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.
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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." |
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