Organized labor’s stunning defeat of Fast Track headlined Monday’s meeting of the Metro Washington Council. AFL-CIO staffer Maya Goines updated Council delegates on the continuing fight against Fast Track and the TPP, which will probably be brought up for another vote soon. Saying “the fight is not over yet,” Goines urged delegates to call Maryland Congressional representatives Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards to thank them for their votes, and to stay tuned for more updates. Delegates also approved the Council’s new strategic plan, which includes a change to a full-time Executive Director and a volunteer President, effective early next year when current president Jos Williams retires.
On today’s labor calendar, ONE DC is holding a Marriot Accountability Report Press Conference today at 10am, there’s a Justice for Janitors Rally at 4pm and thentonight the Maryland State and DC AFL-CIO hosts their annual “Salute to Leadership” Awards Dinner starting at 6pm. Tomorrow there’s a conversation with workers of the occupied RR Donnelly factory in Argentina at Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse in Baltimore. For complete details on all these great events, go to dclabor.org and click on calendar. Here’s today’s labor history: In 1912 the eight-hour work day was adopted for federal employees. On this date in 1934, a pioneering sit-down strike was conducted by workers at a General Tire Company factory in Akron, Ohio. The United Rubber Workers union was founded a year later. The tactic launched a wave of similar efforts in the auto and other industries over the next several years. And in 1937, The Women’s Day Massacre took place in Youngstown, Ohio, when police used tear gas on women and children, including at least one infant in his mother's arms, during a strike at Republic Steel. One union organizer later recalled, "When I got there I thought the Great War had started over again. Gas was flying all over the place and shots flying and flares going up and it was the first time I had ever seen anything like it in my life..." Today’s labor quote is by Jeremy Brecher, author of “Strike”: “The sit-down idea spread so rapidly because it dramatized a simple powerful act, that no social institution can run without the cooperation of those whose activity make it up.”
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