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DC candidates hear from labor at MWC forum

IUOE 77 worksite photos

CSA's News You Can Use: Mortgage and rental assistance for District residents

Solidarity Center Report: Haitian Workers March, Protest Garment Worker's Death

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

Coalition to Repeal "Right to Work": Fri, August 14, 7pm - 9pm
Zoom

"Getting it Right: Reopening Our Nation's Schools": Sat, August 15, 12pm - 4pm
WPFW 89.3 FM, streaming on wpfwfm.org & on the Washington Teachers' Union [link removed] Facebook page.
The Washington Teachers' Union, WPFW-FM and WBAI-FM co-sponsor a national town hall to discuss the chaos, complexities and most effective ways to reopen our nation's schools, featuring national education, health and civil rights leaders, teachers and social workers.

DC LaborFest film: "The Plow that Broke the Plains" and "The River": What can they teach us today? Tue, August 18, 7pm - 9pm
[link removed] Free via Zoom; register here

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? [link removed] Catch the podcast here; Liz Davis, president, Washington Teacher's Union; "Getting it Right: Reopening Our Nation's Schools"; Christopher Martin, Professor of Digital Journalism, University of Northern Iowa: "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class"; PLUS: "Old School Mechanic," by SpudWrench, the singing elevator constructor.

DC candidates hear from labor at MWC forum
More than 40 of the declared candidates for DC City Council and DC State Board of Education attended the second DC Candidate Labor Education Forum Wednesday on Zoom. Hosted by the MWC's DC COPE, the forum provided the candidates with the opportunity to hear from local labor leaders and rank and file members representing unions in the healthcare, transportation, entertainment, building trades, education and government sectors, among others. The candidates, who will appear on the November 3 ballot, also got the opportunity to learn about some of the most important issues to labor as we move into 2021 and the "new normal" of life under COVID-19. Following this forum, all candidates registered with the DC Board of Elections will be sent a questionnaire and invited to candidate interviews in September.
- David Stephen

IUOE 77 worksite photos
Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 77 represents skilled equipment operators in the construction industry in Northern Virginia, D.C. and Maryland. They've been posting a series of great on-the-job photos on their [link removed] Facebook page recently; here's a sampling from jobsites in Northeast DC, Ashburn, VA and on the Purple Line.

CSA's News You Can Use: Mortgage and rental assistance for District residents
Links for [link removed] Mortgage Assistance For District of Columbia Residents and [link removed] Rental Assistance for Low Income District of Columbia Renters have been added to the Community Services Agency's [link removed] page, along with other useful information for dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Solidarity Center Report: Haitian Workers March, Protest Garment Worker's Death
Hundreds of garment workers in Haiti marched in a funeral procession with the casket of Sandra René, a garment worker who died from pregnancy complications. René was turned away from the hospital where she sought medical care because her factory hadn't paid into the health system. The workers marched to the government insurance office with her casket, demanding the government ensure employers meet their legal obligations so Haitian workers can access health care. Read more at the [link removed] Solidarity Center.

Today's Labor Quote: Franklin Roosevelt

"We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age."

Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on this date in 1935, providing, for the first time ever, guaranteed income for retirees and creating a system of unemployment benefits.

Today's Labor History

This week's Labor History Today podcast: [link removed] 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
[link removed] Last week's show: No longer newsworthy?

August 14
Members of the upstart Polish union Solidarity seize the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. Sixteen days later the government officially recognizes the union. Many consider the event the beginning of the end for the Iron Curtain - 1980

Former AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland dies at age 77 - 1999

August 15
Populist social commentator Will Rogers killed in a plane crash, Point Barrow, Alaska. One of his many classic lines: "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts" - 1935

President Richard M. Nixon announces a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents in an attempt to combat inflation - 1971

Gerry Horgan, chief steward of CWA Local 1103 and NYNEX striker in Valhalla, NY, is struck on the picket line by a car driven by the daughter of a plant manager and dies the following day. What was to become a four-month strike over healthcare benefits was in its second week - 1989

Eight automotive department employees at a Wal-Mart near Ottawa won an arbitrator-imposed contract after voting for UFCW representation, becoming the giant retailer's only location in North America with a collective bargaining agreement. Two months later the company closed the department. Three years earlier Wal-Mart had closed an entire store on the same day the government announced an arbitrator would impose a contract agreement there - 2008

August 16
George Meany, plumber, founding AFL-CIO president, born in City Island, Bronx. In his official biography, George Meany and His Times, he said he had "never walked a picket line in his life." He also said he took part in only one strike (against the United States Government to get higher pay for plumbers on welfare jobs). Yet he also firmly said that "You only make progress by fighting for progress." Meany served as secretary-treasurer of the AFL from 1940 to 1952, succeeded as president of the AFL, and then continued as president of the AFL-CIO following the historic merger in 1955 until retiring in 1979 - 1894

Homer Martin, early United Auto Workers leader, born in Marion, Ill. - 1902

Congress passes the National Apprenticeship Act, establishing a national advisory committee to research and draft regulations establishing minimum standards for apprenticeship programs. It was later amended to permit the Labor Dept. to issue regulations protecting the health, safety and general welfare of apprentices, and to encourage the use of contracts in their hiring and employment - 1937

- 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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