Following the AFL-CIO’s first National Summit on Raising Wages last week, the Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO and the metro-area labor movement will launch a campaign later this year aimed at creating an economy that works for everyone. “The National Summit on Raising Wages laid clear the challenges – but more importantly, the opportunities – facing DC-area families,” said Metro Washington Council President Jos Williams. “Allies united behind the idea of a Raising Wages Agenda have come together in a collective voice, and are ready to get to work,” Williams said.

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1883, the United States Civil Service Commission was established as the Pendleton Act went into effect

In 1920, thousands of Palmer Raids detainees – many of them union organizers -- won the right to meet with lawyers and have legal representation at deportation hearings.

Today’s labor quote is from a 1955 ad in Boston newspapers protesting strikebreakers hiring practices by Colonial Provision Company and Boston Sausage Company:
“What kind of job is it where you take the bread and butter off a fellow workers table? Colonial is getting its few strikebreakers by paying Judas money to a few know-nothings to bring in their friends. Tell them you don’t want their dirty thirty pieces of silver.”

Chanting “It’s not that cold, we won’t fold!” several dozen Washington Post workers and their supporters picketed outside the Post on Tuesday. “We’re making some progress but the major issues are still before us,” said the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild’s Rick Ehrmann. Representatives of the Post and Guild met January 7 and reached tentative agreement on several issues. The Guild reported last week that management had dropped a poison pill proposal that could have made it difficult for the union to collect membership dues. 
This followed progress made in the previous session on job security and evaluations, but pensions, wages and health benefits are still on the table.

Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1915, Ralph Chaplin, in Chicago for a demonstration against hunger, completed writing the labor anthem “Solidarity Forever.” A member of the IWW, Chaplin had begun writing the song in 1914 during a miners’ strike in Huntington, West Virginia.

In 1919, seventeen workers died when a large molasses storage tank in Boston’s North End neighborhood burst, sending a 40-foot wave of molasses surging through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour. In all, 21 people died and 150 were injured. The incident is variously known as the Boston Molasses Disaster, the Great Molasses Flood and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy. Some residents claim that on hot summer days, the area still smells of molasses.

On this date in 1929, Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was born.

In 1938, the CIO miners' union in California’s Grass Valley area struck for higher wages, union recognition, and the 8-hour day. The strike was defeated when vigilantes and law enforcement officials expelled 400 miners and their families from the area.

Today’s labor quote is the first verse of Ralph Chaplin’s song, “Solidarity Forever,” which has been sung at countless labor struggles over the last 100 years:
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong 

News: Newspaper Guild members and their supporters will rally for a contract at the Washington Post today at 12:30 in front of the Post, at 15th and L Streets. The current contract expired at the end of October.

This Week's Labor Quiz asks how many states, in addition to the District of Columbia, now have a minimum wage greater than the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour? Go to unionist.com and click on Labor Quiz to submit your answer and you could be next week's winner!

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1874, the original Tompkins Square Riot took place. As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children with billy clubs.

In 1919, Chicano citrus workers struck in Covina, California.

And in 1924, as the nation debated a constitutional amendment to rein in the widespread practice of brutally overworking children in factories and fields, U.S. District Judge G.W. McClintic expressed concern, instead, about child idleness.

Today’s labor quote is by Lane Kirkland:
“If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.”
Lane Kirkland was President of the AFL-CIO from 1979 to 1995.

News: Metro Access operator Karen Reed last week gave new DC mayor Muriel Bowser a glimpse of the grim impact that outsourcing of public services has had on residents of the DC metro area. At a Washington Interfaith Network forum, Reed explained the safety concerns for riders and the financial struggle she endures as an employee of a private, for-profit company contracted by WMATA to provide transportation for the area’s most vulnerable citizens.  “It would be a smoother ride for everybody,” said Reed, “if WMATA and First Transit would stop cutting corners and stop treating me and my fellow workers like disposable people.”

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1993, OSHA issued the confined spaces standard to prevent more than 50 deaths and 5,000 serious injuries annually for workers who enter confined spaces.
In 1995, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that bosses can fire workers for being gay.
In 2003, some 14,000 General Electric employees struck for two days to protest the company's mid-contract decision to shift an average of $400 in additional health care co-payments onto each worker.
And on this date in 2014, a 15-month lockout by the Minnesota Orchestra against members of the Twin Cities Musicians' Union ended when the musicians agreed to a 15 percent pay cut and increased health care cost sharing. They did win a revenue-sharing deal based on performance of the Orchestra's endowments. It was the nation's longest-running contract dispute for a concert orchestra.

Today’s labor quote is by Molly Ivins:
“Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions.  One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts."  
"Molly" Ivins was an American newspaper columnist, author, political commentator, and humorist.      

News: With close to two-thirds of Americans now owning a smartphone, Union Plus has launched a pilot project to develop a smartphone app focused on the benefits of union membership. Last month, Union Plus launched this project by hosting a focus group with UFCW Local 400 and Code for Progress to create a UFCW Local 400 benefits app. The Local 400 app will be designed to help members access and understand all the benefits of their union membership—both union-negotiated benefits and Union Plus benefits. Union members can also access benefit information on the go with the new Union Plus iPhone app, available free in the Apple app store.

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1876, novelist Jack London was born. The American author, journalist, and social activist was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and worker’s rights. He wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.
In 1919, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson ordered police to raid an open-air mass meeting of shipyard workers in an attempt to prevent a general strike. Workers were brutally beaten. The strike began the following month, with 60,000 workers walking out in solidarity with some 25,000 metal tradesmen.
In 1942, President Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board to mediate labor disputes during World War II. Although 12 million of the nation’s workers were women -- rising to 18 million by war’s end -- the panel consisted entirely of men.

Today’s labor quote is Jack London’s classic definition of a scab, or strikebreaker:
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles"

News: The clock has not quite run out on the effort to bring Ralph Fasanella’s painting "The Corner Butcher" to the Smithsonian. The collector who owns the painting “has given us through mid-January to finish raising the funds we need to purchase the painting,” reports Ron Carver. Some $4,000 is still needed to complete the purchase; for details on how to contribute, email [email protected]. Ralph Fasanella was a self-taught painter whose large, detailed works depicted urban working life and critiqued post-World War II America.

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1918, a Mediation Commission appointed by President Woodrow Wilson found that "industry’s failure to deal with unions" was the prime reason for labor strife in war industries.
In 1939, the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union led the Missouri Highway sit-down of 1,700 families. They had been evicted from their homes so landowners wouldn't have to share government crop subsidy payments with them.
In 2003, the Bush administration declared that federal airport security screeners would not be allowed to unionize so as not to "complicate" the war on terrorism. The decision was challenged and eventually overturned.

Today’s labor quote is by Ralph Fasanella: "I didn't paint my paintings to hang in some rich guy's living room."
Ralph Fasanella, who also said: “I'm a society minded guy. I'm committed to life. But I can't shut myself off from the past. I don't forget yesterday, so I know who I am today. I hang onto what I was yesterday, so I know what I'm going to do tomorrow."

News: Few postal workers were surprised by a recent Gallup Poll that found that Americans rate the Postal Service highest among 13 government agencies – after all, the Postal Service routinely ranks at the top of such surveys. But many people were surprised to learn that young people gave the Postal Service the highest rating: 81 percent of 18-29 year olds gave the Postal Service “excellent or good” marks. “Pundits have convinced many people that the future of the Postal Service is bleak because young people consider it irrelevant,” Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein said, “but this poll shows the opposite is true.”

Here’s today’s labor history:
On this date in 1811, the largest slave revolt in U.S. history began on Louisiana sugar plantations. Slaves armed with hand tools marched toward New Orleans, setting plantations and crops on fire, building their numbers to as many as 500 as they went. The uprising lasted for two days before being brutally suppressed by the military.
Today’s the birthday of Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, the first woman organizer for the American Federation of Labor. Born on this date in 1864, she organized the Woman’s Bookbinder Union in 1880 and in 1903 was a founder of the National Women’s Trade Union League.
In 1920, the AFL Iron and Steel Organizing Committee ended the “Great Steel Strike.” Some 400,000 steelworkers had been striking for more than three months, demanding union recognition. The strike failed.

Today’s labor quote is by American labor historian Paul Clark:
“The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining-it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process.”

News: Sen. Elizabeth Warren will deliver the keynote address during the first National Summit on Wages today in Washington, D.C. The summit—sponsored by the AFL-CIO—will examine concrete and progressive steps to raise wages for working people to help solve the dilemma of income inequality that plagues the United States. 
The event will feature a roundtable discussion by a diverse group including academics, business owners, prominent leaders—including Labor Secretary Tom Perez—and everyday working people. The Summit is being held at Gallaudet University starting at 8 am today and will be live streamed. Go to aflcio.org for details.

Here’s today’s labor history:
In 1939, Wobbly Tom Mooney, accused of a murder by bombing in San Francisco, was pardoned and freed after 22 years in San Quentin.
In 2009, the presidents of 12 of the nation’s largest unions met and called for reuniting the American labor movement, which split into two factions in 2005 when seven unions left the AFL-CIO and formed a rival federation. The meeting followed signals from President-elect Barack Obama that he would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices. Unions from both sides of the split participated in the meeting. The reunification effort failed, but by mid-2013 four of the unions had rejoined the AFL-CIO.

Today’s labor quote is by Martin Luther King, Jr:
“What good does it do to sit at the counter when you cannot afford a hamburger?”

News: The Metro Washington Council and UFCW Local 400 joined other winners in the International Labor Communications Association’s Labor Media Awards last month at the AFL-CIO. The Metro Council's “Union City" won first place in the General Excellence - Electronic Newsletter category for 2014, while UFCW Local 400 collected an impressive seven awards, including five first places at a luncheon on Dec. 12. ILCA Executive Council President Kathy Cummings said that “All of this year’s winners truly exemplify our goal of amplifying labor’s voice around the world.”

Here’s today’s labor history: 
On this date in 1882, the Toronto Trades and Labour Council endorsed the principle of equal pay for equal work between men and women.
In 1916, eight thousand workers struck at Youngstown Sheet & Tube. The following day the strikers’ wives and other family members joined in the protest. Company guards used tear gas bombs and fired into the crowd, killing three strikers and wounding 25.

Today’s labor quote is by President Jimmy Carter:
“Every advance in this half-century--Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another--came with the support and leadership of American Labor.”

This Week's Labor Quiz asks what percentage of college teachers today are “adjuncts”? Also known as “contingent faculty,” these are part-timers with no benefits or job security, usually paid only a few thousand per course, frequently cobbling together jobs on two or three different campuses in an effort to get enough work. Is it 20, 45, 60 or 75 percent? Go to unionist.com and click on Labor Quiz to submit your answer and you could be next week's winner!

Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1869, the nation’s first black labor convention was held in Washington, D.C., with 214 delegates forming the Colored National Labor Union. In 1933, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began in San Francisco. Ten of the 11 deaths on the job came when safety netting beneath the site—the first-ever use of such equipment—failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen other workers were saved by the net over the course of construction. They became members of the informal Halfway to Hell Club.

Today’s labor quote is by Sir Francis Bacon: “Knowledge is power.” Sir Francis Bacon, who also said: “Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.”