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Call TODAY: Demand a strong Return to Work bill!

LOC staff turn tables on cafeteria workers

"Don't Change the Metrics" urge MontCo educators and allies

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

[link removed] Prince William County Labor Caucus: Mon, December 14, 7pm - 8pm
Meeting for union members and allies in Prince William County

[link removed] #MASKual Harassment: Tue, December 15, 2pm - 4pm

[link removed] Faith/Labor Caucus: Jeff Caruso: Tue, December 15, 4pm - 6pm
Caruso is the founding director of the Virginia Catholic Conference.

[link removed] DC Pay Stub Clinic (DC JWJ): Tue, December 15, 5pm - 7pm
Join DC Jobs with Justice and the Ethiopian Community Center for a webinar on your rights at work in DC.

Missed last week's Your Rights At Work radio show? [link removed] Catch the podcast here!
The best labor books of 2020, with TIM SHEARD, Hardball Press publisher and author of the Lenny Moss mysteries, and PATRICK DIXON, Managing Editor at LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History. YEMISRACH WOLDE, Ethiopian Community Center on the upcoming DC Pay Stub Clinic. Plus: Fallen Heroes: Songs for Essential Workers by The Pandemics.

Call TODAY: Demand a strong Return to Work bill!
Tomorrow the DC City Council has the chance to ensure that many laid off District workers can get their jobs back after the pandemic. However, local unions and allies warn that business lobbyists are working hard to weaken the bill and deny many workers their right to return to work. "The only way that we can stop this is by calling key DC City Council members today and asking them to hold the line on workers' rights!" said Metro Washington Council president Dyana Forester. "Please take a moment now to call the Council and tell them to stand up for workers and pass a strong bill," Forester urged. [link removed] Click here for their phone numbers and key talking points.

LOC staff turn tables on cafeteria workers
Cafeteria workers at the Library of Congress usually feed the people who work there. Now the tables have been turned. The cafeterias at the Library are closed until further notice and 29 food service workers, all employees of the contractor I.L. Creations, were laid off at the beginning of the pandemic last March. Their health insurance benefits were terminated on July 31, and their extended unemployment benefits run out this month. Library staff, members of AFSCME 2910, AFSCME 2477 and IFPTE Local 75, along with retirees and others, raised just over $62,000 over the last few weeks, enough to give each of the cafeteria workers - members of Unite Here Local 23 -- a $2,100 gift card. "I am completely blown away by how much you were able to raise and cannot overstate how much this means to workers," said Jesse Seitel, Lead Organizer for Local 23. "Without a new stimulus deal, our workers are mostly living on $300 per week and so $2,100 will be the difference in being able to afford food, rent, and other essentials for survival.... Thank you very much for your solidarity and support!" [link removed] Read more here.

"Don't Change the Metrics" urge MontCo educators and allies
A grassroots effort by Montgomery County educators - including unionized teachers - and community members has garnered over 3,000 signatures on a [link removed] petition asking Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) not to change the health metric matrix for a safe phased-in return for in-person instruction. "We are asking that the health metrics grid that was approved on November 10th not be changed by the Board of Education in order to keep health and safety at the forefront of their decision-making," says the petition. "We must continue to abide by CDC guidelines when considering the return to in-person instruction." The Board of Education, which meets tomorrow, has asked MCPS to reevaluate its metrics for reopening on December 15 in order to lower the health standards for return to in-person instruction.

Today's Labor Quote: Lillian Roberts

"That was the first time that I realized that laws were made to handcuff those who they feel are powerless. I had to break the law to force the governor to comply with the law."

Lillian Roberts was arrested for organizing an illegal strike by New York state employees on this date in 1968; she was sentenced to 30 days but released after 11, on Christmas Eve. AFSCME ultimately won the strike. photo: Roberts, center, with her children and AFSCME president Jerry Wurf (left, in striped tie).

Today's Labor History
This week's [link removed] Labor History Today podcast: Paul Robeson and the 1948 Library of Congress cafeteria workers' strike: With 95% of DC's hotel and restaurant workers out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we look back at the history of cafeteria workers' struggle at the Library of Congress for a union and how singer and activist Paul Robeson supported their 1948 strike. Plus: AFSCME's Lillian Roberts tells how a showdown with NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller over the right of state workers to organize led to her being jailed for two weeks in December, 1968; Mark Bradley, author of Blood Runs Coal, about the brutal 1968 murder of Jock Yablonski and his family by United Mineworkers president Tony Boyle, and how it inspired a surge in union democracy; The Beginning of the End of Apartheid.
Last week's show: [link removed] America's last general strike. photo: mass picket outside the Federal Works Administration during the 1948 cafeteria strike.

Daniel DeLeon, socialist scholar and labor organizer, born - 1852

Some 33,000 striking members of the Machinists end a 69-day walkout at Boeing after winning pay and benefit increases and protections against subcontracting some of their work overseas - 1995

- David Prosten

Material published in UNION CITY may be freely reproduced by any recipient; please credit Union City as the source.

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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