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February Marks 44th Anniversary of Historic Memphis Sanitation Strike
February is Black History Month and one of the noteworthy events in African American history is the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike that began Feb. 11, 1968. It was on that day that, after years of discrimination and injustice, the African American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., began their strike for economic justice and dignity. They sought to join AFSCME Local 1733.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. championed the workers’ cause. Two months later, King was gunned down in Memphis as he prepared to lead a massive demonstration with the striking workers.
Click here to see the AFSCME video “I’m a Man” that looks at the strike and King’s murder and includes interviews with the striking workers and here for an excerpt featuring comments from several of the workers honored at a White House ceremony last year.
Make Valentine’s Day International Flower Workers’ Day
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Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and tens of millions of us will show our love to that special someone with flowers. But Valentine’s Day also gives us a great opportunity to how our support for the 100,000 mostly women workers in Colombia who work long days to cut and ship flowers for Valentine’s Day.
About 60 percent of all flowers bought in the U.S. come from Colombia. Workers don’t earn enough to support their families, work long hours, suffer sexual harassment, and are fired when they try to form unionse to improve wages and conditions, according to U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP).
Click here to a sign a letter to Colombian Minister of Labor Rafael Pardo Rueda supporting flower workers and other workers in Colombia who are demanding fair wages, equal treatment and justice.
The letter also urges the Colombian government to implement the spirit and the letter of the Labor Action Plan signed last year with the U.S. government. In October, the AFL-CIO issued a report saying the action plan “has failed to achieve improvements on the ground for Colombia’s working families.” The plan was billed as a major step to ending violence against trade unionists and protecting the right of workers to come together in unions.
Click here for the full report.
New Guide Offers Advice for Women Seeking Green Jobs
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If you’re a woman considering a career in the growing clean energy economy, check out this new online guide from the U.S. Department of Labor. “Why Green Is Your Color: A Woman’s Guide to a Sustainable Career” is designed to help women find and keep higher-paying jobs in the clean energy economy.
The online publication (click here) will help workers learn about a range of in-demand and emerging jobs, as well as job training opportunities and career development tools, in the clean energy economy. The guide also serves as a resource for workforce development professionals, training providers, educators, career counselors and women’s advocacy organizations.
Sara Manzano-Díaz, director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau, says many occupations in the clean energy economy remain virtually untapped by women.
This guide is an invaluable resource that workforce professionals can use to help women transition into higher paying jobs that serve as a pathway into the middle class. It is also a tool to help fight job segregation.
Additional resources to help women succeed in nontraditional and emerging job sectors are available by contacting the Women’s Bureau at 202-693-6710 or click here to visit its website.
Nominate Your Health Care Reform Champion of Change
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The White House Champions of Change program wants to honor those people who have helped people in their communities take advantage of the Affordable Care Act’s growing benefits and those who have championed access to health care for everyone in their community throughout their careers.
Before the nearly two-year-old Affordable Care Act was passed, children were refused insurance coverage because of a pre-existing condition and people with chronic conditions ran out of insurance coverage because their expenses hit lifetime limits. Now young adults under the age of 26 can stay on their parent’s coverage.
Georgetown Panel Examines Wisconsin Uprising
A year ago, thousands of Wisconsin workers filled the statehouse and streets of Madison protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attack on their collective bargaining rights. The battle reverberated beyond the borders of Wisconsin, triggering a nationwide dialogue on collective bargaining.
On Wednesday, Feb. 15, the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, will hold a special discussion focusing on what the Wisconsin protests mean a year later; the history, law, and politics of collective bargaining in the public sector; and what these public sector labor struggles mean for the country more generally.
The discussion will run from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Georgetown Law Gewirz Center on the 12th floor.
Georgetown University professor and Kalmanowitz Initiative Executive Director Joseph McCartin will lead the panel. Panelists include Craig Becker, a former National Labor Relations Board member, Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin (IAFF), Joseph P. Rugola, executive director of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE/AFSCME) and Newsweek and Daily Beast contributor, Eleanor Clift.
Live Tweeting from Occupy CPAC
UPDATE: Metro DC Communications Director Chris Garlock send us this more detailed report from this afternoon’s actions.
Chanting “Whose America? Our America!” as many as 700 labor and community activists turned out in force earlier this afternoon outside the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), shutting down Woodley Rd. with an impromptu sit in and brief takeover take-over of the Mariott Wardman Park Hotel driveway.
Well-heeled CPAC attendees gawked as the huge crowd turned Woodley Road into a multi-hued street festival of “the 99%” The spirited demonstration (click here for a slideshow) lasted over two hours, with many planning to stay on through the afternoon for the second round, dubbed Occupy CPAC: Scott Walker and the Union Busters, planned to start at 5 p.m. focusing on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who’s scheduled to address CPAC tonight.
Union and progressive activists are staging some unique events today at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting in Washington, D.C., the annual gathering of the Who’s Who of the 1 percent, including Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, Ann Coulter and Grover Norquist.
You can keep up with today’s Occupy CPAC actions with this live Twitter feed from the Metropolitan Washington [D.C.] Council AFL-CIO and with the hashtag #OccupyCPAC.
Actions are set for noon and 5 p.m. (EST). If you are in the D.C. area and want to jin, head over to the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel (2600 Woodley Rd. at Connecticut Ave. N.W.). The nearest Metro stop is the Woodley Park station.
Union Plus Lets You Say It with Flowers for Valentine’s Day
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There’s still time to show your love to the special someone who Occupies your heart on Valentine’s Day, and Union Plus and Working America members can get a 20 percent discount on flower arrangements through Teleflora. (Click here to join Working America and get your flower discount.)
Earlier this week, Union Plus posted a few labor-inspired messages on its Facebook wall the union lover in you might want to include with the flowers.
- My love, like a union contract, gives you a feeling of security.
- My heart skipped a beat…I need workers’ comp.
- They might withhold my paycheck, but I’ll never withhold my love.
Click here for more or to add your own.
AFGE Says Republicans Have Some Explaining to Do
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In a nationwide advertising campaign getting underway this weekend, AFGE members are calling out Republican lawmakers for supporting a plan to pay for the payroll tax relief extension by slashing federal employee wages.
The new ads feature a Veterans Affairs nurse, a Defense Department worker and a federal corrections officer. They want GOP lawmakers to “explain it to me” how cutting federal pay and benefits helps put Americans back to work. Asks Minnesota VA nurse Teresa Capecchi:
Twelve percent of the salary I earn caring for veterans goes to my retirement. Explain it to me, GOP, how cutting my retirement puts people to work.
Republicans in Congress have proposed paying for the payroll tax relief extension by freezing federal employee salaries for another year. Says AFGE National President John Gage:
Federal employees already have given up their pay raises for two years in a row and many are in danger of losing their jobs because of drastic agency downsizing efforts. Freezing their wages for another year adds insult to injury and does nothing to get Americans back to work.
Hundreds of AFGE members will be in Washington for the union’s annual Legislative and Grassroots Mobilization Conference Feb. 12-15. Members will meet with their congressional representatives during the week to address the attacks on federal employees’ pay, pensions and benefits.
CWA, TWU Form New Partnership
The Transport Workers (TWU) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have voted to work together in a new partnership. The two unions represent more than 120,000 airline workers and are joining forces to support bargaining and organizing at American Airlines and campaigns at other airlines.
In New York and Philadelphia, TWU members have been a big part of the fair contract fight by CWA and Electrical Workers (IBEW) members at Verizon and Verizon Wireless. In the Midwest, where TWU represents transit workers and CWA represents university and public workers, there’s a lot of common ground.
TWU President James C. Little says the two unions share “common values and principles that should intuitively benefit our members through working together.” CWA President Larry Cohen says partnerships like this “are the only way we will make progress for workers.”
Jobless Facing UI Cut Off Ask Lawmakers ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’
Starting tomorrow and continuing next week, jobless workers in 15 states who face cut off of their unemployment insurance (UI) Feb. 29 will ask members of Congress to “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.”
The mobilization is aimed at lawmakers who are back in their districts for the President’s Day Recess that begins tomorrow, and it’s a partnership between USAction, the AFL-CIO, the National Employment Law Project (NELP), community and other groups.
If the Feb. 29 deadline passes without Congress taking action to extend UI coverage, 1.2 million jobless workers will lose their benefits by the end of March and 3.3 million by the June. (Click here tell your congressional representatives to act now.)
In a telephone press conference today, Gary Polvinale, an Ohio IT manager who has been out of work nearly a year said,
Congress is doing something corporations do, exploiting and bullying the helpless. We need them to act now So we can survive until till can find something. Read the rest of this entry »
