LABOR CALENDAR
Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; click here to hear today's report
Car Caravan Rally at DCA: Tue, May 12, 10:30am – 12:00pm
Meet at Pier 1 Imports at Potomac Yard - 3901 Richmond Highway, Alexandria, VA 22305
DC Labor FilmFest: The Moment Was Now: Tue, May 12, 7pm – 9pm
via Zoom; FREE; register here
NoVA Arts Union Caucus Launch: Wed, May 13, 3pm – 4pm
Via Zoom
The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It: Wed, May 13, 4pm – 5pm
Via Zoom
MWC Candidate Town Hall: Trayon White (Ward 8): Wed, May 13, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Via Zoom; Registration required
Alexandria Dems Labor Caucus: Wed, May 13, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Via Zoom
Calvert teachers “won’t be bullied”
It appears that the commitment of the Calvert County Board of Education to equality doesn’t extend to the county’s hardworking educators. That’s according to the Calvert Education Association, the organization representing the teachers of Calvert County Public Schools (CCPS), which has been renegotiating the contract for the teachers since December 2019. After nearly a dozen negotiating sessions over the past six months, CEA (part of the Maryland State Education Association) says CCPS is stalling discussions on salaries to try to pressure teachers to give up their workplace protections, including protections against racial and gender-based discrimination. “Our teachers are working harder than they ever have for the students of Calvert County,” says CEA president Dona Ostenso. “It is alarming and frankly offensive that representatives of the school board are trying to make teachers choose between their salaries and their most basic rights.” However, Ostenso declared, “We won’t be bullied into allowing our members to suffer discrimination at work.”
photo: From CEA’s Facebook page: “With all of the craziness going on right now, CEA members (and families) are still taking time to complete the Census 2020”
Contact tracing falling short in MD agency facilities, worker saysAFSCME Council 3 President Patrick Moran said that members of his union who work in the state’s detention facilities are “working in literal Petri dishes.” One of his members working at the Baltimore detention center said she wasn’t notified that she had come into contact with an infected individual five different times over an eight-hour shift in mid-April. “I really didn’t care how, I just know they should have told me,” she told Maryland Matters. “I shouldn’t have to overhear at the locker.” Moran said that there are “severe inadequacies” in the state’s contact tracing methods across all departments and that the government “need[s] to be collaborative” with their members when it comes to ironing out the details of the process. “Our folks are first responders,” he said.
Today's Labor Quote: Jeffrey Reed
“The union is fighting for us. Like now they're trying to get these companies that we work for to give grocery workers first responder status. That way we could have access to more PPE and get as many people tested as possible, just like they're going through it now with these meat packing plants all over the country. You know, the unions are saying, Hey man, these people need PPE. These people need protections.”
Reed is a UFCW 400 shop steward featured on “The Essentials” podcast.
Today's Labor History
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: “Strike for Your Life!”; labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis
Peter Rachleff, co-director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, on how “Lessons from labor history can inform our labor movement during the COVID-19 crisis.” “As a labor historian, the closest thing I can think of to the spread of coronavirus strikes is the epidemic of sitdown strikes to spread across the country in the mid-1930s.” Historian and writer Jeremy Brecher, from “Strike for Your Life!” Also this week, we preview Debs In Canton, a new audio/radio drama from the filmmakers of American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs.
Last week’s show: Jack Kelly’s "The Edge of Anarchy”; “Union Maids” director Julia Reichert (Part 2)
Laundry & Dry Cleaning International Union granted a charter by the AFL-CIO - 1958
International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots merges with Longshoremens’ Association - 1971
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raid the Agriprocessors, Inc. slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, arrest nearly 400 immigrant workers. Some 300 are convicted on document fraud charges. The raid was the largest ever until that date. Several employees and lower and mid-level managers were convicted on various charges, but not the owner –- although he later was jailed for bank fraud and related crimes - 2008
- 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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