DC Labor FilmFest: Celebrating 20 Years of Great Labor Films!
Click here for tickets. All films available now: WORK SONGS * THE LUNCHROOM * IDA B. WELLS: A PASSION FOR JUSTICE * MISS MARX * THE CHAMBERMAID * THE WHISTLE AT EATON FALLS * NASRIN * Opens today: THE NEW DEAL FOR ARTISTS

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

NoVA Canvass for Del. Elizabeth Guzman: Sat, May 22, 12pm – 2pm
Andrew Leitch Park 5301 Dale Blvd, Woodbridge, VA

Labor Book Club with Irish Historian John Dorney: Sat, May 22, 4pm – 5pm
Special meeting of NoVA Labor's Labor Book Club, with Irish historian John Dorney joining us on Zoom from Dublin to talk about the great Dublin lock-out of 1913 as portrayed in James Plunkett's classic "Strumpet City." John Dorney is the author of "The Civil War in Dublin" and "Peace After the Final Battle - The Story of the Irish Revolution." John's father led the Irish Teachers' Union for 25 years.

Missed this week’s Your Rights At Work radio show? Catch the podcast here. This week's show: Washington Gas workers (Teamsters 96) blow the whistle on corporate greed. Organizer Steve Lanning (LiUNA 11) on workers’ right to strike. And Brittany Scott on Ending Racial Discrimination in Industrial Temp Hiring Through Innovative Enforcement. Plus: WPFW’s Spring Pledge Drive; click here to support Your Rights At Work on Union City Radio (be sure to scroll down to Your Rights At Work) on the Jazz & Justice station in the nation’s capital.

Labor photo: Blowing the whistle on corporate greed
Washington Gas workers blew whistles and generally caused a commotion yesterday morning at four company facilities to protest the company’s contract proposals. The contract covering 600 union employees at Washington Gas -- owned by AltaGas, a Canadian corporation -- expires on May 31 and Teamsters Local 96 has scheduled a strike authorization vote for next week. More photos posted here.

Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, 2021

Workplace safety and health conditions have improved in the fifty years since the Occupational Safety and Health Act went into effect in 1971. But far too many workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death. Workplace hazards kill and disable more than 100,000 workers each year—over 5,000 from traumatic injuries and an estimated 95,000 from occupational diseases. The 2021 edition of Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect marks the 30th year the AFL-CIO has produced a report on the state of safety and health protections for America’s workers.

Today's Labor Quote: Bartolomeo Vanzetti

“Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident.”

Vanzetti, the Italian activist and anarchist, along with Nicola Sacco, went on trial on this date in 1921; they were eventually executed as part of a government campaign against dissidents.

TODAY'S LABOR HISTORY

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Passaic textile strike & LAWCHA preview. Last week’s show: Sea Shanties and the Pleasure of Work

May 21
The “Little Wagner Act” is signed in Hawaii, guaranteeing pineapple and sugar workers the right to bargain collectively. After negotiations failed a successful 79-day strike shut down 33 of the territory’s 34 plantations and brought higher wages and a 40-hour week - 1945

Nearly 100,000 unionized SBC Communications Inc. workers begin a four-day strike to protest the local phone giant’s latest contract offer - 2004

May 22
Eugene V. Debs imprisoned in Woodstock, Ill. for role in Pullman strike - 1895

While white locomotive firemen on the Georgia Railroad strike, blacks who are hired as replacements are whipped and stoned -- not by the union men, but by white citizens outraged that blacks are being hired over whites. The Engineers union threatens to stop work because their members are being affected by the violence - 1909

Civil Service Retirement Act of 1920 gives federal workers a pension - 1920

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the goals of his Great Society social reforms: to bring “an end to poverty and racial injustice” in America - 1964

May 23
An estimated 100,000 textile workers, including more than 10,000 children, strike in the Philadelphia area. Among the issues: 60-hour workweeks, including night hours, for the children - 1903

Ten thousand strikers at Toledo, Ohio’s Auto-Lite plant repel police who have come to break up their strike for union recognition. The next day, two strikers are killed and 15 wounded when National Guard machine gun units open fire. Two weeks later the company recognized the union and agreed to a 5 percent raise - 1934

U.S. railroad strike starts, later crushed when President Truman threatens to draft strikers – 1946

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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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