“We are sick and tired of having elected officials who are bought and paid for,” said Courtney Stewart, Chairman of the Reentry Network for Returning Citizens. “We need real ethics reform that will help ensure we have a City Council that works for the citizens of DC, not big corporations like Walmart.”

The Living Wages Healthy Communities Coalition’s Respect DC Campaign is calling on all current City Council members with a Walmart planned for their ward to disclose their financial ties to both Walmart and the developers who plan to build the stores.

“Unfortunately, because of ‘bundling’ – where developers and others create shell companies for the sole purpose of getting around contribution limits – we don’t know how much money current Council members have received from (developers like) JBG, Foulger-Pratt, A&R, or Walmart,” said DC Jobs with Justice organizer Dyana Forester. “We deserve to know if our officials are in the pocket of Walmart and big developers.”

The Monday action also featured an appearance by “Candidate Walmart,” the spoof GOP presidential candidate in town after a weekend spent at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“The residents of Washington, DC, clearly are better served when I can buy elections,” said Candidate Walmart. “I don’t understand why people think they know better than me. I have the money, I should get to make the rules.”

UPDATE: As of Feb 20, the hearing has been reschedule for Monday Feb 27.

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Local 400 Members from Macy's at Metro Center pose for a picture to show their love for their customers this Valentine's Day. Photo by Karlyn Williams

On Valentine’s Day, Macy’s members across the country showed their love and appreciation for their customers, distributing handbills thanking them for shopping union.

Local 400 members working at Macy’s joined with their sisters and brothers at Locals 1-S, 3, 5, 21, 23,101, 367, and 1445 to participate in this action and send a message to management that the quality service Macy’s workers provide and the strong customer loyalty they build has more than earned them a fair contract in the next round of bargaining.
“Local 400 members—like all UFCW members working at Macy’s—are making the department store giant highly profitable,” said Local 400 President Tom McNutt. “With America emerging from a recession that Macy’s weathered quite well and with the company perfectly positioned for years of strong growth, it’s time for management to share the wealth our members’ hard work generates.”

Members at Bloomingdale's in Chevy Chase, Maryland was made aware by this National Day of action as well. Photo by Leilah Mooney.

Tell Congress: It’s time to pass a clean, yearlong extension of unemployment aid now.

It’s great news that the economy added jobs last month. But for working America, the economy still is in the gutter. We’re climbing out of a deep, deep hole. Unemployment remains sky high, and it’s projected to stay there through the next year and beyond.

But Tea Party politicians are holding America’s jobless hostage to their extremist agenda.

Urge Congress to act now to extend unemployment benefits for a full year—with no strings attached, no barriers to benefits and no brutal humiliation.

We have to force Congress to renew unemployment insurance benefits again—and this time, the stakes are higher than ever before. Tea Party politicians are pushing plans to:

• Slash federal unemployment funding by more than half in the states with the highest unemployment.
• Let states whose governments have been taken over by the Tea Party divert premium money away from unemployment insurance as we know it—and use it to experiment with right-wing social engineering programs (like “workfare,” where people are forced to work for free to get unemployment benefits.)
• Mandate drug-testing requirements. Politicians are ready to humiliate people who are out of work—by making them urinate in a cup to get benefits they paid for and are entitled to.
  
  
• Make jobless workers pay for their re-employment services. People who are out of work through no fault of their own and have paid into the system aren’t asking for a handout—but a helping hand. Now, the radical lawmakers want to make them pay for the privilege.
• Deny benefits to people who never got their high school diploma—they’d have unemployment insurance taken out of their paycheck, but would get nothing should they lose their job. Shame!
• Cut federal employee pensions—or freeze wages for yet another year. Federal workers already have done more than their fair share to balance the budget—while the richest 1% of Americans have been asked to do absolutely nothing.

Outraged? You aren’t alone. Demand Congress extend unemployment insurance for a full year—with no barriers, no strings attached and no brutal humiliation.

“The latest report provides further evidence that President Obama’s leadership is bringing our economy back from the disaster he inherited from George W. Bush, as the private sector is creating new jobs at a strong pace and unemployment dropped for the fifth consecutive month. His bold action to save the auto industry—strongly opposed by Mitt Romney—continues to pay dividends throughout the economy as well, with manufacturing employment on the rise.

“At the same time, the president’s relentless focus on jobs is being undermined by congressional Republicans’ refusal to provide aid to cash-strapped state and local governments. The result is that job losses in the public sector—totaling 14,000 this month—undercut the impressive private sector job growth of 257,000. If it wasn’t for the tea party extremists acting on behalf of the wealthiest one percent, more Americans would be working today and our recovery would be stronger.

“It’s also noteworthy that the BLS reported on Tuesday that wages for Americans with jobs increased by just 1.4 percent last year, while inflation was 3.2 percent, so most workers, on average, are losing ground. In the face of this threat to workers’ economic standing, it is particularly outrageous that Republicans in Indiana passed right-to-work-for-less legislation that will drive down wages further, and that other Republican governors and state legislatures are pushing additional anti-worker bills.

“This really serves to highlight the choice voters face this November—between a president and party successfully fighting to create new jobs and save the middle class, and a nominee and party of, by, and for the one percent.”

That's what we call unnecessary roughness on workers!

As you know, “right-to-work” is not about rights or work. It is, as President Hansen said in the Huffington Post, “the ultimate transfer of wealth from the 99 percent to the 1 percent.”

You can guarantee that special interest groups, big corporations, and anti-worker zealots will try to use their victory in Indiana as leverage to pass “right-to-work” in Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, and in more and more states around the country.

Not on our watch! Click here to join our rapid response program so that together, we can fight back against anti-worker attacks. You can also sign up by using your cell phone to text the letters UFCW to 698329.

Join today to make sure workers across the country are protected!

¡Hemos luchado por más de un año, pero lo logramos! La campaña de 38 empleados de EMD Sales en Baltimore ganó su elección de representación laboral y ratificaron su primer acuerdo de negociación colectiva el 26 de enero de 2012.

“Quiero personalmente darle la bienvenida a nuestros hermanos y hermanas de EMD Sales a la familia de Local 400,” dijo el Presidente de Local 400, Tom McNutt.  “Gracias a su lucha lograron establecer una voz en el lugar de trabajo, han mejorado su posición económica, han ganado un mejor seguro de salud, y un mejor plan de retiro. Además, saben que tiene el respaldo de los 40,000 miembros de la Local 400 y de los 1.3 millones de miembros de la unión UFCW a través de Norte America.”

EMD Sales es una distribuidora internacional localizada en Baltimore, Maryland.  La compañía ofrece más de 2,000 comestibles, productos congelados y refrigerados a Giant, Safeway, Shoppers Food & Pharmacy, y otros establecimientos de comida al detal. Originalmente, el almacén de EMD Sales estaba en Landover, Maryland pero se mudó para Baltimore el año pasado.

“Nuestra meta es expandir la unión a las industrias principales en nuestra juridicción, no solamente de manera horizontal a través de la representación de más trabajadores de supermercados y colmados, pero también verticalmente, a través de la cadena de suministro y abastecimiento,” dijo McNutt.  “Por eso es que la victoria de nuestros nuevos miembros de EMD Sales es una paso importante hacia el aumento de nuestra fuerza en la mesa de negociaciones y a través de los corredores del poder.”