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Nurses demand PPE at White House protest

Petition: Protect the Postal Service

Earth Day at 50: BlueGreen Alliance

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

[link removed] LABOR CALENDAR

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

Wed. April 22: Alexandria Dems Labor Caucus
7:30p; via Zoom; For info on how to log in contact: [email protected]
Continued discussion of city budget issues, lack of PPE, and impact of the pandemic on Alexandria workers.

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!

Nurses demand PPE at White House protest
Registered Nurses protested in front of the White House on Tuesday to call attention to the tens of thousands of health care workers nationwide who have become infected with COVID-19 due to lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). The nurses, including local members of National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of RNs in the country, read aloud the names U.S. nurses who are known to have died of COVID-19. Nurses have been demanding that the Trump administration's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) promulgate an emergency temporary standard so that health care workers are provided with the optimal PPE. The nurses are also demanding that President Trump use his authority under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to order the mass production of PPE, including N95 respirators, face shields, gowns, gloves and shoe coverings, as well as ventilators and COVID-19 testing kits.

Petition: Protect the Postal Service
As most Americans shelter in place, postal workers are delivering people's prescriptions, keeping small companies in business and connecting families. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has always been the country's emergency distribution system during times of crisis. But during this unprecedented time, that work is under threat. Postal revenues are plummeting during the shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic costs are increasing. "The USPS could run out of money as early as June," warns a coalition that's circulation a petition to [link removed] "Tell Congress: Support our public Postal Service!" "The loss of the USPS would shatter our response to the pandemic," warns the coalition. "The Postal Service needs our congressional leaders--Democrats and Republicans alike--to provide urgent and ongoing financial support from the federal government during this public health and economic crisis."

Earth Day at 50: BlueGreen Alliance
On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the [link removed] BlueGreen Alliance -- which unites America's largest labor unions and its most influential environmental organizations -- argues that "the actions we take to create quality jobs and to protect working people and the environment must go hand-in-hand, and that together, we will build clean, thriving and fair economy." Americans are often asked to choose between jobs and the environment, says the Alliance, "But as we face increasingly severe impacts of environmental challenges like climate change and adapt to an interconnected global economy, we can no longer choose one or the other. The BlueGreen Alliance believes we can and must choose both." [link removed] Earth Day Live, a three day livestream mobilization connecting the fights against the coronavirus and the climate crisis and striving to build a society rooted in sustainability and justice, kicks off today.

Today's Labor Quote: Richard Trumka

"Time after time we're told corporations should have freedom from pesky job safety regulations, environmental protections and labor standards - giving working people the freedom to be crushed in collapsing mines, choke on filthy air and get paid too little to live on."

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka was president of the United Mine Workers from 1982 to 1995.

Today's Labor History

This week's Labor History Today podcast: [link removed] Sacco & Vanzetti at 100; What happened to MLK's dream?
Michele Fazio on "The Crime of the Century: Remembering Sacco and Vanzetti 100 Years Later"; Michael Honey, on "What Happened to Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream of Economic Justice?" Plus Saul Schniderman on Ida Mae Stull, the nation's first woman coal miner.
Last week's show: [link removed] Organizing during historic crises

One of the worst disasters in Virginia mining history occurred at the Red Jacket Coal Corporation mine near Grundy in Buchanan County. All 45 men in the mine at the time died when coal dust ignited, causing blasts that were felt two miles away -1938

- 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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