Women’s Solidarity Breakfast Highlights Need for Employee Free Choice
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Roselyn Maina wasn’t about to settle for doing first-class work but being treated like a second-class worker. So she and her co-workers at the Budget car rental operation at Boston’s Logan Airport joined together, and despite strong management opposition, formed a union in October.
The new member of IUE-CWA Local 201 was one of several union women who took part in the recent North Shore (Mass.) Labor Council’s (NSLC‘s) Women’s Solidarity Breakfast.
NSLC organizer Rosa Blumenfeld says the annual meeting gives women a chance to share stories and strategies on how to improve their work lives, often in the face of anti-worker employers, as in Maina’s case. Says Blumenfeld:
Her story is one of determination and courage.
Colombians Mourn Colleagues Killed in Past Two Months
When 14 Colombian trade union members were in the United States for a training program, they were unable to forget just how dangerous it is to support unions in their home country. During the two months they were here, four of their colleagues were assassinated.
In a memorial service at AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., yesterday, we joined the Solidarity Center and the Colombian workers to honor those who were killed and to reaffirm our determination to fight for workers’ and human rights in that country.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told the group:
We want our Colombian sisters and brothers to know that as we fight for basic trade union rights in this country, we are totally dedicated to their struggle to organize and collectively bargain in an atmosphere free of fear, terror and violence.
Ohio Workers Make Voices Heard On Health Care
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Union members in Ohio made it clear yesterday at two meetings that working people want real health care reform and they want it now. These and other workers are fighting back against the lie-filled campaigns by extremist groups—some funded by corporate donations and backed by extremist Republican leaders who are vowing to kill health care reform.
In Cleveland, most of the 450 people at a regular report to constituents meeting hosted by Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge supported health care reform. Outside the hall, more than 115 union members and health care reform activists drowned out about 25 opponents, some singing in German and carrying signs characterizing Obama as “Adolf Hitler.”
