Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency staff are teleworking; reach them at the contact numbers and email addresses here.
Labor Radio/Podcast Weekly: WorkWeek; Heartland Labor Forum; Working People; Valley Labor Report; America’s Work Force Radio; Tales of the Resistance
Lawyers’ Committee management reneges on union recognition
More than three months after pledging to certify Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law staff’s union through voluntary recognition, the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union (NPEU) reports that President Kristen Clarke and executive management have backed out of recognizing the union through card check, demanding an election instead. “This is an egregious show of bad faith from President Clarke and the rest of the Lawyers' Committee executive management,” said Lawyers’ Committee United organizing committee members. “An overwhelming majority of staff support our union.” “It’s deeply disturbing to hear about the toxic work environment at one of the country’s leading civil rights organizations,” said NPEU President Kayla Blado. “It’s clear that Lawyers’ Committee employees urgently need a union. Particularly in an election year, it’s absurd to waste so much of the organization’s time and energy on delaying the recognition. Now, in another show of bad behavior, management is union-busting by failing to recognize employees’ workplace rights.”
photo: NPEU tweet "Us reading about the work environment at @LawyersComm under President/ED @KristenClarkeJD"
MCT adding insult to injury
Six months later, workers at Montgomery Community Television still don’t have a contract, reports NABET-CWA Local 31 negotiator Barbara Krieger. As reported previously in Union City, the workers haven’t had a raise in five years and after the union charged MCT with refusing to bargain -- the current contract expired June 30, 2018 -- company finally submitted new proposals in late April. Now, Krieger reports. “MCT is refusing retro pay back to 2018, and in this Covid environment they want to remove access to any health compensation for the majority of their workforce!” Also, she adds, “one of their offers is to reduce pay to several employees via a condensed pay scale. The union is attempting to right the cart by continuing talks and ignoring this despicable and insulting “Last” offer! We need a decent contract now!”
CLUW SNAP The Vote Town Hall report
AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser were among the featured guests on an outstanding panel of the August 6th Coalition of Labor Union Women's Town Hall Meeting. The theme was SNAP (Sisters/Siblings Not Afraid of Power) The Vote -- reflecting on the suffragist movement to win women's right to vote and the vital importance for women, now more than ever in our history, to get out the vote and step up as leaders in our communities and workplaces. Quoting the late Honorable John Lewis, Secretary Treasurer Shuler told the over 200 participants that "...voting is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have." Not voting "...exacerbates inequalities,” said CLUW next-gener Teresa Oller, Portland APWU. "I'm not mad or discouraged,” CLUW President Elise Bryant concluded the town hall, “I'm inspired! In the name of justice, women vote!" Check out the CLUW All of Us SNAP the Vote Town Hall here. Password: WVAa2?C8
- reported by Sonte DuCote
COVID-19 Relief project seeks worker input
If any of your local’s members are essential workers, the DC Appleseed Center for Law and Justice wants to hear from you. Click here for a survey for their COVID-19 essential workers relief project, “designed to identify the needs of essential workers facing increased health risks and/or increased hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluate whether and how those needs are being met and what needs are still outstanding, and recommend ways that D.C. government and philanthropy can support these workers based on our best practices, research, and interviews.”
Today's Labor Quote: I.W. Abel
''Collective bargaining is pretty much of a crisis business. You have to have patience and you have to be tolerant. You have to be a fair fisherman. You have to sit back and wait for a bite.''
Abel -- better known as "Abe" -- was president of the United Steel Workers of America from 1965 to 1977, and died on this date in 1987 at the age of 79. In one year, he led 42 wildcat walkouts.
Today's Labor History
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Remembering Gene Debs; Waging Peace
Shubert Sebree remembers Eugene Debs. Professor Laura McEnaney, author of Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago, on the fate of labor's complex New Deal coalition and connecting the essential workers of the 1940s with those fighting today’s war against the pandemic.
Plus Joe Glazer and The Ballad of Eugene Victor Debs, and this week’s Labor History in 2: Workers Pay the Price for Bad Management
Last week’s show: No longer newsworthy?
The Air Line Pilots Association is founded at a meeting in Chicago attended by 24 activists from across the country - 1931
Hundreds of Transport Workers Union members descend on a New York City courthouse, offering their own money to bail out their president, Mike Quill, and four other union leaders arrested while making their way through Grand Central Station to union headquarters after picketing the IRT subway company offices in lower Manhattan - 1935
President Roosevelt signs amendments to the 1935 Social Security Act, broadening the program to include dependents and survivors' benefits - 1939
Construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway begins. Ultimately 22,000 workers spent five years building the 2,342 mile route from the Atlantic to the northernmost part of the Great Lakes. Employees of the St. Lawrence Seaway are represented today by AFGE Local 1968 - 1954
Pres. Barack Obama signs a $26 billion bill designed to protect 300,000 teachers, police and others from layoffs spurred by budgetary crises in states hard-hit by the Great Recession - 2010
- David Prosten
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