In this week’s “Winners and Losers of the Week” feature, the winners are low-wage workers, who participated in strikes last week in 270 cities across the country in support of living wages and the protection of workers' rights on the job. The loser is Donald Trump, after saying that wages were too high in the latest contest to see which Republican hates workers the most or, as they call it, a GOP debate.
For the latest local labor events listings, go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details. Here’s today’s labor history: On this date in 1816, the term “scab” – referring to a strikebreaker – was first used by the Albany Typographical Society. And in 1888, Willard Bundy, a jeweler in Auburn, N.Y. invented the time clock. Bundy’s brother Harlow started mass producing them a year later. In 2008 the Great Recession hit high gear when the stock market fell to its lowest level since 1997. Adding to the mess: a burst housing bubble and total incompetence and greed—some of it criminal—on the part of the nation’s largest banks and Wall Street investment firms. Officially, the recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, though millions are still out of work, working part-time or forced to retire early. Today’s labor quote is by writer Jack London: “After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out...."
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