This week's "Your Rights At Work" WPFW radio show reviews the local and national impact of the Supreme Court's Janus ruling, featuring Matthew Ginsburg, AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel, Andrew Washington, Executive Director, AFSCME Council 20, and Harold Meyerson, executive editor of The American Prospect. Plus an interview with Adam Sobel, director of "The Worker's Cup" (which begins a 1-week DC run today) and "Union Town" from Tom Morello. An “Everybody’s Got a Right to Live” rally in downtown Baltimore, hosted by 1199SEIU, demonstrated union support for the Poor People’s Campaign earlier this month. An “advocate for retirement equity,” AFSCME MD member Jamaal Craddock won a spot on Maryland’s Retirement and Pension System Board of Trustees. Unions are the solution to DC’s First Source failure, say Stephen Courtien (CHOICE) and John Boardman (UNITE HERE 25) in a Washington Business Journal op-ed. Paul Shearon was elected president of the 80,000-member International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) on June 28. Matthew Biggs will become secretary-treasurer. Shearon had previously served as the union’s secretary-treasurer and before that had worked as the organizing director for IFPTE's largest local, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA/Local 2001), which represents engineers and technical workers at the Boeing Company and other aerospace and defense contractors. Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast, which takes a look at two important dates in the history of the Supreme Court and labor. 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 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 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 see below for June 30 and July 1 history “It is now beyond partisan controversy that it is a fundamental individual right of a worker to associate himself with other workers and to bargain collectively with his employer.”
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