LABOR CALENDAR

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

MWC Candidate Town Hall: Janeese Lewis-George (Ward 4): Wed, May 20, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Via Zoom; Registration required

Union City Radio: Your Rights at Work: Thu, May 21, 1pm – 2pm
WPFW 89.3 FM or listen online

NoVA Labor monthly meeting: Thu, May 21, 7pm – 9pm
NoVA Labor, 4536 B John Marr Drive, Annandale, VA

MWC Candidate Town Hall: Jordan Grossman (Ward 2): Thu, May 21, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Via Zoom, Registration required

Tuesday, May 26: 7p: Eight Men Out (DC LaborFest screening)
Introduced by director John Sayles!
FREE; register here

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!

Fighting for hourly workers during COVID-19
Local food service workers have been among the hardest-hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anthony Randolph is a longtime food service worker and a member of UNITE HERE Local 23 who’s been a leader in organizing his fellow workers, especially in response to the pandemic. WPFW reporter Chris Bangert-Drowns caught up with Anthony recently. “During this crisis, we are actually reaching out to all the food service contractors such as Sodexo, Compass, Aramark asking them to continue paying into their medical and to the pension contribution. And at the same time, we're reaching out to the client, which is at the university level, like at Howard, or at American university or at Georgetown university, asking them to support us as well, because at the end of the day, the workers didn't ask for (the pandemic) and at the same time, these corporations are getting all kinds of subsidies, so we're like, they're not losing, it's the hourly employees that's losing.”
Listen to Anthony Randolph on Union City Radio. Read also: Bring Anthony Back!

Town Halls host Ward 2 & Ward 4 candidates this week
DC Ward 4 endorsed candidate Janeese Lewis George will be the featured guest at tonight’s MWC Zoom Town Hall, starting promptly at 7:30p; registration required. Then tomorrow, Jordan Grossman (Ward 2) will join us; click here to register. “This is your chance to meet the candidates and ask them how they’ll stand up for DC’s working men and women,” says MWC Political and Legislative Director David Stephen.

Building trust...and solidarity
An article about handshakes in yesterday's Washington Post included this photo from a DC Labor Chorus concert with the caption, “Touch builds trust.” One of those hands belongs to Chorus founder and director Elise Bryant and the other to chorus pianist Steve Jones. "We were singing 'Solidarity Forever"” says Bryant, "That’s what builds trust!"
photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post

Today's Labor Quote: Charles Horton Cooley

“One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once, the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.”

graphic courtesy TheRealDeal

Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: “The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland”
Labor historian, activist and writer Toni Gilpin's rich history detailing the bitter, deep-rooted conflict between industrial behemoth International Harvester and the uniquely radical Farm Equipment Workers union. "The Long Deep Grudge" makes clear that class warfare has been, and remains, integral to the American experience, providing up-close-and-personal and long-view perspectives from both sides of the battle lines.
PLUS: David Fernandez-Barrial, Saul Schniderman and Hazel Dickens on the Matewan Massacre.
Last week’s show: “Strike for Your Life!”; labor history’s lessons for the COVID-19 crisis

The Railway Labor Act took effect today. It was the first federal legislation protecting workers’ rights to form unions - 1926

9,000 rubber workers strike in Akron, Ohio - 1933

- 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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