LABOR CALENDAR
Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; click here to hear today's report
NoVA Labor Faith Caucus: Tue, May 26, 3pm – 4pm
Via Zoom
DSA Workshop on Right-to-Work (NoVA Labor): Tue, May 26, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
via Zoom
Eight Men Out (DC LaborFest screening): Tuesday, May 26, 7p
Introduced by director John Sayles!
FREE; register here
The Disproportionate Impact of Covid-19 on African American Workers: Wed, May 27, 12pm – 1pm (Via Zoom)
Labor Arts Caucus (NoVA Labor): Wed, May 27, 3pm – 4pm
via Zoom
Alexandria Dems Labor Caucus: Wed, May 27, 7:30pm – 8:30pm
Zoom
Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency staff are teleworking; reach them at the contact numbers and email addresses here.
D.C.-area hospital workers say they need hazard pay, more protective gear
As coronavirus cases near 83,000 across D.C., Maryland and Virginia, hospital workers say they’re facing hazardous conditions at work and are calling for increased pay and more personal protective gear while they take on the pandemic. “Every day I wake up when I have to go to work, and you feel a little jittery,” nurse Debra Washington says. She works at United Medical Center in Southeast D.C., the District’s only public hospital, and the only one east of the Anacostia River. Washington has worked at the hospital for more than 30 years. But like health care workers treating coronavirus patients across the country, she says her work days are full of unprecedented fears and stresses. Washington and 146 other nurses at UMC sent a formal petition to the hospital’s management calling for hazard pay last week...read more here
- by Margaret Bathel and Jenny Gathright on DCist
MWC Claimant Advocacy Program featured in AFL-CIO newsletter
"Many working people are not familiar with the complexities of applying for unemployment insurance (UI), nor are they aware that simple mistakes could cause applications to be denied or benefits to be delayed," reported the AFL-CIO in its weekly newsletter last week ("Fighting for unemployed workers in Washington, D.C.). "The Metropolitan Washington (D.C.) Council, AFL-CIO, under the leadership of First Vice President Andrew Washington (AFSCME), is offering its Claimant Advocacy Program (CAP) as a free legal counseling service available to individuals who file UI appeals in Washington, D.C. CAP is funded by the District of Columbia and its attorneys meet with workers who have been denied UI or whose benefit awards have been appealed by an employer."
NOTE: The CAP program has been in operation since the 1980's, and is limited to helping those who have been denied DC benefits.
Today's Labor Quote: Hiram Johnson
"The president sent against these men, emaciated from hunger, scantily clad, unarmed, the troops of the United States army. Tanks, tear-bombs, all of the weapons of modern warfare were directed against those who had borne the arms of the republic."
On May 25, 1932, thousands of unemployed WWI veterans arrived 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. California Senator Hiram Johnson called the 1932 attack on the Bonus Army ‘one of the blackest pages in our history,’ noting that the veterans had been hailed as heroes and saviors only a decade earlier.
Today's Labor History
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: “Politics of the Pantry”; “We Just Come to Work Here”
“This period of time in the Thirties struck me as a period of great innovation and resilience that women organized around the need to provide certain services. And I see that happening in my community today around the pandemic.” Emily Twarog, author of “Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth Century America.” Her study of how women used institutions built on patriarchy and consumer capitalism to cultivate a political voice resonates strongly today in the midst of both the COVID-19 pandemic and an election year. Joyce McCawley talked with Twarog on the Heartland Labor Forum, the labor radio show airing weekly in Kansas City on KKFI.
Plus: Ben Grosscup (photo) with a new version of “We Just Come to Work Here” and Joe Glazer on the Memorial Day Massacre.
Last week’s show: “The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland”
Men and women weavers in Pawtucket, R.I. stage nation's first "co-ed" strike - 1824
Western Federation of Miners members strike for eight-hour day, Cripple Creek, Colo. – 1894
Actors’ Equity is founded by 112 theater actors meeting in the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel in New York City. A strike six years later, during which membership increased from 3,000 to 14,000, loosened the control on performers’ lives by theater owners and producers - 1913
IWW Marine Transport Workers strike, Philadelphia – 1920
One hundred thousand steel workers and miners in mines owned by steel companies strike in seven states. The Memorial Day Massacre, in which ten strikers were killed by police at Republic Steel in Chicago, took place four days later, on May 30 - 1937
Battle of the Overpass, Ford thugs beat United Auto Workers organizers – 1937
- David Prosten
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