The Metro Washington Council, AFL-CIO has just released the 2015 Directory of Local Unions. The Directory is a handy guide to the local labor movement, listing nearly 200 Council affiliates representing a broad cross-section of 150,000 area workers, from athletes to writers, government workers to the construction trades. The annual Directory has been completely updated with the latest information – including social media -- on the Council’s affiliated locals, as well as allies in the community and constituency groups. Also updated this year is the Union Shop listing of union employers, including restaurants, hotels, parking garages, movie theaters, printers and more. The Directory is sponsored by American Income Life, Amalgamated Bank and Labor 411. For a free copy, email [email protected] and mention you heard about it on Union City Radio.
On today’s labor calendar, the AFL-CIO is conducting its National Immigration Implementation Training starting at 9am and running through tomorrow at the Holiday Inn Washington-Georgetown. Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details. Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1883, cowboys earning just $40 a month began what was to become an unsuccessful two and a half month strike for higher wages at five ranches in the Texas Panhandle. In 1927, farmworker organizer Cesar Chavez was born in Yuma, Arizona. And in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed legislation establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps, to help alleviate suffering during the Depression. By the time the program ended, it had provided jobs for more than six million men and boys. Today's labor quote is by Cesar Chavez: "Our opponents in the agricultural industry are very powerful and farm workers are still weak in money and influence. But we have another kind of power that comes from the justice of our cause. So long as we are willing to sacrifice for that cause, so long as we persist in non-violence and work to spread the message of our struggle, then millions of people around the world will respond from their heart, will support our efforts ... and in the end we will overcome."
0 Comments
Transit workers Local 689 on Tuesday blasted the appointment of Corbett Price to the Metro board. Local 689 president Jackie Jeter cited Price’s “reputation as an anti-worker, union-busting, slash-and-burn executive consultant who puts profits over people and public welfare,” in a blistering open letter to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, who made the appointment. Jeter noted that one of Price’s first acts as an executive for Prince George’s County’s Dimensions Healthcare System was to fire nearly a quarter of the system’s staff but that he himself was fired within months of being promoted to CEO. Read more about labor’s concerns at dclabor.org
On today’s labor calendar, there’s a reception for Salvadoran union leader Estela Ramirez at 5:30pm at the Teamsters. And at 6pm, check out “Students, Workers, and the Making of the 99 Percent Movement" at Georgetown University. Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details. Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1868, San Francisco brewery workers began a 9 month strike as local employers followed the union-busting lead of the National Brewer’s Association and fired their unionized workers, replacing them with scabs. Two unionized brewers refused to go along, kept producing beer, prospered wildly and helped force the Association to capitulate. One of the contract benefits workers were defending was free beer for employees. Today's labor quote is by writer William Faulkner: “It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.” Just before 8 on the last morning of her 2,604th week on the job, a nurse in a kaleidoscopic scrub top hobbled across the lobby’s cream-colored tile and switched on the lights. At a computer in the back of the D.C. neighborhood health clinic, Clydia Lavenia McAbee — “Miss McAbee” to most — adjusted her black-rimmed Ray-Ban reading glasses to review the day’s list of patients, almost all of whom she knew well. To read the rest of this inspirational Washington Post profile of a dedicated SEIU 722 member, go to dclabor.org.
OPEIU Local 2's Caniesha Seldon is featured in a report on last weekend's historic Next Up Young Workers Summit in Chicago. Seldon is Local 2's chief steward at the American Federation of Government Employees and staffperson at their young worker program, and we’ll be hearing more from her soon about the summit. Meanwhile, go to dclabor.org for that report. In today’s labor calendar, catch former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse and his Ideas@Work Talk today at 1pm at the AFL-CIO; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details. Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1918, Chicago stockyard workers won the 8-hour day. In 1930, at the height of the Great Depression, 35,000 unemployed workers marched in New York’s Union Square. Police beat many of the demonstrators, injuring 100. In 1990, Harry Bridges, Australian-born dock union leader, died at age 88. He helped form and lead the International Longshore and Warehouse Union for 40 years. Today's labor quote is by Harry Bridges: “The most important word in the language of the working class is ‘solidarity’” A recent Facebook post by Washington Post reporter Lydia DePillis about why she joined the Newspaper Guild explores the challenge of “free riders,” or workers who are represented by a union but don’t have to join. Although DePillis at first felt no strong motivation to join the union, harsh demands by contract negotiators at the Post got her thinking “Suddenly, management seemed like something that needed to be defended against.” Then, in her job as the Post’s labor reporter, she says that “writing about people who are fighting hard for the right to join a union at all…I gained a greater appreciation for the history of worker organizing, and how collective bargaining has kept so many people in the middle class.” When DePillis joined the Newspaper Guild, she says she “felt suddenly unburdened, and more a part of the place where I work.” Go to dclabor.org to read the rest of her thoughtful post.
Today’s labor calendar is jam-packed, beginning with a noontime talk about the 1877 Railroad Strike in Baltimore. Then at 6, there’s a benefit for the Restaurant Opportunity Center; also at 6, ATU Local 689 will hold a Public Hearing on Safety at Metro, and there’s also a DC Labor FilmFest Promotion Planning Meeting at the same time. Then at 6:30 the GU Women's Center is hosting a screening of "Paycheck to Paycheck." Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details on all these events. Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1894, populist Jacob Coxey led the first “Poor People’s March” on Washington, in which jobless workers demanded creation of a public works program. In 1911, 146 workers were killed in a fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a disaster that launched a national movement for safer working conditions. Today's labor quote is by Jacob Coxey: “We have come here through toil and weary marches, through storms and tempests, over mountains, and amid the trials of poverty and distress, to lay our grievances at the doors of our National Legislature and ask them in the name of Him whose banners we bear, in the name of Him who plead for the poor and the oppressed, that they should heed the voice of despair and distress that is now coming up from every section of our country, that they should consider the conditions of the starving unemployed of our land, and enact such laws as will give them employment, bring happier conditions to the people, and the smile of contentment to our citizens.” This speech was delivered on the steps of the US Capitol in 1944, fifty years after Coxey, leading his “Poor People’s March,” was arrested there in 1894 for walking on the grass. |
Categories
All
Union City Radio is proud to be supported by UnionPlus, which has been working hard for union families since 1986.
Union City Radio is part of The Labor Radio/Podcast Network
Listen now...UC Radio airs weekdays at 7:15a on WPFW 89.3 FM; subscribe to the podcast here. |