After the DC City Council failed to act on paid family leave legislation last Tuesday, Joanna Blotner said that "We're disappointed but undeterred by the Council's inaction.” Blotner is the Paid Family Leave Campaign Manager for the coalition supporting family leave. “Chairman Mendelson has committed multiple times to passing paid leave this session so the delay simply provides us additional time to ensure we enact the most comprehensive legislation possible," Blotner added. DC is still on track to be the first city to create paid family and medical leave insurance. The proposed family-leave law would give paid time off to both new parents and adults caring for dying parents and significant others. It would also create a new citywide benefit of paid personal leave for workers’ own medical problems.
For the latest local labor calendar, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1883, the Brotherhood of Telegraphers began an unsuccessful 3-week strike against the Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1919, some 35,000 Chicago stockyard workers struck. And in 1969, hospital workers won a 113-day union recognition strike in Charleston, South Carolina. Today’s labor quote is by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka "There's no evil that's inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism - and it's something that we in the Labor Movement have a special responsibility to challenge. It's our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people. We've seen how companies set worker against worker - how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table - and how it's black and Latino workers who get the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs. But we've seen something else too. We've seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down."
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The sense of betrayal was palpable at Tuesday night’s Montgomery County Council hearing on Expedited Bill 24-16, which county unions say would devastate collective bargaining for public employees by tilting power in favor of the employer.
Speaker after speaker excoriated the County Council – controlled by Democrats in one of the most progressive counties in the nation – for considering anti-worker legislation that appeared to have been taken directly from the playbook of the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded by the notoriously anti-union Koch brothers. UFCW 1994 president Gino Renne said the bill "will disrupt the labor peace we have worked so hard to achieve," while UFCW 400 president Mark Federici called it “shocking,” and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre – a Montgomery County resident – said that “I shouldn’t have to be here; I should be fighting for workers rights in Right-to-Work states” like Kansas, where other witnesses said the bill had originated. Fire fighter Brock Cline brought the packed room to its feet when he said that “My compatriots back here, my brothers in blue, those of us in red, and all the other employees of the county, we work hard. We have one simple mission, and that is to make the county a better place. Please do not hamstring us in our ability to continue to serve the citizens, and make a better life for ourselves and our children in Montgomery County.” For the latest local labor calendar, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1917, some 50,000 lumberjacks struck for an 8-hour day. In 1931, Ralph Gray, an African-American sharecropper and leader of the Share Croppers Union, was murdered in Camp Hill, Alabama. And in 1959, a half-million steelworkers began what was to become a 116-day strike that shuttered nearly every steel mill in the country. Today’s labor quote is by Franklin Delano Roosevelt "True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." Union City Radio’s Chris Garlock hosts, with co-host Ed Smith, Executive Director of DCNA.
This week's guests: Mike Wilson, UFCW 400 on saving 8 area Giant stores... David Stephen, ATU 689 (in-studio), on ATU 689’s response to Congresswoman Barbara Comstock blaming WMATA’s backlog of open work orders on the train operators and controllers of Metro rail and attacking their earnings... Bill Fletcher, Jr. on his 5:30pm talk at the 5th Street Busboys and Poets discussing his book, “They’re Bankrupting Us! And 20 Other Myths About Unions.” Labor song of the week: Take The Money And Run – The Steve Miller Band Hundreds of county workers and their supporters across the labor movement turned out Tuesday night to demonstrate their vocal opposition to an anti-union bill introduced by Montgomery County Council President Nancy Floreen that county unions say would devastate collective bargaining for firefighters, school nurses, county employees, and many more working people in Montgomery County. Read more on our website at dclabor.org
There are still some spaces left in the July 23 "DC Labor Workers' History Guided Walking Tour.” From the "Labor is Life" mosaic at the AFL-CIO to Joe Hill’s ashes at the National Archives, worker’s history is around just about every corner in our nation’s capitol, if you know where to look. I’ll be leading this 3-hour walking tour of downtown DC, revealing labor’s often-untold story of protest and resistance. Go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar to register for the walk. On today’s labor calendar, I’ll be back in the host’s chair for today’s edition of “Your Rights at Work” at 1 pm this afternoon here on WPFW and then at 5:30 catch “Arise” host Bill Fletcher Jr. at the 5th Street Busboys and Poets for a discussion of his book, "They're Bankrupting Us! And 20 Other Myths About Unions.” Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1877, “The Great Uprising” nationwide railway strike began in Martinsburg, West Virginia, after railroad workers were hit with their second pay cut in a year. In the following days, strike riots spread through 17 states. The next week, federal troops were called out to force an end to the strike. In 1912, Woody Guthrie, writer of "This Land is Your Land" and "Union Maid," was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. And in 1921, Italian immigrants and anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted in Massachusetts of murder and payroll robbery—unfairly, most historians agree—after a 2-month trial, and were eventually executed. Fifty years after their deaths the state's governor issued a proclamation saying they had been treated unfairly and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." Today’s labor quote is by Woody Guthrie “Maybe I should talk to you about fascism. It is a big word and it hides in some pretty little places. It is nothing in the world but greed for profit and greed for the power to hurt and make slaves out of the people. But fascism can no more control the world than a bunch of pool hall gamblers and thugs can control America. Because all of the laws of man working in nature and history and evolution say for all human beings to come always closer and closer together.” |
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