LABOR CALENDAR
Union City Radio: 7:15am – 7:20am daily (now including weekends!)
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; click here to hear today's report
“Know Your Rights (COVID-19): Labor Leaders and Advocates Tele-Town Hall”: Fri, March 27, 11am – 12pm
Call-In: 888-802-8640 ID #: 9047942
NoVA Coalition to Repeal Right to Work (via Zoom): Fri, March 27, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
National Writers Union Chapter Meeting (via Zoom): Sun, March 29, 2pm – 4pm
Transit workers: “Please stay home”
Social distancing in a subway car is tough, and nearly impossible on a bus. We checked in with ATU Local 689’s Brian Wivell earlier this week to find out what the transit worker’s union is asking folks to do during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. “First and foremost, our number one ask right now is that if you do not have to be traveling to other places, please, please, please stay home. Do not use public transit if at all possible. It is really essential that we keep public transit accessible to those that are essential employees and need to be using public transit at this time. If you do not need to use public transit, if you have the means of getting someplace without coming into contact with other people, please use that. Help us keep our members safe, help us keep public transit functioning during this critical time. So if you have the ability and means to do so, you know, stay home.” ATU Local 689 represents nearly 7,000 metro-area transit workers.
- David Stephen
Sanitize and organize
SEIU 32BJ represents about 21,000 metro-area workers, from airport workers to commercial office cleaners, federal contracted workers, workers who maintain area universities, doing the landscaping, cleaning the dorms and so on. Union City caught up with 32BJ Area Director Jaime Contreras the other day to see how his members are coping with the COVID-19 crisis.
“One of the things a lot of workers have said, especially at the airport where we have active organizing campaigns, is that this is one of the reasons why all workers in the United States need a union to speak for them in a time of crisis like this,” said Contreras. “We have about 125,000 contracted workers at airports, who don't necessarily work directly for the airlines. If it wasn't for the union, these workers would have been left out of the deal that made it to Congress. And our organizing campaigns continue.”
- Chris Garlock
MWC COVID-19 UPDATES
Legislative updates: click here for the latest updates, including More Info On Relief For Workers Affected By Coronavirus Act; Hoyer: Republican Senators Action "Hurts Not Only The Residents Of The District, But Our Entire Region" By Not Recognizing DC As A State; Montgomery County Council Introduced a $5 Million Special Appropriation To Support The Increased Need For Existing County Safety-Net Programs; Senators Unanimously Passed The Biggest Stimulus Package In History
Unemployment Insurance: click here for the latest helpful information on UI, including Provisions Related to Unemployment Compensation in the Senate-passed CARES Act (FAQ) (and click here to hear DC Councilmember Elissa Silverman discuss UI on yesterday's Your Rights At Work on WPFW 89.3FM or search for Union City Radio on your favorite podcast platform).
CSA: latest resource updates posted here.
Union Voice/Readers Write: Appreciating connecting; graphic source; organizing during COVID-19
Appreciating connection: “I just wanted to say thank you so much for continuing to send these morning emails out,” writes Renata Strause. “I love being connected to the area labor movement this way and to know what's going on, and right now, I especially appreciate the feeling of normalcy it gives. It is so good to hear about how union members are stepping up and taking care of each other and our community in these tough times, and it is really giving me so much hope every morning. Thank you, and take care.”
Graphic source: "The handwashing graphic is cropped from here," writes Monica Gorman.
Organizing during COVID-19: “NPEU put out a statement about the importance of continuing to organize unions in our sector and in every workplace, even during this uncertainty caused by COVID-19,” writes Ethan Miller.
Today's Labor Quote: Mother Jones
“I will tell the truth wherever I please.”
Mother Jones was ordered to leave Colorado, where state authorities accused her of “stirring up” striking coal miners, on this date in 1904.
Today's Labor History
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: COVID-19: An injury to one is the concern of all
Al Neal’s “Silent streets: Life halts, but not for all workers,” and Joe McCartin on “Class and the Challenge of COVID-19.” Plus Saul Schniderman and John O’Connor remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Last week’s show: The Great Postal Strike, Watergate and “Casey Jones, the Union Scab”
March 27
U.S. Supreme Court rules that undocumented workers do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired - 2002
March 28
Members of Gas House Workers’ Union Local 18799 begin what is to become a four-month recognition strike against the Laclede Gas Light Co. in St. Louis. The union later said the strike was the first ever against a public utility in the U.S. - 1935
Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. Violence during the march persuades him to return the following week to Memphis, where he was assassinated - 1968
March 29
Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 and women to work more than 10 hours a day - 1852
Sam Walton, founder of the huge and bitterly anti-union Wal-Mart empire, born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He once said that his priority was to “Buy American,” but Wal-Mart is now the largest U.S. importer of foreign-made goods—often produced under sweatshop conditions - 1918
“Battle of Wall Street,” police charge strikers lying down in front of stock exchange doors, 43 arrested - 1948
National Maritime Union of America merges with National Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association - 1988
- 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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