News: An estimated 200,000 Burmese migrants fuel Thailand’s huge fishing industry in Samut Sakhon province, an hour outside of Bangkok. The majority of workers are ethnic Mon from farming villages and they send their salaries to their families back home. Many workers do not hold legal documents and are vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers and lack access to legal protection. The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center documents their struggles in a new online photo essay: go to solidaritycenter.org to see it.  

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1906, the local lumber workers' union in Humboldt County, California founded the Union Labor Hospital Association to establish a hospital for union workers in the county. The hospital became an important community facility financed and run by the local labor movement.

In 1915, Congress approved the Seamen’s Act, providing the merchant marine with rights similar to those gained by factory workers. Action on the law was prompted by the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier. Among other gains: working hours were limited to 56 per week and guaranteed minimum standards of cleanliness and safety were put in place.

And in 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act took effect on this date. It orders contractors on federally financed or assisted construction projects to pay wage rates equal to those prevailing in local construction trades.

Today's labor quote is by Grace Abbott:
Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.
Grace Abbott was an American social worker who specifically worked in improving the rights of immigrants, especially those from eastern Europe, and advancing child welfare, especially the regulation of child labor.

 

 

News: The last in our series of Black History Month Labor Profiles honors Bill Lucy. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Bill Lucy was a materials and research engineer in California when he joined AFSCME in 1956.  A decade later, he was elected president of the Local and the next year, went to work full time for the union.  He worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968 until King was assassinated later that year. The strike continued and the union won recognition. Lucy was elected Secretary-Treasurer of AFSCME in 1972, the same year he became the first president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. He was also instrumental in the anti-apartheid movement, as one of the founders of the Free South Africa Movement, that eventually led to Nelson Mandela's release from prison and to the first democratic elections in South Africa. “Though his name is not as well-known as King and Mandela, Lucy has carved out a legacy based on living wages, health care benefits, and job safety,” said the N-double A-CP. “And like these famous men, Lucy's legacy lives on through the lives of hundreds of thousands of working families around the world every day.” You can find links to all our Black History Month Labor Profiles at dclabor.org

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1913, postal workers were granted the 8-hour day.

In 1990, more than 6,000 drivers struck Greyhound Lines; most lost jobs to strikebreakers after the company declared an “impasse” in negotiations.

Today's labor quote is by Bill Lucy, on the occasion of his retirement from AFSCME in 2010:
“We’ve always known that there’s a crisis. It may be more intense now, but there’s always been a crisis for millions of people not as lucky as we are in this room. There’s a daily crisis in their lives, as they struggle to put bread on their tables, to put clothes on their backs, to have a roof on their heads. We have a responsibility to help them out.”

News: Airline catering workers will protest at Freedom Plaza this afternoon to call attention to the low wages paid to the food workers and unaffordable health care plans. According to UNITE HERE Local 23, nearly half of airline food workers currently make less than $10.10 an hour, which means they not only can’t afford the premiums of so-called “minimum value plans,” but are also ineligible to purchase more affordable options from health care exchanges. The 3 pm action at Freedom Plaza is an escalation of the workers’ “Nickel A Ticket” campaign, which calls on United, American and Delta Airlines to earmark five cents per passenger ticket toward affordable health care options for airline catering employees. Go to dclabor.org for complete details.

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1972, a coal slag heap doubling as a dam in West Virginia’s Buffalo Creek Valley collapsed, flooding the 17-mile long valley. 118 died and 5,000 were left homeless. The Pittston Coal Company claimed it was "an act of God."

In 2004, a 20-week strike by 70,000 Southern California supermarket workers ended, with both sides claiming victory.

Today's labor quote is by Gene Debs:
“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States

News: The latest in our series of BLACK HISTORY MONTH LABOR PROFILES honors FANNIE LOU HAMER. Hamer began working in the cotton fields at age six and in the 1950s, she and her husband worked as sharecroppers in Mississippi. In 1962, she was kicked off the plantation where she had lived and worked for 18 years after she volunteered to lead a group of African Americans seeking to register to vote. Hamer immediately went to work as a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Despite being jailed and beaten, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign" in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 to challenge Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention and in 1968 she was a member of the Mississippi delegation. Hamer continued her work throughout her life, including working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. She died in 1977.
You can win one of 100 Black History Month posters by texting the code “BLACK” (for Black History Month) to 235246

Here's today's labor history:
On this date in 1902, John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. Steinbeck is best known for writing The Grapes of Wrath, which exposed the mistreatment of migrant farm workers during the Depression and led to some reforms.

In 1937, four hundred fifty Woolworth’s workers and customers occupied a store in Detroit for eight days in support of the Waiters and Waitresses Union.

And on this date in 1939, the Supreme Court ruled that sit-down strikes, a major organizing tool for industrial unions, are illegal.

Today's labor quote is by Fannie Lou Hamer:
“All my life I’ve been sick and tired. Now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”