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Missed last week’s Your Rights At Work radio show? Catch the podcast here. This week's show: The American Postal Workers Union is celebrating its’ 50th birthday; Postal Workers president Mark Dimondstein reports on how his union is still fighting for postal worker rights. PLUS: the Hero Pay bill in DC City Council…Your Rights at Work and the New Minimum Wage webinar…the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Michael Gene Sullivan previews the Mime Troupe’s brand-new radio drama, “Tales Of The Resistance, Volume 2: Persistence,” and the Labor411 on which franks are kosher for a union-made Independence Day.

Courts block Hogan’s attempt to cut off UI
Unemployed workers across Maryland breathed a sigh of relief last weekend when courts blocked the state from cutting off enhanced federal unemployment benefits. “Now I can look for a job without my family having to starve,” tweeted one worker. “Finally a win for the people,” tweeted another. Maryland governor Larry Hogan had issued the order cutting off UI, but worker advocates – including UNITE HERE Local 7 and the Unemployed Workers Union -- had filed two lawsuits challenging the order and on Saturday a Circuit Court judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking Hogan’s order, which had been scheduled to take effect the same day. Hogan’s appeal to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals was rejected Saturday night. “This is great news,” tweeted Metro Washington Council president Dyana Forester, congratulating UNITE HERE. “It’s time for the administration to do the right thing and let Marylanders know that for now the Federal Unemployment Benefits will be continued in Maryland,” Local 7 president Roxie Herbekian told The Washington Post.
photo: Herbekian at a protest over Hogan’s decision to stop federal pandemic aid for the unemployed. (photo by Robb Hill for The Washington Post)

Today's Labor Quote: The New York Times

Rail union leader Eugene V. Debs was arrested on this date in 1894 during the Pullman strike, which involved a quarter of a million workers in 27 states at its peak, and which was described by The Times as "a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital."

TODAY'S LABOR HISTORY

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: The Memphis Fire Fighter Strike of 1978. Last week’s show: Marvel Cooke, a Journalist for Working People. photo source: WMC Action News 5.

Two strikers and a bystander are killed, 30 seriously wounded by police in Duluth, Minn. The workers, mostly immigrants building the city’s streets and sewers, struck after contractors reneged on a promise to pay $1.75 a day - 1889

Two barges, loaded with Pinkerton thugs hired by the Carnegie Steel Co., landed on the south bank of the Monongahela River in Homestead, Penn. seeking to occupy Carnegie Steel Works and put down a strike by members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers - 1892

Transit workers in New York begin what is to be an unsuccessful 3-week strike against the then-privately owned IRT subway. Most transit workers labored seven days a week, up to 11.5 hours a day - 1926

- David Prosten

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