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MLK weekend labor actions/events

AFSCME rings alarm on staffing shortages in Maryland prisons

DC nurses and supporters join national day of action for job safety

Virginia Beach city workers seek union rights

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] Affordable Housing/Tenant Rights Committee: Fri, January 14, 1pm - 2pm

Join us for updates on Northern Virginia tenants' union activity and to discuss labor's perspective and efforts on affordable housing.

Fairfax NAACP MLK Economic Empowerment Brunch: Sat, January 15, 10am - 1pm
American Legion Post 176, 6520 Amherst Ave, Springfield, VA ([link removed] map)

Co-sponsors include NoVA Labor, IBEW Local 26, and UA Local 5. Individual tickets $60, Tables $290, contact mailto:[email protected] [email protected]; [link removed] tinyurl.com/MLKEcoBrunch

[link removed] Immigrant Rights Committee: Sat, January 15, 3pm - 4pm
This committee organizes labor engagement in immigrant rights efforts. Immigrant rights are worker rights!

[link removed] 2022 AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference: Jan 16 - 17, 2022

[link removed] 2022 MLK Gonna Take Us All Ball (Virtual Event): Sun, January 16, 8pm - 10pm
Hosted by the Labor Heritage Foundation.

Join NoVA Labor at Leesburg's 31st annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March: Mon, January 17, 9:45am - 1:00pm
We will meet in front of the Leesburg Post Office across from the Leesburg Courthouse near the corner of King and Market Street at 9:45AM. Please look for our banner. Any questions contact mailto:[email protected] [email protected]

MWC/CSA offices closed for MLK federal holiday: Mon, January 17

Missed this week's [link removed] Your Rights At Work radio show? [link removed] Catch the podcast here. The AFL-CIO's Bill Samuel on the racist anti-democratic roots of the filibuster, nurses hold a [link removed] national day of action, Elise Bryant previews the annual [link removed] MLK Gonna Take Us All Ball and Donald Cohen on [link removed] The Privatization of Everything. Plus: labor news headlines and music from the DC Labor Chorus.


MLK weekend labor actions/events

The AFL-CIO'shttps://sites.google.com/aflcio.org/sidelinethefilibuster/toolkit [link removed] Sideline the Filibuster/Voting Rights Week of Action continues today.

Exploring the theme of Honoring Our Past and Protecting Our Future, the [link removed] 2022 AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference is set for Sunday and Monday; speakers include Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Raphael Warnock, Sen. Jon Ossoff, actors Michael B. Jordan, Blair Underwood, Ruth Negga, Mykelti Williamson, Colman Domingo and musicians Yolanda Adams, Tom Morello, PJ Morton and Brittney Spencer will perform.


The online [link removed] 2022 MLK Gonna Take Us All Ball is set for Sunday at 8pm, and NoVA Labor will join Leesburg's 31st annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March on Monday starting at 9:45am.


This weekend's online [link removed] World House Documentary Film Festival includes these labor-themed films: At the River I Stand: The 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike and the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King; Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin; Love and Solidarity: Rev. James Lawson & Nonviolence in the Search for Workers' Rights; Reparations.

[link removed] Click here to register to receive an email with the full program and instructions on how to watch the films and join the webinar.
Complete details in Calendar, above.

AFSCME rings alarm on staffing shortages in Maryland prisons

Unionized corrections workers said Monday that they are facing staff shortages and dangerous conditions in state prison facilities, citing a fire at a Baltimore pretrial detention center earlier this month that sent multiple people to the hospital. Patrick Moran (below, at left), president of AFSCME Council 3, said that, because of backups in state courts, people are being held at the detention center both pre-trial and post-sentencing. "Detainees are staying way too long at this facility and that leads to the situation like we saw," Moran said. "The Hogan administration has continued to neglect the DOC, and their neglect has consistently put the DOC in danger -- and I'm not talking just about our officers that are working in these facilities but, obviously, the inmates that they are overseeing."

- Hannah Gaskill, [link removed] Maryland Matters

DC nurses and supporters join national day of action for job safety


National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest union of RNs, held actions across the country yesterday, including an early-morning action outside Howard University Hospital and an evening candlelight vigil (below right) in front of the White House for the 481 nurses who have lost their lives to Covid-19. DC City Council members Brianne Nadeau and Robert Smith (in photo below left) joined HUH nurses, DCNA Executive Director Ed Smith and Metro Washington Labor Council president Dyanna Forester at the morning rally and at the candlelight vigil NNU leaders and members called on the CDC to strengthen isolation guidelines for health care workers and the public, and on @OSHA to institute a permanent Covid health care standard without delay, saying "We don't want to light one more candle."

photos by Korey Hartwich (l) and NNU.

Virginia Beach city workers seek union rights

The Catholic Labor Network is supporting Virginia Beach workers who are asking the city to bargain with their chosen representatives - as it did recently with workers in [link removed] Fairfax and Loudoun Counties in Northern Virginia. The Network has directed letters in support of collective bargaining to the Virginia Beach Mayor and City Council "and looks forward to working with the Tidewater Sowers of Justice and city workers' unions to promote union rights for Virginia Beach workers." [link removed] Read more here.


Today's labor quote: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until `justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

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TODAY'S LABOR HISTORY

This week's Labor History Today podcast: This week's show: [link removed] Who was Zelda D'Aprano? Last week's show: [link removed] Labor's Untold Stories

January 14
Clinton-era OSHA issues confined spaces standard to prevent more than 50 deaths and 5,000 serious injuries annually for workers who enter confined spaces - 1993

Pennsylvania Superior Court rules bosses can fire workers for being gay - 1995 (In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workers cannot be fired for being gay or transgender.)

Some 14,000 General Electric employees strike for two days to protest the company's mid-contract decision to shift an average of $400 in additional health care co-payments onto each worker - 2003

January 15
Wobbly Ralph Chaplin, in Chicago for a demonstration against hunger, completes the writing of the labor anthem "Solidarity Forever" on this date in 1915. He'd begun writing it in 1914 during a miner's strike in Huntington, W. Va. - 1915 (See Tom Morello's version in the video above)

Martin Luther King, Jr. born - 1929

The CIO miners' union in the Grass Valley area of California strikes for higher wages, union recognition, and the 8 hour day. The strike was defeated when vigilantes and law enforcement officials expelled 400 miners and their families from the area - 1938

The Pentagon, to this day the largest office building in the world, is dedicated just 16 months after groundbreaking. At times of peak employment 13,000 workers labored on the project - 1943

January 16
The United States Civil Service Commission was established as the Pendleton Act went into effect - 1883

Thousands of Palmer Raids detainees win right to meet with lawyers and attorney representation at deportation hearings. "Palmer" was Alexander Mitchell Palmer, U.S. Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson. Palmer believed Communism was "eating its way into the homes of the American workman," and Socialists were causing most of the country's social problems - 1920

Former UAW President Leonard Woodcock dies in Ann Arbor, Mich. at age 89. He had succeeded Walter Reuther and led the union from 1970 to 1977 - 2001

- David Prosten.

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