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Kroger workers ratify new Roanoke contract

Union shop steward embraces leadership roles

What We're Reading

Union Voice/Readers Write: More teacher join Resistance; Our enemies, united

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

[link removed] LABOR CALENDAR

Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
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Special Meeting of the Coalition to Repeal "Right to Work" on the Eviction Crisis: Fri, August 7, 7pm - 9pm
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DC LaborFest film: "The Plow that Broke the Plains" and "The River": What can they teach us today? Tue, August 18, 7pm - 9pm
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Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency staff are teleworking; reach them at the contact numbers and email addresses [link removed] here.

Missed yesterday's Your Rights At Work radio show? Catch the podcast [link removed] here; Jews United For Justice DC Community Organizer Zach Weinstein on "Wins, losses and a few things in-between: highlights from this year's DC City Council"; AFL-CIO Deputy Director, Corporations and Capital Markets Brandon Rees on "1,000-to-1 Pay Ratio CEOs Furlough Workers"; the AFL-CIO's 2020 Executive Paywatch report. Tales of the Resistance, an original radio serial from the San Francisco Mime Troupe. This week's episode: "The Good Cop."

Kroger workers ratify new Roanoke contract
Following votes taken over three days at stores throughout the region, UFCW Local 400 members working at Kroger stores under the Roanoke contract overwhelmingly ratified a new collective bargaining agreement. The new two-year agreement provides competitive pay raises above minimum wage and reduces steps on the pay scales. The agreement also protects existing healthcare and retirement benefits. "While we did not get everything we want, we were proud of the achievements we made in this contract," said Kristy Lee Vance, a 22-year Kroger employee from Fries, Va. and member of the union Bargaining Advisory Committee, which helped to lead negotiations. "Many of my coworkers will be seeing significant pay increases over the life of the contract, putting us in an even better bargaining position in two years when this agreement is up for renewal." The contract also reflects significant increases to the minimum wage championed by Local 400 in Virginia. [link removed] Read more here

Union shop steward embraces leadership roles
UFCW Local 1994 member Clint Sobratti's impressive list of accomplishments keeps growing with his recent installment as a member of Progressive Maryland's 2020 Leadership Institute Cohort. "I wanted to be a part of a group that wants to shape the world into how I believe a country and state should be run," Sobratti said. He's worked for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation's Ride-On division for the past nine and half years. He's a shop steward for Local 1994, and served on the union's bargaining committee team, where he's helped advocate for better working conditions including the need for adequate amounts of PPE during the pandemic as well as for core member needs like higher wages, lower medical costs, and sustainable retirement plans. A member of the Montgomery County Sierra Club's Executive Committee, Sobratti was involved in some of the 2019-20 Fire Drill Friday events led by Jane Fonda and he was a candidate for State Delegate in District 39 in 2018.

What We're Reading
[link removed] Failure to Enforce Mask Mandate Leaves Grocery Workers Vulnerable (Labor Notes)
Kroger and other grocery chains say they are requiring customers to wear masks, but workers like UFCW 400 member Travis Boothe say that the lack of enforcement shows that companies don't take their safety seriously.

[link removed] OPM Is Reorganizing Employees to Get Around Ban on GSA Merger, Union Claims (Government Executive)
AFGE 32, the union representing employees at the Office of Personnel Management, is accusing the agency of improperly reorganizing workers without bargaining over the change and potentially violating a ban on merging OPM with the General Services Administration.

[link removed] The Ongoing Relevance of "Norma Rae" (The New Yorker)
On this viewing, what struck me even more strongly, however, was the movie's suggestion that no struggle can take place alone. Norma Rae is heroic, but she comes into her own, as a woman, because she is fighting for class solidarity--a struggle that, in turn, could not happen without a breaking down of long-standing ethnic and racial barriers.

Union Voice/Readers Write: More teachers join Resistance; Our enemies, united; Mystery Man revealed

More teachers join Resistance: "You might be interested to know that MCEA in conjunction with the PGEA and the BTU (Baltimore Teachers Union) conducted actions on Monday as well ([link removed] D.C. teachers call for tech support for safe schools 8/3 UC)," writes Tobi Starin. "We joined with the National Day of Resistance and the Demand Safe Schools Coalition on Monday. Our focus was to demand that Comcast and Verizon provide free internet to all of our students and educators so that all of our students and staff can conduct classes this Fall."
Our enemies, united: "Thank you for sharing that New Yorker article on the UFCW plant (UFCW Local 27 and [link removed] "How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit The Pandemic" 7/24 UC)," writes John Ertl. "What a heart-wrenching story. Quite the illustration of how truly interconnected the enemies of democracy, unions, and the public interest are."
Mystery Man revealed: "The AFSCME Local 1072 steward in the [link removed] labor history photo is Saul Schniderman," writes Carl Goldman. "That is about the time that I met him." "It has to be our very own Saul Schniderman," agrees George Farenthold. "He is always on the right side of history...and still is!" Schniderman went on to lead the [link removed] Library of Congress Professional Guild, AFSCME Local 2910, [link removed] retiring in 2018.

Today's Labor Quote: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

"There is less violence against labor today, but there are more legal restrictions... There has been labor protection by law but there has also been labor repression by law."

The IWW organizer was born on this date in 1890.

Today's Labor History

This week's [link removed] Labor History Today podcast: Christopher Martin, author of No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class. Plus Florence Reece and Rebel Diaz ask "Which Side Are You On?" and this week's Labor History in 2.
[link removed] Last week's show: Confederate monuments and the Knights of Labor

Eugene Debs and three other trade unionists arrested after Pullman Strike - 1894

Actors Equity is recognized by producers after stagehands honor their picket lines, shutting down almost every professional stage production in the country. Before unionizing, it was common practice for actors to pay for their own costumes, rehearse long hours without pay, and be fired without notice - 1919
photo: Actor Brandon Tynan: "Friends, Brothers, Sisters, Countrymen, lend me your ears ... Behind us we have more than five million men and women. The ship of hope - the AFL ... Now, dear public, our great public. You have always stood for justice ... Will you stand up and show that you are with us, and join us in our cry of Equity! Equity!!, Equity!!!" --Speech from the strike benefit performance

Some 675,000 employees struck ATT Corp. over wages, job security, pension plan changes and better health insurance. It was the last time CWA negotiated at one table for all its Bell System members: divestiture came a few months later. The strike was won after 22 days - 1983

Television writers, members of both the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW), end a 22 week strike - 1988

August 8
Delegates to the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly elect 35-year-old Charles James, leader of the Boot and Shoe Workers local union, as their president. He was the first African-American elected to that leadership post in St. Paul, and, many believe, the first anywhere in the nation - 1902

Cripple Creek, Colo. miners strike begins - 1903

Cesar Chavez is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, becoming the first Mexican-American ever to receive the honor - 1994

August 9
Twenty people, including at least nine firefighters, are killed in Boston's worst fire. It consumed 65 downtown acres and 776 buildings over 12 hours - 1872

Knights of Labor strike New York Central railroad, ultimately to be defeated by scabbing - 1890

Nine men and one woman meet in Oakland, Calif. to form what was to become the 230,000-member California School Employees Association, representing school support staff throughout the state - 1927

73,000 Bell Atlantic workers end a successful two-day strike over wages and limits on contracting out of work - 1998

The United Steelworkers and Amicus, the largest manufacturing union in the United Kingdom, announce formation of a strategic alliance to work on a range of mutual concerns - 2005

- 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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