Teachers at Frank W. Ballou High School staged a sit-in last week to protest “reconstitution,” which requires teachers to reapply for their positions. The process has resulted in a number of layoffs, while some teachers have simply left the system entirely. WTU Local 6 President Elizabeth Davis sent a letter to DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson criticizing the way “reconstitution” is being implemented at Ballou and pointing out that “the constant teacher turnover at the school over the past five years has created an instability that is hurting student achievement.” Davis asked the chancellor to rescind the reconstitution order.
On today’s labor calendar, the Great Labor Arts Exchange starts today at the ATU Training and Education Center in Silver Spring, where you can join labor and community cultural workers for a weekend of workshops, films, discussion groups, slam poetry, jam sessions and open mike. At 11:30 this morning, check out the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust Worker Appreciation Day event and tonight at 6pm the DC National Lawyers Guild host their first annual awards reception at the Bohemian Caverns; go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for details. Here’s today’s labor history: In 1893, more than 8,000 people attended the dedication ceremony for The Haymarket Martyrs Monument in Chicago, honoring those framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. On this date in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act passed Congress, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week. In 1941, at the urging of black labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order barring discrimination in defense industries. And on this date in 1994, in Decatur, Illinois, police sprayed workers with pepper-gas workers at an A.E. Staley plant gate one year into the company's two-and-a-half-year lockout of Paperworkers Local 7837. Today’s labor quote is by A. Philip Randolph: “Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.”
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