Washington Post workers turned up the heat on Post owner Jeff Bezos last week in their battle for a fair contract. At lunchtime last Thursday, a group of about 25 staffers – members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild -- marched inside the Post's Washington, D.C., headquarters and upstairs to the publisher’s office to deliver a petition signed by nearly 500 Guild members and other Post employees. “The Post is not just a brand or a building," the petition said. "Keep your eyes focused here, on your loyal employees who work hard to uphold the great name and legacy of this outstanding news organization." Go to dclabor.org to see great photos.
On today’s labor calendar, a photography exhibit by Earl Dotter opens at 2p this afternoon with a special memorial tribute to asbestos workers at the AFL-CIO; and tonight at 7, check out the Jazz Jam concert by members of the Metropolitan Washington DC Federation of Musicians at Guapo's Restaurant in Northwest DC. Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details. In today’s Labor Quiz, what percentage of front-line fast food workers, and their dependents, receive some form of welfare assistance? Is it 12, 23, 47, or 52 percent? Go to unionist.com and click on Labor Quiz and you could be next week's winner! Here's today's labor history: the first strike for the 10-hour day occurred on this date in 1825 when Boston carpenters walked off the job; and on this date in 1911, James Oppenheim’s poem “Bread and Roses” was published in the IWW newspaper Industrial Solidarity. Today's labor quote is James Oppenheim’s poem, Bread and Roses: As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses, For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses." As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men-- For they are women's children and we mother them again. Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes-- Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses! As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread; Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew-- Yes, bread we fight for--but we fight for Roses, too. As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days-- The rising of the women means the rising of the race-- No more the drudge and idler--ten that toil where one reposes-- But sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses! Oppenheim wrote this poem to celebrate the movement for women’s rights and is closely associated with the 1912 Lawrence textile mill strike. During the strike, which was in protest of a reduction in pay, the women mill workers carried signs that quoted the poem, reading “We want bread, and roses, too”. Bread and Roses was set to music by Mimi Fariña in the 1970s, and has become an anthem for labor rights, and especially the rights of working women, in the United States and elsewhere.
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