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Bethesda And ZeniMax Union Votes To Authorize A Strike
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Today in Labor History March 31, 1927: Birth of Cesar Chavez. In 1965, Chavez led farm workers in California on their first grape boycott. The nationwide protest lasted five years and ended with the first union contract for U.S. farm workers outside of Hawaii. In 1966, Chavez’s organization officially became the United Farm Workers. Chavez was inspired by the nonviolent civil disobedience of Gandhi. In addition to strikes, boycotts and pickets, he was famous for going on hunger strikes. Later he became infatuated with the religious cult, Synanon. He used Synanon’s “game” to punish union members and enforce conformity. Chavez also supported the brutal Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This alienated Filipino members of the union, as well as many of the religious organizations that had supported the UFW.
Today in Labor History March 31, 1949: The Canadian Seamen's Union launched a strike that would last six months.
Not a Dad Joke (but relevant to this post):
What's stiff and full of seamen?
.... A submarine.
Today in Labor History March 31, 1883: Cowboys in the Texas panhandle began a 2-and-a-half-month strike for higher wages. Investment firms from the East Coast and Europe were taking over the land and cutting benefits that cowboys had accustomed to, like keeping some horses for themselves and holding some of the land for their own small farming. New ranch owners were more interested in expanding holdings and increasing profits, forcing their hands to work entirely for wages, and maintaining all livestock entirely for the profit of the owners.
Media from as far away as Colorado accused the cowboys of being incendiaries, threatening to burn down the ranches, attacking ranchers, and indiscriminately killing cattle.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #cowboy #strike #texas #wages #books #nonfiction #author #writer @bookstadon
Today in Labor History March 29, 1948: Police attacked striking members of the United Financial Employees’ Union and arrested forty-three in the “Battle of Wall Street.” This was the first and only strike in the history of the New York or American Stock Exchanges.
Today in Labor History March 29, 1973: Workers launched a wildcat strike and occupation of Fiat plants at Mirafiori. This came during a wave of Italian student and worker protests going back to the 1960s.
This boils my blood. I don't know the US labour history, but I do know how hard public sector workers in Canada and Alberta had to fight to gain collective bargaining rights, which they were not allowed because they were "civil servants".
All public worker strikes were wildcat strikes and illegal until 1967 when Federal workers gained the right to collective bargaining through the Public Service Staff Relations Act which took 2 years to pass through Parliament after the wildcat Postal Workers Strike of 1965.
Federal government employees responded by joining unions in record numbers.
Public sector workers in Alberta did not gain these rights until 2016, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that ALL Canadian workers have the fundamental right to strike, essential to even the playing field between workers and employers.
That hasn't even been 10 years ago, that our Provincial healthcare workers, education workers, social workers, wildlife workers, custodial workers, and many more have had access to such basic fundamental rights to legal collective job action! You may not have realized that all these strikes you are seeing now are history in the making!
We are living out a struggle for the right of the working-class to SURVIVE.
It breaks my heart to see our fallen comrades losing this fight with such desperation to the south, and makes me fearful of the coming storm we will have to face in Canada as our populist shadow government pushes to put us down in Canada.
Whatever is happening now, I believe that before all of this is over billionaire fucks will be taxed until they are abolished, and EVERYONE will pay 6.2% into social security. in fact, if you make more than $50 million you'll pay 50% into Social Security. Rich people already have a lot. They don't need more. But the rest of us do. The elderly cannot afford their medication. They can't afford a pet. They can't afford housing. All of this will change. Courage is contagious.
#Protest #Strike #USA
Today in Labor History March 28, 1977: AFSCME Local 1644 struck in Atlanta, Georgia, for a pay raise. This local of mostly African American sanitation workers saw labor and civil rights as part of the same struggle. They saw their fight as a continuation of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike. For several years, they organized to get black civil rights leaders elected to public office. They succeeded in getting their man, Maynard Jackson, elected mayor of Atlanta. After all, as vice mayor, Jackson had supported their 1970 strike. Yet, in his first three years as mayor, he refused to give them a single raise. Consequently, their wages dropped below the poverty line for a family of four. Jackson accused AFSCME of attacking Black Power by challenging his authority. He fired over 900 workers by April 1 and crushed the strike by the end of April. Many believe this set the precedent for Reagan’s mass firing of 11,000 air traffic controllers during the PATCO strike, in 1981.
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back, and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.
#SouthKorea: #union members #strike for #impeachment of president. Government declares political strike illegal.
Today In Labor History March 27, 1904: The authorities kicked Mother Jones out of Colorado for “stirring-up” striking coal miners. Earlier in March, the authorities deported 60 striking miners from Colorado. In June, they arrested 22 in Telluride. For nearly 2 years, strikers, led by the Western Federation of Miners, were violently attacked by Pinkerton and Baldwin-Felts detectives. 33 strikers were killed. At least two scholars have said “There is no episode in American labor history in which violence was as systematically used by employers as in the Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904.”
Today In Labor History March 27, 1912: Start of the 8-month Northern railway strike in Canada by the IWW. Over 8,000 construction workers walked off the job at Northern Railway workcamps Wobblies picketed employment offices in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Tacoma and Minneapolis in order to block the hiring of scabs.
Fellow workers pay attention to what I'm going to mention,
For it is the fixed intention of the Workers of the World.
And I hope you'll all be ready, true-hearted, brave and steady,
To gather 'round our standard when the red flag is unfurled.
CHORUS:
Where the Fraser River flows, each fellow worker knows,
They have bullied and oppressed us, but still our union grows.
And we're going to find a way, boys, for shorter hours and better pay, boys
And we're going to win the day, boys, where the river Fraser flows.
For these gunny-sack contractors have all been dirty actors,
And they're not our benefactors, each fellow worker knows.
So we've got to stick together in fine or dirty weather,
And we will show no white feather, where the Fraser river flows.
Now the boss the law is stretching, bulls and pimps he's fetching,
And they are a fine collection, as Jesus only knows.
But why their mothers reared them, and why the devil spared them,
Are questions we can't answer, where the Fraser River flows.
(Lyrics by Joe Hill, 1912, to the tune of “Where the River Shannon Flows.”)
Continued thread
We hope the employer can quickly reconsider its approach. We don’t want to take this action, especially when too many UCU members desperately need our support right now. Be assured we remain committed to finding a resolution which can see us calling off any further action and ending our dispute.
Continued thread
After our employer ended Acas talks last week, supported by Unite officials we tried to secure a last minute agreement to bring them back to the table. This could have led to action being paused. Sadly no written proposal was presented for consideration. Threats to our branch officers remain.
Continued thread
With work-related stress absences & casework levels at alarming levels, widespread dysfunction, and too many staff leaving, unable to continue, we need our employer to realise they must work with and not against us if they are to make UCU a place where we are all proud to work.
We deeply regret our strike action which begins today in our Campaign for A Safe and Professional Workplace. With our dispute now a year old we remain resolute that the toxic bullying culture, racism and victimisation that our members and officers are experiencing must end.
https://uniteucu.wordpress.com
Unite UCUUnite UCUUnite branch (LE127) for employees of the University and College Union
Strike action on April 1!
"We anticipate the strikes will have noticeable impacts to the services provided by campus dining, transit, and health services."
Go get 'em, UC union workers!
https://afscme3299.org/blog/why-are-uc-workers-on-strike-2/
https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/03/april-labor-strikes.html #Labor #Union #Strike
UPTE-CWA 9119UPTE-CWA 9119
Unifor · DHL members’ bulletinDear Members,It has been a disappointing week for Unifor/our bargaining representatives across Canada, the company simply refuses to take negotiations seriously and didn’t adequately prepare to bargain a new contract.Unifor began bargaining with the DHL Express Canada six months ago on Oct. 1, 2024, but to-date, we’re still waiting for a concrete response to address more than half of our demands.Even the presence of a mediator, requested by DHL, was not enough to get the company to bargain.
Today in Labor History March 25, 1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed 146 people, mostly immigrant women and young girls who were working in sweatshop conditions. As tragic as this fire was for poor, working class women, over 100 workers died on the job each day in the U.S. in 1911. What was most significant was that this tragedy became a flash point for worker safety and public awareness of sweatshop conditions.
The Triangle workers had to work from 7:00 am until 8:00 pm, seven days a week. The work was almost non-stop. They got one break per day (30 minutes for lunch). For this they earned only $6.00 per week. In some cases, they had to provide their own needles and thread. Furthermore, the bosses locked the women inside the building to minimize time lost to bathroom breaks.
A year prior to the fire, 20,000 garment workers walked off the job at 500 clothing factories in New York to protest the deplorable working conditions. They demanded a 20% raise, 52-hour work week and overtime pay. Over 70 smaller companies conceded to the union’s demands within the first 48 hours of the strike. However, the bosses at Triangle formed an employers’ association with the owners of the other large factories. Soon after, strike leaders were arrested. Some were fined. Others were sent to labor camps. They also used armed thugs to beat up and intimidate strikers. By the end of the month, almost all of the smaller factories had conceded to the union. By February, 1910, the strike was finally settled.