“Riggers kick ass,” says former IATSE 22 member Benjamin Tschudin about his 15-second video (right) showing Local 22 members working at the National Building Museum earlier this month. “12 100' chains at 120' connection @ 2 Hours flat,” adds Tschudin, who’s now a partner/designer at Atmosphere. Local 22 which represents stagehands and special events workers. Today’s labor quote is by President Harry Truman, from his June 20 1947 radio address to American people after vetoing the Taft-Hartley bill: "The bill is deliberately designed to weaken labor unions. When the sponsors of the bill claim that by weakening unions, they are giving rights back to individual workingmen, they ignore the basic reason why unions are important in our democracy. Unions exist so that laboring men can bargain with their employers on a basis of equality. Because of unions, the living standards of our working people have increased steadily until they are today the highest in the world." Click here for a link to the entire speech. Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, goes to Butte, Mont. in an attempt to mediate a conflict between factions of the miner’s local there. It didn’t go well. Gunfight in the union hall killed one man; Moyer and other union officers left the building, which was then leveled in a dynamite blast - 1914 Congress overrides President Harry Truman's veto of the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. The law weakened unions and let states exempt themselves from union requirements. Twenty states immediately enacted open shop laws and more followed - 1947 OSHA issues standard on cotton dust to protect 600,000 workers from byssinosis, also known as "brown lung" - 1978 A majority of the 5,000 textile workers at six Fieldcrest Cannon textile plants in Kannapolis, N.C., vote for union representation after an historic 25-year fight - 1999 Montgomery County Council President Nancy Floreen, who led the effort this spring to trim previously negotiated pay raises from public employee union contracts, is proposing legislation to bring what she calls more “balance” to the county’s collective bargaining process. Union leaders immediately denounced the bill, calling it a series of solutions to problems that do not exist. They also expressed disappointment that Floreen(left) did not reach out to them prior to introducing the measure. - Excerpted from a report in the Washington Post; photo by Chris Garlock/Union City |