LABOR CALENDAR

Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; click here to hear today's report

Union City Radio: Your Rights at Work: Thursday, April 16⋅1:00 – 2:00pm
WPFW 89.3 FM or listen online
This week's guests: JOHN BOARDMAN, UNITE HERE LOCAL 25: Update on hotel workers; KATIE BARROWS, NPEU: Why we’re still organizing; TONI GILPIN, “The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland”

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

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

Supermarket workers renew demand for COVID-19 testing
UFCW Locals 400 and 27, which represent thousands of area union workers in grocery stores and food processing facilities, applauded Maryland governor Hogan yesterday for issuing an order to require enhanced safety measures in retail establishments. But the unions renewed their call on Hogan – as well as DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam -- to declare all grocery store, pharmacy, and food processing workers as ‘first responders’ to ensure access to free testing, treatment and protective equipment “to stay safe on the job while they continue to serve our communities.”
Read more here

NCA United Way gives CSA $20K for COVID-19 relief
For nearly half a century, the United Way of the National Capital Area has served the metro Washington area by partnering with the Metro Council’s Community Services Agency and other organizations that provide valuable resources and services to the community. "Our mission is to diligently work to offer solutions to the challenges facing our neighbors in need," said Rosie Allen-Herring, United Way NCA President and CEO, "which is why we are pleased to provide the Community Services Agency with a $20,000 grant to assist workers impacted by the COVID-19 economic crisis." CSA Executive Director Sonte DuCote said that "the United Way NCA has been one of our major partners and we are deeply grateful for their support during this challenging time.”

Today's Labor Quote: David Brody

“First, power. Then, maybe, cooperation.”

David Brody rose to prominence following the 1969 publication of his pioneering history of early steelworker unions, The Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era, and is credited with founding the field of “new labor history” in North America.

Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Organizing during historic crises
On this week’s show, labor historians Dorothy Sue Cobble and Michael Merrill talk with the NoVA Coalition to Repeal Right to Work about how workers engaged in mass uprisings and organizing during previous historical crises. Plus American Prospect Editor at Large Harold Meyerson, on The Return of the Breadline and retired nurse and novelist Tim Sheard visits a New York City hospital during the pandemic.
Last week’s show: Coronavirus essential workers’ rights

Employers lock out 25,000 New York City garment workers in a dispute over hiring practices. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union calls a general strike; after 14 weeks, 60,000 strikers win union recognition and the contractual right to strike - 1916

500 workers in Texas City, Texas die in a series of huge oil refinery and chemical plant explosions and fires - 1947

An estimated 20,000 global justice activists blockade Washington, D.C. meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund - 2000

- David Prosten; photo courtesy urban75.com

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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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