Union-organized public pressure forced a key D.C. City Council member, Kenyan McDuffie to publicly pledge he would fight to keep Providence Hospital in Northeast open.
And the Metropolitan Washington AFL-CIO is arranging meetings with other council members to lobby them to back the hospital, one of only two acute-care hospitals in almost all of the eastern half of the city. Approximately 100 people showed up last Thursday night at a community meeting to protest the highly profitable Catholic-run Ascension Health Care System’s plan to close Providence in December and sell the land to a developer. Patients from wards 4, 5, 7 and 8, most of them paid for by Medicare or Medicaid, would have to scramble for care if Providence closes. Ambulances would have to transport emergency patients twice as long to the nearest acute-care hospital, Washington Hospital Center. Facing a barrage of tough questions, McDuffie finally admitted: “I don’t support what’s happening. I don’t think this city or our nation can afford to have Providence Hospital close.” He too urged attendees to jam the October 10 DC City Council Health Committee meeting. On today’s labor calendar, the Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO meets tonight at 6:30 at the AFL-CIO; get complete details and the latest updates on our website at dclabor.org, click on Calendar. In today’s labor history, on this date in 1989, ninety-eight United Mine Workers of America members and a minister occupied the Pittston Coal Company's Moss 3 preparation plant in Carbon, Virginia, beginning a year-long strike. Among other issues: management demands for drastic limitations in health and pension benefits for retired and disabled miners and their dependents and beneficiaries. Today’s labor quote is by Susan B. Anthony. On this date in 1868, at a New York convention of the National Labor Congress, Anthony called for the formation of a Working Women's Association. As a delegate to the Congress, she persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. But male delegates deleted the reference to the vote. Susan B. Anthony, who said: “Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.”
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