Latest News & Updates

Hey Larry,: If every reader signed up just one friend or colleague, we'd have almost 10,000 folks getting the LHF newsletter and that's the kind of labor arts solidarity we're trying hard to build here! So I hope you enjoy this week's newsletter and if you do, please take a moment to forward it. You can also sign up folks here. Thank you!

Chris

Museum workers win in LA & Brooklyn!

Brooklyn Museum Workers Ratify First Union Contract

BROOKLYN -- Workers at the Brooklyn Museum, members of International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) Local 2110, voted overwhelmingly to ratify their first contract on Tuesday, one day before the union was set to strike. The new three-and-a-half-year contract boosts pay by more than 23% over the life of the contract, raises minimum pay, guarantees annual pay increases, reduces the employee’s share of health premium costs, expands eligibility for health care benefits to part-time staff and establishes an annual $50,000 set aside for professional development. “We’re thrilled to have finally reached this agreement with the Museum,” said Elizabeth St. George, an assistant curator of decorative arts. “I will now have the opportunity to do the work I love at a Museum I love in a workplace with union rights.”

AFL-CIO Daily Brief

First contract for Academy Museum workers contains much-needed pay hikes, other gains

LOS ANGELES – Workers at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures are getting much-needed pay hikes and other gains in the first contract they negotiated with management through their newly formed union. Academy Museum Workers United (AMWU) (AFSCME Local 126) is affiliated with Council 36. AMWU took root last year after management voluntarily recognized the union. “We all came together to make this happen, and I'm proud to have represented my co-workers in this historic win,” said Cheryl Jones, a visitor experience associate at the Academy Museum.

Read more here. photo courtesy AFSCME Council 36

READERS WRITE

“I’m looking for a short labor history book(159-250pp) starting from 1619 and extending to the US labor movement today. This would be used in an undergraduate labor history course. Any and many suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Solidarity to all.” - Greg Giebel

Send your suggestions to [email protected]

THIS WEEK’S LABOR HERITAGE POWER HOUR

On this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour radio show, Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art walks us through the BMA’s brand-new exhibit, Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA, which explores the importance of women artists many of whom are unknown today, yet who captured the human faces of industrial and domestic labor and its inherent racial, gendered, and class inequities while they used their art to support important reforms led by the era’s growing communist and socialist movements.

PLUS: Singer-songwriter Si Kahn finds poetry in the many names for the third shift, that overnight work period that is the bane of existence for so many.

photo: Labor Heritage Power Hour host Chris Garlock interviews BMA's Virginia Anderson; photo by Lisa Raye Garlock

PICKET SIGN of the Week

Labor VIDEO of the Week

Anna Kendrick - Cups (Pitch Perfect’s “When I’m Gone”)

In honor of the Starbucks workers who participated in the November 16 #RedCupRebellion

Got labor video? Email us at [email protected]

https://youtu.be/zwkMKVu7dxo?si=NbeZvqUVZRHYLd33

Labor SONG of the Week

8 Hours - R.J. Phillips Band

CLICK HERE to listen. “To celebrate the lives of Joe Hill, Mother Jones and Bill Haywood, as well as the struggles of labor’s rank and file, we are proud to present our latest recording, ‘8 Hours,’ says Joe DeFilippo. “Let us never forget the struggles and ideals of those who came before us.” The release of the song was intended to coincide with birth (Oct. 7) and death (Nov. 19) of Joe Hill.

Got a labor song? Email us at [email protected]

Labor ART of the Week

Making Work Visible—A Labor Arts Contest

This contest is about work and workers. Written entries (poems and essays) need to include a link to an illustration (there are many choices). Keep in mind that paid work and labor unions are only part of the story—entries about unpaid work, immigration, family, and community are also encouraged.

When? Deadline is December 4, 2023

Who? Open to CUNY undergraduates.

Got labor art? Email us at [email protected]

Labor POEM of the Week

Worker XL-1T-05R

Like the cans and bottles, bags and boxes

in this huge warehouse, I bear a number

instantly traceable, always answerable

to the role assigned me. Icy, digital orders

from afar determine my purpose and actions:

lift, carry, pack, return, lift carry, pack.

My job is chained to my body, and only

in dreams do I sense my true worth.

- Darrell Petska; click here for the rest of his poem at the Blue Collar Review.

Got a labor poem? Email us at [email protected]

Labor QUOTE of the Week

“When we fight we win. Congratulations @sagaftra, and take inspiration fellow union members all over. No one is going to hand it to us. No politician or CEO. We have to fight for it sadly.”

Mark Ruffalo, actor

Got a labor quote? Email us at [email protected]

LHF's comprehensive listing of labor's cultural events: music, films, theater, books, history and more...

Click here to add your labor arts event!

Book: Art Works

Wed, November 22, 5:30pm – 6:30pm

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Rue Sherbrooke O, Montréal, QC H3G 1J5, Canada

Art Works: How organizers and artists are creating a better world together by Ken Grossinger; An inside look at the organizers and artists on the front lines of political mobilization and social change. In conversation with Museum Director Stéphane Aquin.

EXHIBIT: Memory in Cloth - Safety and Solidarity for New York City Garment Workers

Thru Nov 17, 2023

Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square S, New York, NY 10012, USA (map)

EXHIBIT: Collective Ribbon: The Interwoven Voices of the Triangle Fire Memorial

Weekdays thru Dec 16, 10am – 6pm

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, New York University, 24 West 12th Street, NYC (map)

EXHIBIT: "We Are One: Honoring Immigrant Garment Workers"

Weekdays (thru Dec 1), 11am – 4pm

The Puffin Gallery 20 Puffin Way Teaneck, NJ 07666 (map)

LABOR HISTORY TODAY

Check out this week's Labor History Today podcast, Under the Iron Heel: Repressing the IWW and free speech.

A county judge in Punxutawney, Pa. grants an injunction requested by the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Co. forbidding strikers from speaking to strikebreakers, posting signs declaring a strike is in progress, or even singing hymns.

November 16, 1927

LABOR HISTORY QUIZ OF THE WEEK

Which of these quotes is NOT by Joe Hill?

“Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize.”

“Labor history is littered with defeats that sowed the seeds of victory for workers.”

“All the world is made of music. We are all strings on a lyre. We resonate. We sing together.”

LAST WEEK'S QUIZ: The National Federation of Telephone Workers (later CWA) was founded in New Orleans on Nov. 14, 1938.

"The worker must have bread,

but she must have roses, too."

Please CLICK HERE NOW to pledge your financial support to our 2023 program, which this year includes our annual Solidarity Forever Award, the Great Labor Arts Exchange, the DC Labor FilmFest and much more (check out our website for details!).

Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

RECENT NEWSLETTERS

New monument honors union victims of Centralia tragedy

Exit singing: Elise Bryant retires from LHF

Elise Bryant shows why she’s “Queen of the Night”

“TRIANGLE: Scenes from a Prosecution”

Triangle Fire Dedication Ceremony streams live today (10/11)

Leadville Irish Miners’ Memorial to be unveiled Saturday (9/13)

Springfield (OR) Labor Mural dedication (9/8)

The ’63 March, 60 years later

Solidarity and song at the UALE/LHF Southern Women’s School (8/10)

Labor Heritage Power Hour: We Will Never Stop (8/4)