Archives for Hot Topics

September 17 Seventy-five workers die in explosion at Allegheny Arsenal, Pittsburgh, Pa. – 1862 At a New York convention of the National Labor Congress, Susan B. Anthony calls for the formation of a Working Women’s Association. As a delegate to the Congress, she persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. But male delegates deleted the reference to the vote – 1868 One hundred thousand Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners go on strike. Their average annual wage is $250. They are paid by the ton, defined by Pennsylvania as 2,400 pounds,
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If so, please see the message below from CFT President Josh Pechthalt:   Begin forwarded message: From: Joshua Pechthalt <jpechthalt@cft.org> Subject: Help in identifying plaintiffs for student loan lawsuit Date: September 10, 2018 at 11:40:01 AM PDT   Dear AFT member,   Many AFT members are struggling daily to pay off student loan debt and make ends meet. In fact, for many members, student loan debt has reached a crisis point. The AFT has learned that the student loan servicer Navient may be giving AFT members misleading information about eligibility for programs that may reduce their student loan payments or
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Dear AFT Guild Members,   Two years ago our AFT Guild formed a task force to address the issues of racial equity for the safety of our students, members of the community, and law enforcement. The committee has been chaired by Pegah Motaleb, AFT Guild Executive Council Member and Professor of English at Mesa College.   The goal of this committee is to bring together AFT Guild members from all areas within our membership, including those who teach or work in the police and corrections training programs, to help devise potential solutions as to how we can contribute our knowledge and expertise in an effort to bring peace to our communities.   We have had some attrition over the past two years and would like to
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  Dear Colleagues, As part of your Union’s Climate Justice work, your AFT Guild is a co-sponser of the Rise for Climate March this Saturday, September 8th at 10:00 AM at the San Diego Civic Center at 202 C Street.  We invite you to join your fellow AFT members and students as we stand with climate advocates worldwide for this global day of action ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco. We will call for a #FossilFree world and a just and rapid transition to 100% clean energy. We hope to see you there! In Unity, Jim
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September 03 African-American cotton pickers organize and strike in Lee County, Texas, against miserably low wages and other injustices, including a growers’ arrangement with local law enforcement to round up Blacks on vagrancy charges, then force them to work off their fines on select plantations. Over the course of September a White mob put down the strike, killing 15 strikers in the process – 1891 Some 300 musicians working in Chicago movie houses strike to protest their impending replacement by talking movies – 1928 Twenty-five workers die, unable to escape a fire at the Imperial Poultry processing plant in Hamlet,
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Dear SDCCD Faculty Colleagues,   We just wanted to let you all know that we began our negotiations with the District for our new union contract yesterday.  Not much to report as we spent the entire time reviewing our proposal and answering questions the District team had.   We are in the process of confirming more meeting dates for September and October.  We will keep you posted as we proceed through this process.   A copy of our initial proposal that we submitted to the District is posted on our website here.  Our AFT Guild Faculty Negotiating Team Members are:  Mark Linsky,
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August 27 Some 14,000 Chicago teachers who have gone without pay for several months finally collect about $1,400 each – 1934 President Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize all the nation’s railroads to prevent a general strike.  The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later – 1950 August 28 The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—the Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have A Dream” speech march—is held in Washington, D.C., with 250,000 participating.  The AFL-CIO did not endorse the march, but several affiliated unions did – 1963 (Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March
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Dear Jim, $11 billion more for schools and communities As a new year gets underway at schools, colleges, and universities across the state, we have some good news to report. Last week, as part of a broad coalition of 90 different organizations, we turned in over 850,000 signatures to the California Secretary of State to place the California Schools And Local Communities Funding Act on the November 2020 ballot. CFT has consistently been a leader in bringing more resources into our schools for years, spearheading the original millionaires’ tax in 2012 that ultimately became the successful Prop. 30, and taking a leading
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