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Virginia Interfaith Center donates masks to grocery workers

Solidarity Center Report: Unions Meeting COVID-19 Challenges

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

A Conversation: Protect All Workers! Fri, May 22, 11am - 12pm
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Special guests: DORIS CROUSE-MAYS, president, VA AFL-CIO & DYANA FORESTER, UFCW Local 400 Political and Community Affairs Director

Coalition to Repeal Right to Work: Fri, May 22, 7pm - 9pm
Via Zoom; special guest Wade Henderson

NoVA Labor Faith Caucus: Tue, May 26, 3pm - 4pm
Via Zoom

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

The Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency will be closed Monday for Memorial Day; have a safe holiday!

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

Virginia Interfaith Center donates masks to grocery workers
"This crisis has exposed countless shortcomings in our country, from our inadequate healthcare system to our federal government's feckless response to the pandemic," says UFCW 400 in a [link removed] recent post. "But the crisis has also brought out the best in many members of our community." One recent example comes from the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), who recently organized volunteers to sew and donate masks to UFCW Local 400 grocery workers. "It is one of the small ways we can show grocery workers and shelter residents that they are loved and appreciated," said Kim Bobo, Executive Director of VICPP.

Solidarity Center Report: Unions Meeting COVID-19 Challenges
In Ukraine, unions and worker rights activists are leveraging trade unions' collective power to advocate for better pay and conditions for working people and help provide emergency relief during quarantine, despite the challenges posed by the country's worsening labor rights environment. And, unions in Jordan, Kenya, Zimbabwe and elsewhere are providing relief where resources allow and banding together to urge governments to provide financial and other social support for some of the world's 2 billion workers in the informal economy.
Find out more at the [link removed] Solidarity Center.

Today's Labor Quote: Eugene Victor Debs

Debs was imprisoned on this date in 1895 in Woodstock, Illinois for his role in the Pullman strike. Gene Debs, who said:

"Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves."

Today's Labor History

This week's [link removed] 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: [link removed] "Strike for Your Life!"; labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis

May 22
While white locomotive firemen on the Georgia Railroad strike, blacks who are hired as replacements are whipped and stoned -- not by the union men, but by white citizens outraged that blacks are being hired over whites. The Engineers union threatens to stop work because their members are being affected by the violence - 1909

Civil Service Retirement Act of 1920 gives federal workers a pension - 1920

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the goals of his Great Society social reforms: to bring "an end to poverty and racial injustice" in America - 1964

May 23
An estimated 100,000 textile workers, including more than 10,000 children, strike in the Philadelphia area. Among the issues: 60-hour workweeks, including night hours, for the children - 1903

Ten thousand strikers at Toledo, Ohio's Auto-Lite plant repel police who have come to break up their strike for union recognition. The next day, two strikers are killed and 15 wounded (photo) when National Guard machine gun units open fire. Two weeks later the company recognized the union and agreed to a 5 percent raise - 1934

U.S. railroad strike starts, later crushed when President Truman threatens to draft strikers - 1946

May 24
After 14 years of construction and the deaths of 27 workers, the Brooklyn Bridge over New York's East River opens. Newspapers call it "the eighth wonder of the world" - 1883

2,300 members of the United Rubber Workers, on strike for 10 months against five Bridgestone-Firestone plants, agree to return to work without a contract. They had been fighting demands for 12-hour shifts and wage increases tied to productivity gains - 1995

May 25
Pressured by employers, striking shoemakers in Philadelphia are arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy for violating an English common law that bars schemes aimed at forcing wage increases. The strike was broken - 1805

Philip Murray is born in Scotland. He went on to emigrate to the U.S., become founder and first president of the United Steelworkers of America, and head of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1940 until his death in 1952 - 1886

Two company houses occupied by non-union coal miners were blown up and destroyed during a strike against the Glendale Gas & Coal Co. in Wheeling, W. Va. - 1925

Thousands of unemployed WWI veterans arrive in Washington, D.C. to demand early payment of a bonus they had been told would get, but not until 1945. They built a shantytown near the U.S. Capitol but were burned out by U.S. troops after two months - 1932

The notorious 11-month Remington Rand strike begins. The strike spawned the "Mohawk Valley (NY) formula," described by investigators as a corporate plan to discredit union leaders, frighten the public with the threat of violence, employ thugs to beat up strikers, and other tactics. The National Labor Relations Board termed the formula "a battle plan for industrial war." - 1936

The AFL-CIO begins what is to become an unsuccessful campaign for a 35-hour workweek, with the goal of reducing unemployment. Earlier tries by organized labor for 32- or 35-hour weeks also failed - 1962

- 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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