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Digital organizing at UMD

"Value all workers equally" labor urges

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

[link removed] LABOR CALENDAR; click here for latest listings

Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; [link removed] click here to hear today's report

DC COPE meeting: Tue, October 20, 2pm - 4pm
Meet to discuss and update our latest political and legislative efforts for Election Day and beyond.
Please [link removed] register in advance for this meeting

[link removed] Airport Union Caucus: Tues. Oct. 20th, 2 pm
Meeting for unions representing airport and airline workers

Northern Virginia AFL-CIO Faith/Labor Caucus: Tue, October 20, 4pm - 6pm
[link removed] CLICK TO REGISTER

MD/DC AFL-CIO Labor 2020 phonebank (NC): Tue, October 20, 6pm - 9pm
Maryland and DC union members are urged to sign up and help out; all you need is a computer and a phone.
[link removed] Sign up here

[link removed] Film on Voter Suppression: Tues. Oct 20th, 6 pm
Followed by panel on voting in Virginia Questions contact Bob Zabel: [email protected]

FILM: NO TIME TO WASTE - THE URGENT MISSION OF BETTY REID SOSKIN: Tue, October 20, 7pm - 9pm
FREE via Zoom; [link removed] RSVP here; With intro/Q&A with director Carl Bidleman

[link removed] Shenandoah Valley Labor/Community Alliance: Tues. Oct. 20th, 7:30 pm
Organizational meeting to plan support for workers seeking to join unions and gain collective bargaining rights in the Shenandoah Valley

Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency staff are teleworking; reach them at the contact numbers and email addresses [link removed] here.

Missed last week's Your Rights At Work radio show? [link removed] Catch the podcast here; "Systemic racism" at the VA? Plus: the latest episode of the San Francisco Mime Troupe's Tales of Resistance!

Digital organizing at UMD
Gliny Gonzalez was anxious. It was late May, and the University of Maryland, College Park -- the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland -- had just called her back to her job as a Residential Facilities Housekeeper. The university wanted staff like Gliny to clean up after students returning to retrieve their belongings left behind during the abrupt campus shutdown in March. COVID-19 case numbers in Maryland were still high -- and the highest case count was in Prince George's County, where the campus is located. Despite this, and despite the stay-at-home order in place, Gliny's supervisor told her that she was required to come to work...she soon began noticing symptoms of COVID-19. She was hospitalized days later. So began AFSCME's fight over the health and safety of workers at public universities in Maryland...
- Stuart Katzenberg (Director of Collective Bargaining and Growth Strategies at AFSCME Council 3) and Todd Holden's (Shop Steward for AFSCME Local 1072, and the local's Interim President) [link removed] report in The Forge

"Value all workers equally" labor urges
"D.C. should value all workers equally," says Metro Washington Council (MWC) president Dyana Forester. "And in order to do that, the District government must provide the same set of benefits to all." Forester joined representatives from MWC affiliates including AFSCME, the Teamsters and SEIU last Friday when they spoke at the DC Council Committee on Government Operations hearing in support of the Public Sector Injured Workers' Equality Act of 2020. This legislation seeks to make sure all DC workers, whether in the public or private sector, have access and compensation to the same workers compensation benefits and process. "This is simply the right, fair, and just thing to do," added Forester.
photo: AFSCME 20 Executive Director Andrew Washington testifies

Today's Labor Quote: Merle Travis

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

Travis, the songwriter and performer who wrote "Sixteen Tons" & "Dark as a Dungeon" died on this date in 1983.

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Today's Labor History
This week's Labor History Today podcast: [link removed] One Day More
Saul Schniderman remembers musician activist Elaine Purkey (photo).
Justice Denied: David Gariff on "Ben Shahn and the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti."
From the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, "When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism."
And, on this week's Labor History in 2: Paul Robeson, "The Voice of an Era."
Last week's show: [link removed] The Package King

Eugene V. Debs, U.S. labor leader and socialist, dies in Elmhurst, Ill. Among his radical ideas: an eight-hour workday, pensions, workman's compensation, sick leave and social security. He ran for president from a jail cell in 1920 and got a million votes - 1926

Hollywood came under scrutiny as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened hearings into alleged Communist influence within the motion picture industry. Dozens of union members were among those blacklisted following as a result of HUAC's activities - 1947

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan writes to PATCO President Robert Poli with this promise: if the union endorses Reagan "I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety." He got the endorsement. Nine months after the election, he fires the air traffic controllers for engaging in an illegal walkout over staffing levels and working conditions - 1980

- 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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