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Dems defeat anti-union amendment targeting D.C. labor

Solidarity Center Report: Bangladesh garment workers face new blocks to form unions

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

Union City Radio: Weekdays, 7:15am - 7:20am
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MWC/CSA Offices Closed (Presidents Day): Mon, February 17, 9am - 5pm

CLUW Baltimore Chapter mtg: Tue, February 18, 5pm - 7pm
Baltimore Teachers Union, AFT Local 340 5800 Metro Drive Baltimore, MD 21215

Metro Washington Council Delegate Meeting: Tue, February 18, 6:30pm - 8:00pm
AFL-CIO, 815 16th St NW, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States (map)
NOTE: Nominations for a new MWC President and to fill two Board vacancies will be held at this meeting. [link removed] Click here for details.

Dems defeat anti-union amendment targeting D.C. labor
An attempt to drag the District of Columbia into a politically motivated attack on organized labor has been defeated. Congressman Ralph Norman (R-SC) had proposed an amendment modeled after the Freedom from Union Violence Act of 2019, would single out D.C. and make it a special federal crime to engage in violence during a labor dispute solely within the District, but would not include the states. House Rules Committee Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA) defeated the amendment, which Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) noted "directly attacks D.C. union workers and self-government." AFSCME Council 20 president Andrew Johnson thanked McGovern, Norton and the Democratic-led House of Representatives "for defending DC workers and standing up to conservatives trying to weaken the working class."

Solidarity Center Report: Bangladesh Garment Workers Face New Blocks to Form Unions
In Bangladesh, garment workers increasingly are being denied the ability to form unions because of an intensifying anti-worker environment. Even when they succeed in forming unions, their attempts to register them with the government often are denied, according to data compiled by the Solidarity Center. Find out more at Solidarity Center.

Today's Labor Quote: Susan B. Anthony

"Failure is impossible"

The suffragist, abolitionist, and labor activist was born on this date in 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts.

Today's Labor History

On this week's [link removed] Labor History Today podcast: John Sayles on "Matewan," "Yellow Earth" and more
Writer, actor, and filmmaker John Sayles talks about his latest novel, "Yellow Earth," and about his classic labor films Matewan and Eight Men Out. Plus, a reading from "Yellow Earth." Also this week, Saul Schniderman on the arrest of Mother Jones while leading a protest of conditions in West Virginia mines, and Jacob Feinspan remembers the 1926 general strike by New York furriers.
Last week's show: [link removed] Sisters, rebels and social justice in the Jim Crow South. photo by [link removed] Bruce Guthrie

February 14
Western Federation of Miners strike for 8-hour day - 1903

Jimmy Hoffa born in Brazil, Indiana, son of a coal miner. Disappeared July 30, 1975, declared dead seven years later - 1913

Striking workers at Detroit's newspapers, out since the previous July, offer to return to work. The offer is accepted five days later but the newspapers vow to retain some 1,200 scabs. A court ruling the following year ordered as many as 1,100 former strikers reinstated - 1996

February 15
U.S. legislators pass the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, providing funds for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which funneled money to states plagued by Depression-era poverty and unemployment, and oversaw the subsequent distribution and relief efforts - 1934

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expels the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers; the Food, Tobacco & Agricultural Workers; and the United Office & Professional Workers for "Communist tendencies." Other unions expelled for the same reason (dates uncertain): Fur and Leather Workers, the Farm Equipment Union, the International Longshoremen's Union, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers - 1950

February 16
Leonora O'Reilly was born in New York. The daughter of Irish immigrants, she began working in a factory at 11, joined the Knights of Labor at 16, and was a volunteer investigator of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. She was a founding member of the Woman's Trade Union League - 1870

Diamond Mine disaster in Braidwood, Ill. The coal mine was on a marshy tract of land with no natural drainage. Snow melted and forced a collapse on the east side of the mine, killing 74 - 1883

Beginning of a 17-week general strike of 12,000 New York furriers, in which Jewish workers formed a coalition with Greek and African American workers and became the first union to win a five-day, 40-hour week - 1926

- David Prosten

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Published by the Metropolitan Washington Council, an AFL-CIO "Union City" Central Labor Council whose 200 affiliated union locals represent 150,000 area union members.

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