TODAY'S LABOR CALENDAR; click here for latest listings
Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; click here to hear today's report
Prince William County Labor Caucus: Mon, April 12, 7pm – 8pm
Meeting of union members and community allies in PWC.
DC COPE meeting: Tue, April 13, 2pm – 4pm
Register here
George Mason University Coalition for Worker Rights: Tue, April 13, 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Coalition of faculty, students, alumni, employees and contract workers.
Loudoun County Labor Caucus: Tue, April 13, 5pm – 6pm
Meeting of union members and community allies in Loudoun County
Missed last week’s Your Rights At Work radio show? Catch the podcast here. This week's show: AFL-CIO Communications Director Tim Schlittner on the PRO Act Digital Day of Action today; Moment of Silence for WTU 6 president Liz Davis; latest labor news headlines, including peeing in bottles at Amazon and our new Bad Bosses feature.
The fight to organize Amazon workers is just beginning
The results are in but the fight to organize Amazon workers may have just begun. RWDSU, the union organizing the workers at the Bessemer warehouse in Alabama, immediately announced that it’s filing charges “against Amazon’s blatantly illegal conduct” during the election in which workers voted 1,798-738 against the union. “We won’t rest until workers’ voices are heard fairly under the law,” the union said, adding that they’ve heard from Amazon workers across the country who want to organize. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka hailed “the heroic Amazon workers in Bessemer” who he said “have made history, helping pave the path toward workplace justice for all.” Michigan congressman Andy Levin said that Amazon had “won recognition as the very symbol of corporate oppression of worker voice, of income and wealth inequality, and of the dehumanization of work.” And the EPI’s Celine McNicholas called for passage of the PRO Act, saying that “The results of the election at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama reveal a broken union election system.” “Bessemer was just the beginning,” said Jobs with Justice Executive Director Erica Smiley. A Union Busting is Disgusting rally will be held at the RWDSU union hall in Bessemer on Sunday. This story was posted on our website and Twitter Friday; follow us there for latest updates!
Read more: The Message from the Amazon Union Defeat in Alabama Is Clear: Keep Organizing (In These Times)
NoVA Labor supports TPS hunger-strikersThe Painters, Carpenters, 32bj SEIU, and LiUNA on Friday led a NoVA Labor delegation to support the TPS hunger strikers who are demonstrating at Freedom Plaza, asking for permanent residency for TPS holders who have contributed so much to our unions and our communities. photo: Painters; more photos here
Today's Labor Quote: News Guild member
“I now have a better understanding of why management fought the union. We have so much power and so many rights. I can demand a union representative in a meeting and they are equal to management...it’s no wonder corporations hate us! It’s about power and control!”
At a recent steward training at a newly organized shop, tweeted by labor organizer and journalist Chris Brooks.
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: The US-Canadian Labor History Collaborative, plus songs about the 1913 Saskatchewan coal miners’ strike.
Last week’s show: Canal workers, gays & miners, Gandhi’s labor quote
A group of "puddlers" -- craftsmen who manipulated pig iron to create steel -- met in a Pitsburgh bar and formed The Iron City Forge of the Sons of Vulcan. It was the strongest union in the U.S. in the 1870s, later merging with two other unions to form what was to be the forerunner of the United Steel Workers - 1858
Birth of Florence Reece, active in Harlan County, Ky. coal strikes and author of famed labor song “Which Side Are You On?” - 1900
photo: Mining family’s company housing, Bell County, Kentucky, ca. 1930s (from Kentucky Coal Mining History website)
The Union Label and Service Trades Department is founded by the American Federation of Labor. Its mission: promote the products and services of union members - 1909
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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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