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Safeway and Giant workers approve strong new contracts, avoid strike

COPE candidate interviews set for March 11

DC female labor leaders honored on Harriet Tubman Day

Union Voice/Readers Write: Jefferson offensive

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

[link removed] LABOR CALENDAR

Union City Radio: Weekdays, 7:15am - 7:20am
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; [link removed] click here to hear

Labor Listening Session with Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy: Mon, March 9, 9:00am - 10:30am
IBEW Local 26, 7016 Infantry Ridge Rd, Manassas VA

EVENING WITH LABOR: Sat, April 4, 7pm - 11pm
Martin's Crosswinds, 7400 Greenway Center Drive, Greenbelt, MD 20770
[link removed] Order tickets here and/or email mailto:[email protected] [email protected]

EWL ad deadline today! The deadline for 2020 Evening with Labor program book ads is today, Friday, March 6. [link removed] Click here for more info and here to [link removed] download the order form or email mailto:[email protected] [email protected] or call Chris at 202-974-8153.

Safeway and Giant workers approve strong new contracts, avoid strike
With just hours to go before a strike vote, members of UFCW Local 400 struck a deal with Safeway early Thursday morning. The agreement was overwhelmingly ratified by Safeway workers Thursday afternoon; Giant workers, who reached a deal last month, ratified their new contract Thursday morning. The four-year Safeway contract -- paralleling the Giant contract -- provides pay increases above the minimum wage, maintains current health care coverage, and -- addressing the most contentious issue in bargaining -- it guarantees full funding of pension benefits for current employees and retirees, one of the only agreements in the U.S. to secure a defined benefit multiemployer pension plan. "We stood up to Wall Street and we won," said Local 400 President Mark P. Federici. "Some of the most powerful private equity billionaires learned they could not break our solidarity in order to grab even more money from our pockets into theirs. We stayed united, they backed down, and our members and retirees can still count on their pension benefits being there for them." [link removed] Read more here

COPE candidate interviews set for March 11
The Metro Washington Council's District of Columbia Committee on Political Education (DC COPE) will interview candidates for the DC City Council next Wednesday, March 11. The interviews are open to locals affiliated with the MWC and their members, but you must [link removed] RSVP here. Candidates confirmed (and their interview times) include: Ward 2 (11am): Jack Evans, John Fanning, Jordan Grossman, Daniel Hernandez, Patrick Kennedy, Brooke Pinto, Kishan Putta, and Yilin Zhang; Ward 4 (2pm): Marlena Edwards, Janeese Lewis George, Brandon Todd (incumbent); Ward 7 (1pm): Kelvin Brown, Vincent Gray (incumbent), Anthony Lorenzo Green, Rebecca Morris, and Veda Rasheed; Ward 8 (10am): Stuart Anderson, Mike Austin, Yaida Ford, Nelson Jackson, Danielle Platt, Trayon White (incumbent); At Large (3pm): Robert White (incumbent).

DC female labor leaders honored on Harriet Tubman Day
DC-area female labor leaders are among those being honored with the Harriet Tubman Award for Social Justice next Tuesday. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has declared March 10 Harriet Tubman Day and the awards "symbolize the spirit of freedom, justice, and equality for all," says Don Victor Mooney of the [link removed] HR 1242 Resilience Project -- an effort to rename the Virginia Inside Passage the Harriet Tubman Waterway -- which is organizing the event. "If Harriet Tubman were alive today, she would be an organizer, Mooney added, "fighting for social justice, a living wage, quality schools, affordable prescription drug prescriptions, quality housing, and healthcare." The labor leaders include SEIU 400's Cynthia Collins, who serves on the Metro Council's Executive Board, Lorretta Johnson (AFT), Valerie King (UWUA), Se'Adoreia K. Brown (AFSCME), Suping Gong-Mooney (DC 37), Linda Martin (UNITE HERE 25), Virginia Barnes (Teamsters) and Becky Pringle (NEA). The event runs from 5-7 pm at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Centre and includes a photo exhibit and a Harriet Tubman reenactor from Maryland; to attend, RSVP to mailto:[email protected] [email protected] by noon Monday.

Union Voice/Readers Write: Jefferson offensive
"You quote Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner who benefited from the free labor of kidnapped Africans, ([link removed] March 4 Union City Labor Quote)" writes Rhonda White-Yakoub of AFSCME Local 1170. "As a union member, shop steward and African American, I find the quoting of Thomas Jefferson offensive."

Today's Labor Quote: Bev Grant

We have ploughed and we have planted. We have gathered into barns.
Done the same work as the men with babies in our arms.
But you won't find our stories in most history books you read.
We were there. We're still here, fighting for the things we need.

From Grant's song "We Were There" (see video), also the title of her multimedia performance about women's labor history, which will be performed on March 17 at this month's [link removed] Bread and Roses Series. In celebration of Women's History Month, local labor activists will bring the history of the struggles of women workers to life, depicting our sisters' struggles from abolitionist Sojourner Truth, fighting for women's rights to Dolores Huerta fighting on behalf of the farmworkers of today.

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Today's Labor History

This week's Labor History Today podcast: [link removed] Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote
Professor Robyn Muncy, co-curator of "Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote," on the role organized labor played in the lengthy and difficult struggle for women's rights.
Plus Saul Schniderman on the origins of Women's History Month and "Rise Up: Songs of the Women's Movement," the PBS show celebrating that history.
Last week's show: [link removed] African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South

March 6
The Knights of Labor picket to protest the practices of the Southwestern Railroad system, and the company's chief, high-flying Wall Street financier Jay Gould. Some 9,000 workers walked off the job, halting service on 5,000 miles of track. The workers held out for two months, many suffering from hunger, before they finally returned to work - 1886

With the Great Depression underway, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers demonstrated in some 30 cities and towns; close to 100,000 filled Union Square in New York City and were attacked by mounted police - 1930

Predominantly young workers at a Lordstown, Ohio GM assembly plant stage a wildcat strike, largely in objection to the grueling workpace: at 101.6 cars per hour, their assembly line was believed to be the fastest in the world - 1972

March 7
6,000 shoemakers, joined by about 20,000 other workers, strike in Lynn, Mass. They won raises, but not recognition of their union - 1860

3,000 unemployed auto workers, led by the Communist Party of America, braved the cold in Dearborn, Mich. to demand jobs and relief from Henry Ford. The marchers got too close to the gate and were gassed. After re-grouping, they were sprayed with water and shot at. Four men died immediately, 60 were wounded - 1932

IWW founder and labor organizer Lucy Parsons dies - 1942

Hollywood writers represented by the Writers Guild of America went on strike against 200 television and movie studios over residuals payments and creative rights. The successful strike lasted 150 days, one of the longest in industry history - 1988

Musicians strike Broadway musicals and shows go dark when actors and stagehands honor picket lines. The strike was resolved after four days - 2003

March 8

Thousands of New York needle trades workers demonstrate for higher wages, shorter workday, and end to child labor. The demonstration became the basis for International Women's Day - 1908

New York members of the Fur and Leather Workers Union, many of them women, strike for better pay and conditions. They persevere despite beatings by police, winning a 10 percent wage increase and five-day work week - 1926

The Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act took effect on this day. It limits the ability of federal judges to issue injunctions against workers and unions involved in labor disputes - 1932
César Chávez leads 5,000 striking farmworkers on a march through the streets of Salinas, Calif. - 1979

- 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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