whose roots traced back to the militant Western Federation of Miners, and which helped found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), merges into the United Steelworkers of America - 1967

Up to 40,000 New York construction workers demonstrated in midtown Manhattan, protesting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s awarding of a $33 million contract to a nonunion company. Eighteen police and three demonstrators were injured. "There were some scattered incidents and some minor violence," Police Commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Post. "Generally, it was a pretty well-behaved crowd." – 1998
(Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits follows the history of the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO from the emergence of building trades councils to the age of the skyscraper. It takes the reader through treacherous fights over jurisdiction as new building materials and methods of work evolved and describes numerous Department campaigns to improve safety standards, work with contractors to promote unionized construction, and forge a sense of industrial unity among its fifteen (and at times nineteen) autonomous and highly diverse affiliates.)

Nineteen firefighters die when they are overtaken by a wildfire they are battling in a forest northwest of Phoenix, Ariz. It was the deadliest wildfire involving firefighters in the U.S. in at least 30 years - 2013
- compiled/edited by David Prosten at Union Communication Services.

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