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Service + Solidarity Spotlight: Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council Fights for Workplace Safety Enforcement
Tennessee AFL-CIO
Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our regular Service + Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of those stories every day. Here's today's story.
Too many front-line workers across the country are working in fear for their health and safety. As the federal government fails to intervene by mandating safety and health guidelines, many states are not acting, either. Despite hundreds of complaints to the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the state agency has no legally binding safety standards related to COVID-19, and therefore cannot issue citations when employers fail to protect their workers from infection. Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council President Billy Dycus (USW) told the Tennessean, “Probably one of the best things they could have done is [gotten] ahead of it when this started and started looking at implementing some workplace safety standards that would have given employers...
Service + Solidarity Spotlight: San Diego’s Labor Movement Holds Food Distribution Event
San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council
Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our regular Service + Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of those stories every day. Here's today's story.
On Saturday, members of the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council, led by Executive Secretary-Treasurer Keith Maddox (IAM), held a food relief drive-through at Palomar College. More than 400 families were served at the labor council’s North County food distribution event. The labor council said on social media it plans to hold a similar event at the same location in San Marcos, California, on Saturday, Aug. 1.
Kenneth Quinnell
Wed, 07/22/2020 - 11:27
Tags:
COVID-19, Community Service
Service + Solidarity Spotlight: IBEW Women’s Committee Raises Money for Dubuque Area Labor Harvest
Iowa Starting Line
Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our regular Service + Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of those stories every day. Here's today's story.
The Women’s Committee of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) 11th District, made up of IBEW women from Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, has been raising money to help support workers in need during this time of crises by collecting bottles and cans and through private donations from its members. The committee was able to raise $2,325 for the Dubuque Area Labor Harvest, a food pantry affiliated with the Dubuque Federation of Labor, led by President Tom Townsend (IBEW), that is staffed and run by retired and active union members. The Dubuque Area Labor Harvest will use the money to support its Sunday breakfasts and monthly food giveaway programs. This past Saturday, the organization was able to give away 264 boxes of food to people who came to the...
An Unstoppable Force For Change: What Working People Are Doing This Week
AFL-CIO
Welcome to our regular feature, a look at what the various AFL-CIO unions and other working family organizations are doing across the country and beyond. The labor movement is big and active—here's a look at the broad range of activities we're engaged in this week.
Actors' Equity:
There have been 241,033 new coronavirus cases in Florida since Actors' Equity called on @Disney to offer regular testing for our members. No masks and no testing for performers puts workers and guests at risk. $DIShttps://t.co/SJikn2GyVE pic.twitter.com/jNqu6b4s71
— Actors' Equity (@ActorsEquity) July 20, 2020
AFGE:
Federal prisons have become a hotspot for COVID-19. #1u https://t.co/YvFg3ImutU
— AFGE (@AFGENational) July 17, 2020
AFSCME:
AFSCME President Lee Saunders, paying tribute to civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis: “He was a man of great personal gentility and modesty, but that did not stop him from being an agitator, disruptor and unstoppable force for...
Service + Solidarity Spotlight: Keeping Kids Safe Never Stops
Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our regular Service + Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of those stories every day. Here's today's story.
Colorado AFL-CIO President Josette Jaramillo (AFSCME) is a lead caseworker for the Department of Social Services in Pueblo County, Colorado. For Jaramillo, work never stopped when COVID-19 hit. The pandemic only makes it harder to protect the foster children she helps. “We really try hard to meet the kids where they’re at,” she said. “Caseworkers all around the country are on the front lines.” Learn more about how foster care children and social services have been affected during these dangerous times.
Kenneth Quinnell
Mon, 07/20/2020 - 09:47
Tags:
COVID-19, Community Service
Service + Solidarity Spotlight: Laborers Step Up to Provide Food Relief to Other Union Members
LIUNA
Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our regular Service + Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of those stories every day. Here's today's story.
Members of Laborers (LIUNA) Local 773 delivered fresh produce and dairy products to their union brothers, sisters and friends in Madison County, Illinois. Local 773 set up shop in the bus lot at two local school districts, where members gave out 200 boxes of produce and 250 boxes of dairy products to union families in need. “Our strength comes from the willingness to stand together as a united front,” Local 773 Business Manager Jerry Womick told the Labor Tribune. “It is this commitment to each other that has allowed us to prosper through good times and preserve through bad.”
Kenneth Quinnell
Thu, 07/16/2020 - 09:47
Tags:
COVID-19, Community Service
Labor Radio–Podcast Weekly: Museum Workers, Mimes, Nurses and More
Labor Radio-Podcast Weekly
The latest episode of the "Labor Radio–Podcast Weekly" features Museum Workers, mimes, nurses and more.
Gabi DiDonna of the United Museum Workers union, on the Belabored podcast: "We really just felt like our voices weren't being heard and worse, sort of actually being told to be quiet.”
WorkWeek Radio talks with playwright and actor Michael Sullivan about the new San Francisco Mime Troupe production "Tales of Resistance": “Normally, we tour all over the world doing shows, but now that’s too difficult. So we decided instead it was like, well, what can we do? And so I was like, well, why don't we do radio plays?”
On The Valley Labor Report, a nurse talks about unionizing her hospital and the process of bargaining the first contract: “We don't need hospital employers to help us ‘poor little nurses,’ help us learn how to vote.”
On The SAG-AFTRA Podcast, actors Michelle Hurd and Jason George continue the discussion of race and media in a time of social transformation and cultural reform: “Back in the day, I didn't see...
Going Above and Beyond for Working People: In the States Roundup
AFL-CIO
It's time once again to take a look at the ways working people are making progress in the states. Click on any of the links to follow the state federations on Twitter.
Alaska State AFL-CIO:
House Committee hearing today in #akleg on worker safety in a pandemic. Thanks to @UNITEHERE_AK member Rashan Perry for his testimony. https://t.co/Xf3Ed1KPB9
— Alaska AFL-CIO (@AKAFLCIO) July 8, 2020
Arizona AFL-CIO:
With early ballots out, we’ll be featuring some of our endorsed candidates that have gone above and beyond for Arizona’s working families! Visit our website for our full endorsement list: https://t.co/5Rq7A9Mc9T
— Arizona AFL-CIO (@ArizonaAFLCIO) July 13, 2020
California Labor Federation:
Across the country, @UAW members are standing up for immigrant student-workers against Trump's xenophobic executive order. We echo our union siblings in their call to reverse the suspension...
Service + Solidarity Spotlight: Railroad Signalmen Remain on the Front Lines Throughout COVID-19 Pandemic
Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our regular Service + Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of those stories every day. Here's today's story.
BRS
Despite the pandemic, members of the Railroad Signalmen (BRS) continue to show up to work each day to ensure the safety of the railroad for trains and the traveling public. BRS President Jerry Boles has provided an update to members on the union’s response to the health crisis. In a recent newsletter from BRS, he called the CARES Act “a step in the right direction,” but said that the federal government must do more to help railroad workers. Boles highlighted the need to fund the Railroad Retirement Board so that it can continue to operate fully. The union, he said, is advocating for parity for all railroad unemployment benefits. “It is my belief that infrastructure is the best way to recover, and BRS will continue to be at the table whenever it is discussed,” Boles said.
...
CBTU Holds ‘Black Lives Matter to Labor’ Event
CBTU
On a hot and drizzly summer morning, dozens of union members and civil rights activists turned out for the Black Lives Matter to Labor event by the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) in Rochester, New York. The rally showcased the unity of the local labor movement as members of the Rochester-Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation and many others gathered as a community to speak out against racial injustice.
Shelly Clements (NYSUT/AFT-NEA), second vice president of the CBTU Rochester chapter, told those in attendance that the removal of Confederate statues and other symbolic changes are not enough. “Protest is vital, but we’ve got to have action,” she said. “It’s time to take the steps to be on the right side of history. It’s time to dismantle the oppression in our workplaces, our health care systems, our housing systems, our environment, our voting laws and our education system.”
Local elected officials and endorsed candidates also spoke at the rally. Among them was Demond Meeks, an organizer for 1199SEIU, who recently won a primary election for the New York State...
