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Bowser urged to declare grocery workers "first responders"

Tough Teamsters: "It's a challenge every day"

Solidarity Center Report: Workers Stand Up for Rights in Bangladesh, Ukraine

MWC COVID-19 UPDATES

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

[link removed] 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, [link removed] "Building trades and COVID-19"

[link removed] Coalition to Repeal Right to Work (via Zoom): Fri, April 3, 7pm - 8pm

[link removed] National Writers Union Chapter Mtg (via Zoom): Sun, April 5, 2pm - 3pm

Virtual Freedom Seder (Jews United for Justice): Sun, April 5, 4:30pm - 7:00pm
Via Zoom; [link removed] RSVP here.
video: Samuel L. Jackson's COVID-19 Public Service Announcement.

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Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency staff are all teleworking and can be reached at the contact [link removed] numbers and email addresses here.

[link removed] Latest DC-area labor news, delivered daily: tell a friend and help build our Union City!

Bowser urged to declare grocery workers "first responders"
Following news of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in several area grocery stores, UFCW Local 400 is urging DC Mayor Bowser to declare grocery workers as "first responders." The union, which represents thousands of grocery workers at Giant, Shoppers, and Safeway stores in the DMV area, is calling on Mayor Bowser to provide access to free, dedicated testing sites and protective equipment for grocery store, pharmacy, and food processing workers, as has been [link removed] made available to other first responders in the District. "Our members working on the frontlines of this crisis are exposed to hundreds of customers per day and thousands per week, not to mention their coworkers, families and neighbors," said UFCW Local 400 president Mark Federici. "We must do everything in our power to ensure these essential personnel are not putting themselves at unnecessary risk or serving as unintentional vectors for the virus. Without adequate testing, there is simply no way to know how widespread their exposure could be. The time to take immediate action is now, now, now!"
UFCW has launched an [link removed] online action targeting Mayor Bowser and governors from surrounding states.

Tough Teamsters: "It's a challenge every day"
Teamsters 639's 9,000 DC-area members drive for a number of area employers, from freight haulers to UPS. "Some of them are flourishing and some are going to take a hit," Local 639 president John Gibson told Union City recently when we checked in on how the COVID-19 outbreak is affecting his members. "We also have folks in the casino industry over at MGM, and that's pretty much shut down," Gibson said. Meanwhile, he said, "out there at Dulles, the planes are not really operating, so obviously that's having a huge impact. On Amtrak, where we have a contract with Aramark, the trains aren't running as much as they were, if at all. And people just aren't traveling. So those industries are being impacted, but some others are not." As far as the danger of exposure, Gibson says "It's a challenge every day. These guys go out there knowing that they're susceptible to exposure to this virus, but they do it anyway, practicing safe hygiene procedure and all that, but it is really tough. But our Teamsters are tough. They're out there."

Solidarity Center Report: Workers Stand Up for Rights in Bangladesh, Ukraine
In Ukraine, as workers face employer efforts to shortchange their pay, lay them off or take other adverse actions during the COVID-19 crisis, many are turning to Labor Initiatives, a Solidarity Center-supported Ukrainian NGO that provides legal assistance to workers. And in Bangladesh, tens of thousands of garment workers are successfully standing up to employers through their unions to ensure they are paid during plant closures and have proper protective equipment if they must report to work. Find out more at [link removed] Solidarity Center.

MWC COVID-19 UPDATES
Legislative updates: [link removed] click here for the latest updates, including Stay at Home Order Details for Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. & What Are Allowable Recreational Activities in DC?
Unemployment Insurance: [link removed] click here for the latest helpful information on UI.
CSA: latest resource updates posted [link removed] here, including latest version of "WHEN THE PAYCHECK STOPS: An AFL-CIO Survival Guide to Unemployment" including a Spanish version.

Today's Labor Quote: Martin Luther King Jr.

"Whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery."

Dr. King delivered his famous [link removed] "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech in a church packed with union members and others on this date in 1968. He had returned to Memphis to stand with striking AFSCME sanitation workers, and was assassinated the following day.

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Today's Labor History

This week's Labor History Today podcast: [link removed] Socialists, suffragettes and fear at work
On this week's show, Kurt Stand, who - at least until recently - was a bookseller at Busboys and Poets here in Washington, DC, tells us about his last days at work, Carl Goldman reminds us of the day in 1913 when 20,000 striking textile workers and their supporters gathered in front of the house of the socialist mayor of Haldeon, New Jersey, and Jessica Pauszek tells the story of Tough Annie, a woman of means who threw in her lot with working women in London during the struggle for women's suffrage.
Last week's show: [link removed]  COVID-19: An injury to one is the concern of all

20,000 textile mill strikers in Paterson, NJ gather on the green in front of the house of Pietro Botto, the socialist mayor of nearby Haledon, to receive encouragement by novelist Upton Sinclair, journalist John Reed and speakers from the Wobblies. Today, the Botto House is home to the American Labor Museum - 1913

UAW Local 833 strikes the Kohler bathroom fixtures company in Kohler, Wisc. The strike ends six years later after Kohler is found guilty of refusing to bargain, agrees to reinstate 1,400 strikers and pay them $4.5 million in back pay and pension credits - 1954

- David Prosten; photo: William Dudley Haywood at the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike; Photo: Library of Congress

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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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