Metro workers are rallying Saturday at noon over funding and safety issues. Led by ATU Local 689, other unions as well as political and community allies are expected to turn out to support demands for dedicated funding for Metro to ensure long-term maintenance, upkeep, and expansion and make Metro safe for riders and workers. “No one knows the system better than our members, who are the front line workers of the system,” says Jackie Jeter, president of Local 689. Among those speaking tomorrow are Dion Baker, a Metro Train Operator who will talk about the faulty and outdated radio equipment he's forced to use, and DC Circulator Bus Operator “Tiny” Burke who has witnessed dangerous cost cutting while the outsourced company he works for makes a profit. The rally will be held at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation at 213 East Capitol Street Northeast.
For the latest local labor calendar listings, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1903, a preliminary delegation from Mother Jones' March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt's summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, publicizing the harsh conditions of child labor, arrived but were not allowed through the gates. In 1956, nineteen firefighters died while responding to a blaze at the Shamrock Oil and Gas refinery in Sun Ray, Texas. And in 1970, following a 5-year table grape boycott, Delano-area growers filed into the United Farm Workers union hall in Delano, California to sign their first union contracts. Today’s labor quote is by Cesar Chavez "The name of the game is to talk to people. If you don't talk to people, you can't get started...You knock on twenty doors or so, and twenty guys tell you to go to hell, or that they haven't got time. But maybe at the fortieth or sixtieth house you find the one guy who is all you need. You're not going to organize everything; you're just going to get it started.”
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