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AFSCME Maryland turns up heat on UMD

DC schools celebrate Black literature with readings by city leaders

Union Voice/Readers Write: More union sweets

Solidarity Center Report: NagaWorld Strikers Gain Global Support as Crackdown Heats Up

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

 

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If you missed last week's Your Rights At Work radio show -- [link removed] Organizing with Union Kitchen, Starbucks and POTUS - catch the podcast here!

AFSCME Maryland turns up heat on UMD

AFSCME Maryland members turned out at Friday's meeting of the University System of Maryland to demand negotiations. "Why won't @JayPerman negotiate with @AFSCMEMaryland members?" the union tweeted. "It's the law and we make the universities run! Why is he scared to talk to his staff?" AFSCME MD also noted that "So ironic that today's @Univ_System_MD started honoring black history month at this meeting while ignoring black workers demanding @JayPerman negotiate NOW!"

DC schools celebrate Black literature with readings by city leaders

D.C. officials and other guests joined union leaders to celebrate The National African American Read-In Friday at a local elementary school named after a historic Black resident of the city. "We are celebrating Black History Month," Mayor Muriel Bowser told a gym full of students at Houston Elementary School, named after D.C. native Charles Hamilton Houston, who played a key role in abolishing Jim Crow laws. "Your job as an elementary school student at Charles H. Houston is to sing his praises and let everyone know who he is, and why he is important to the fabric of America," said Jacqueline Pogue Lyons, the president of the Washington Teachers Union. The WTU and American Federation of Teachers also handed out books celebrating Black history to every student in the school for their home library.

Adapted from a [link removed] WTOP report.

Union Voice/Readers Write: More union sweets
"Pearson candy workers in Saint Paul, MN are members of BCTGM local 22 and make Nut Goodies, among many other treats," reports reader Joanne Murphy.

NagaWorld Strikers Gain Global Support as Crackdown Heats Up

A "Global Day of Action" drew activists in 11 cities on four continents in a show of solidarity with striking workers at Cambodia's NagaWorld Hotel and Casino complex. The workers, who have been on strike for more than eight weeks, say government officials are now using the COVID-19 pandemic to further interfere with workers' right to assemble. Meanwhile, eight union leaders jailed in January for peacefully walking a picket line were denied pre-trial release. Find out more at [link removed] Solidarity Center.


Today's labor quote: Kat Wiggers

"Our biggest thing has been educating people on what a union is and what we do for workers. Once you kind of explain that and like, they see all the injustice, like that's been happening and stuff, it's just like, how could you disagree?"

Kat Wiggers (photo) is organizing a union at the [link removed] Forest Hill Starbucks in Virginia; hear her on last week's [link removed] Your Rights At Work radio show.

TODAY'S LABOR HISTORY

This week's Labor History Today podcast: [link removed] The Irish Immigrant Miners' Memorial. Last week's episode: [link removed] City Workers Strike Song.

February 14

President Theodore Roosevelt creates the Department of Commerce and Labor. It was divided into two separate government departments ten years later - 1903

Western Federation of Miners strike for 8-hour day - 1903

Jimmy Hoffa born in Brazil, Indiana, son of a coal miner. Disappeared July 30, 1975, declared dead seven years later - 1913

Striking workers at Detroit's newspapers, out since the previous July, offer to return to work. The offer is accepted five days later but the newspapers vow to retain some 1,200 scabs. A court ruling the following year ordered as many as 1,100 former strikers reinstated - 1996

February 15

Susan B. Anthony, suffragist, abolitionist, labor activist, born in Adams, Mass. - 1820

U.S. legislators pass the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, providing funds for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which funneled money to states plagued by Depression-era poverty and unemployment, and oversaw the subsequent distribution and relief efforts - 1934

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expels the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers; the Food, Tobacco & Agricultural Workers; and the United Office & Professional Workers for "Communist tendencies." Other unions expelled for the same reason (dates uncertain): Fur and Leather Workers, the Farm Equipment Union, the International Longshoremen's Union, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers - 1950

- David Prosten

 

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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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