LABOR CALENDAR
Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; click here to hear today's report
Prince George's/Montgomery County COPE Town Hall with Councilmember Tom Hucker: Fri, July 24, 12pm – 1pm
Via Zoom; RSVP here
Coalition to Repeal Right to Work: Fri, July 24, 7pm – 9pm
Zoom; Special guest Delegate Jay Jones from the 89th District of the House of Delegates in Norfolk will speak about worker rights.
National Writers Union Open Meeting: Sun, July 26, 1pm – 2pm
Zoom
WTU 6's “Share your Story #OnlyWhenItsSafe Virtual Round Table": Sun, July 26, 3:00pm – 4:30pm
Zoom; Register here
Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency staff are teleworking; reach them at the contact numbers and email addresses here.
UC off next week: Union City will take a brief summer break next week, returning Monday, August 3. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for breaking labor news. for latest local labor news updates.
Missed yesterday’s Your Rights At Work radio show? Catch the podcast here (or search for Your Rights At Work on your favorite podcast platform); Kayla Blado, president of the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union (NPEU), on union-busting at the Scholars Strategy Network. 18 ways to be a hero (by supporting the HEROES ACT). Plus: Episode 2 of Tales of the Resistance, an original radio serial from the San Francisco Mime Troupe. This week: Novice Nurse: Susie Terse and "The Price of Infection."
Substandard PPE at WHC “unsafe,” say nurses
“I feel like we are being experimented on…I started wheezing, coughing, I had shortness of breath, and chest tightness.” That was Erica Jones, RN, talking about nurses at MedStar Washington Hospital Center being forced to re-use N95 masks. She spoke at a press conference outside the hospital Thursday morning, organized by National Nurses United, which warned that “decontaminating” and reusing N95 filtering facepiece respirators is unsafe. “I don’t understand why Washington Hospital is not doing everything it can to get us the PPE we need,” said Stephanie Sims, a registered nurse in WHC’s neonatal intensive care unit. “We are being asked to risk our well-being, and the well-being of our communities when it is not necessary.” In addition, nurses say the hospital is not offering nurses testing unless they’re showing symptoms of illness. They’re calling on the hospital to offer testing to any health care worker who is asking for a test, pointing to studies that indicate peak infectiousness with COVID-19 occurs during the pre-symptomatic phase. Read more here.
UFCW Local 27 and "How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic"
On June 22nd, in the baking heat of a parking lot a few miles inland from Delaware’s beaches, several dozen poultry workers, many of them Black or Latino, gathered to decry the conditions at a local poultry plant owned by one of President Donald Trump’s biggest campaign contributors. “We’re here for a reason that is atrocious,” Nelson Hill, an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, told the small but boisterous crowd. Its members, many defined as “essential” workers—without the option of staying home—have been hit extraordinarily hard by the coronavirus. For the previous forty-two years, a thousand or so laborers at the local processing plant, in Selbyville, had been represented by UFCW Local 27. Just two years earlier, the workers there had ratified a new five-year contract. But, Hill told the crowd, in the middle of the pandemic, as the number of infected workers soared, the plant’s owner, Mountaire Corporation—one of the country’s largest purveyors of chicken—conspired, along with Donald Trump, to “kick us out.” Read more in The New Yorker. Illustration by Cleon Peterson
18 ways to be a hero
From actors to utility workers, bus drivers to teachers to postal workers and more, the American labor movement is working nonstop to ensure that workers devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic receive the protections and support they need. YOU CAN HELP! We've put together a list of 18 online actions where you can get involved and make sure the voices of working people are heard and their needs are met. It’s also posted on Twitter and Facebook, where you can follow us and be sure to get the latest updates.
Solidarity Center Report: Morocco Union Condemns Firing of Journalist, Union Advocate
The Union of Moroccan Workers (UMT) is condemning the recent firing of television host and union leader Youssef Belhaissi and attacks on other members of his union, including Aziz Fathi, a union office coordinator, who was demoted from editor-in-chief. The actions follow weeks-long demands by employees at Medi1 TV for stronger sanitary measures to protect against spread of the virus, and for COVID-19 testing. Employees say the company has refused to allow workers eligible for teleworking to do so. Find out more at the Solidarity Center.
Today's Labor Quote: Walter Reuther
“You cannot solve a human problem by pitting one human being against another human being. The only way you can solve human problems is to get people to join hands and to find answers to those problems together.”
Walter Reuther was an American labor leader and civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history.
Today's Labor History
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Strike! Joe McCartin on the 1934 San Francisco Longshoreman's strike and Donna Haverty-Stacke on the 1934 Minneapolis truckers strike. (Originally released 7/15/2018)
Last week’s show: “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work”: the Housewives League of Detroit.
July 24
The United Auto Workers and the Teamsters form the Alliance for Labor Action (ALA), later to be joined by several smaller unions. The ALA's agenda included support of the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Viet Nam. It disbanded after four years following the death of UAW President Walter Reuther - 1968
July 25
Workers stage a general strike – believed to be the nation’s first – in St. Louis, in support of striking railroad workers. The successful strike was ended when some 3,000 federal troops and 5,000 deputized special police killed at least eighteen people in skirmishes around the city - 1877
New York garment workers win closed shop and firing of scabs after 7-month strike - 1890
The Teamsters and Service Employees unions break from the AFL-CIO during the federation's 50th convention to begin the Change to Win coalition, ultimately comprised of seven unions (4 by 2011: SEIU, Teamsters, UFCW and the UFW). They say they want more emphasis on organizing and less on electoral politics - 2005
July 26
In Chicago, 30 workers are killed by federal troops, more than 100 wounded at the "Battle of the Viaduct" during the Great Railroad Strike - 1877
President Grover Cleveland appoints a United States Strike Committee to investigate the causes of the Pullman strike and the subsequent strike by the American Railway Union. Later that year the commission issues its report, absolving the strikers and blaming Pullman and the railroads for the conflict - 1894
Battle of Mucklow, W.Va. in coal strike. An estimated 100,000 shots were fired; 12 miners and four guards were killed - 1912
President Truman issues Executive Order 9981, directing equality of opportunity in armed forces - 1948
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) took effect today. It requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to qualified disabled employees and bans discrimination against such workers - 1992
- 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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