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MWC joins call for sanitation worker vaccinations

Solidarity Center Report: Jordan Teachers 'Will Not Back Down' in Face of Assault on Union

Today's Labor Quote: MWC resolution

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
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[link removed] A Woman's Work: The NFL's Cheerleader Problem: Fri, February 26, 3:30pm - 5:00pm

Missed yesterday's Your Rights At Work show? [link removed] Catch The Hardhat Riot here. EPI Policy Analyst Margaret Poydock on the story behind the 2020 decline in the number of striking workers; David Paul Kuhn on his book THE HARDHAT RIOT: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution.

MWC joins call for sanitation worker vaccinations
The Metropolitan Washington Council this week joined with AFSCME District Council 20 in calling for DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to immediately move sanitation workers into the current phase of eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines and to recognize their essential work. "Our sanitation workers have been doing the essential work of keeping the city clean and safe, facing increased risk and exposure to the virus every single day with little recognition of their service," said Robert Hollingsworth, Executive Director of District Council 20. "Ever since the pandemic began," he added, "they rose to the call and never quit showing up and ensuring that our community is kept safe and essential services continue to run."
photo: DC sanitation worker Olivia French; photo courtesy [link removed] WAMU

Solidarity Center Report: Jordan Teachers 'Will Not Back Down' in Face of Assault on Union
Teachers in Jordan are "insisting on their legal rights to have an association" and will not give up after the government dissolved their union in July and imprisoned union activists, says Kefah Abu Farhan, a board member with the Jordan Teacher Association (JTA). "Teachers, male and female, stress day after day that these measures are not acceptable for us and we will not back down until the teachers' association goes back to its legal standing," said Abu Farhan, speaking recently with the Solidarity Center. Read more at [link removed] Solidarity Center.
PLUS: Upcoming Event: Essential: Women's Work Is the Backbone of the Global Economy
Join Solidarity Center and the Coalition of Labor Union Women for a special International Women's Day event March 8: Essential: Women's Work Is the Backbone of the Global Economy. Six women from around the world will share inspiring stories of women on the front lines! [link removed] Register here.
photo: Teachers in Jordan oppose the government's move to shut down their union. Credit: Education International

Labor Quote: MWC resolution

Today's labor quote is from the resolution passed this past Tuesday by the Metro Washington Council, which harkens back to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was killed in Memphis in 1968 while standing with sanitation workers, which notes that, like the conditions that led to that strike: "The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis have highlighted critical gaps in public service workers' rights to healthy, fair, and equitable treatment."
photo: Black garbage collectors in Memphis often rode this way to stay out of the rain. On February 1, 1968, two workers were killed when their truck malfunctioned and crushed them. Their deaths helped spark a strike by black sanitation workers in Memphis. Photo courtesy University of Memphis Libraries

TODAY'S LABOR HISTORY

This week's Labor History Today podcast: [link removed] The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly. Last week's show: [link removed] Remembering John Sweeney and Anne Feeney

February 26
Congress okays the Contract Labor Law, designed to clamp down on "business agents" who contracted abroad for immigrant labor. One of the reasons unions supported the measure: employers were using foreign workers to fight against the growing U.S. labor movement, primarily by deploying immigrant labor to break strikes - 1885

Bethlehem Steel workers strike for union recognition, Bethlehem, Penn. - 1941

A coal slag heap doubling as a dam in West Virginia's Buffalo Creek Valley collapsed, flooding the 17-mile long valley. 118 died, 5,000 were left homeless. The Pittston Coal Co. said it was "an Act of God." - 1972

A 20-week strike by 70,000 Southern California supermarket workers ends, with both sides claiming victory - 2004

February 27
Birth of John Steinbeck in Salinas, Calif. Steinbeck is best known for writing "The Grapes of Wrath," which exposed the mistreatment of migrant farm workers during the Depression and led to some reforms - 1902

Thirty-eight miners die in a coal mine explosion in Boissevain, Va. - 1932

Legendary labor leader and socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs becomes charter member and secretary of the Vigo Lodge, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. Five years later he is leading the national union and in 1893 helps found the nation's first industrial union, the American Railway Union - 1875

450 Woolworth's workers and customers occupy store for eight days in support of Waiters and Waitresses Union, Detroit - 1937
The Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes, a major organizing tool for industrial unions, are illegal - 1939

Mine disaster kills 75 at Red Lodge, Mont. - 1943

February 28
U.S. Supreme Court finds that a Utah state law limiting mine and smelter workers to an eight-hour workday is constitutional - 1898
The minimum age allowed by law for workers in mills, factories, and mines in South Carolina is raised from twelve to fourteen - (Actually Leap Year Feb. 29) 1915

Members of the Chinese Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in San Francisco's Chinatown begin what is to be a successful four-month strike for better wages and conditions at the National Dollar Stores factory and three retail outlets - 1938

In response to the layoff of 450 union members at a 3M factory in New Jersey, every worker at a 3M factory in Elandsfontein, South Africa, walks off the job in sympathy - 1986.

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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