Jobs with Justice Solidarity Calendar – March-May 2012
The idea is to list all the information that is shared at our monthly Steering Committee—now it’s all here in one place, for folks to use in their union newsletters, church bulletins, email lists, or just to stick up on the fridge. (Apologies in advance for any accidental omissions; please check with event organizers to confirm any details, or call JwJ 503-236-5573.) For more information or to make an online donation please visit http://www.jwjpdx.org
Also, follow us on twitter and facebook if you’re into that kind of thing!
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JwJpdx,
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Portland-Jobs-with-Justice/134450800882
Upcoming Actions:
 |
Jobs with Justice Solidarity Calendar –
Staff Transition:
After 16 years as lead staff person, Margaret Butler will transition
out of the role of Portland JwJ Executive Director over the next 9 to 12
months. We will hire a new ED. Click here for the job description.
Announcement: we are in need of a secretary for our monthly Steering Committee meetings – please let us know if you are interested.
Also, follow us on twitter and facebook if you’re into that kind of thing!
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JwJpdx,
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Portland-Jobs-with-Justice/134450800882
Full Mobilization: April 17 Tax Day of Action
Tax Dodgerball - 12 Noon, Terry Schrunk Plaza, SW 3rd and Jefferson, Exhibition Dodgeball teams: The 1% vs Janitors, homeowners, teachers, medicare recipients.
Budget Crisis Bake Sale - 4pm, City Hall, 1221 SW 4th Avenue, Press conference & rally to save services. Then ride the MAX for free to:
Save America's Postal Service - Informational Picket & Rally 5:30pm, Portland Main Post Office, SW Hoyt @ Broadway, No taxes are needed to stop the closures, save Saturday delivery and prevent mail delays.
Other Upcoming Actions:
Mon, April 9, 9am – 12pm, Rally in Salem to oppose coal export to Asia through Ore, Department
of State Lands, 775 Summer St. N.E. Suite 100, Salem, Oregon, followed
by attending the State Land Board meeting, sending a message to Governor
Kitzhaber we want him to say "NO" to Big Coal!
Thursday, April 19, 11:15am, Support Vancouver Hilton Workers City Hall, 415 West 6th Street, Vancouver, WAThe
Vancouver Hilton is owned by the City's Downtown Redevelopment
Authority. Come to this meeting of the Authority, where Unite Here! will
present the upheld complaints to the National Labor Relations Board and
the recommendations of the Workers Rights Board.
Saturday, April 28, 10am Unite Against The War On Women, The Steps of the Capitol, Salem,
Together, throughout Oregon, across the United States, and around the
World, Sisters and Brothers alike will raise our collective voice in
Solidarity and Strength to combat the oppressive, anti-woman,
anti-equality political rhetoric that has taken hold of our nation.
Tues. May 1, 3:30pm Rally, 4:30pm March, May Day - International Workers Day,South Park Blocks, SW Park and Salmon
Upcoming JwJ Committee Meetings:
Monday, April 2, 5:30pm, Monthly JwJ Steering Committee 6025 E. Burnside
Wednesday, April 11, 5:30pm, Economic Crisis Committee 6025 E Burnside
Monday, April 16, 5:30pm Executive Committee 6025 E. Burnside
Monday, April 23, 6 pm, Health Care Committee 6025 E Burnside
Wednesday, April 25, 12pm, Faith-Labor Committee 6025 E. Burnside
Wednesday, April 25, 6pm, Global Justice Committee 6025 E. Burnside
Thursday, April 26, 6pm, Immigrant Rights Committee 6025 E. Burnside
Other Events:
Friday, April 13, 7pm Insecure Communities: A Community Forum on Ending Unjust Deportation
First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 13th Ave, An inspiring evening
discussing the issues and solutions, and how you can get involved.
Sat. Apr. 14, 7pm – Inner City Blues Festival – to benefit Health Care for All Oregon, Melody Ballroom, 615 SE Alder
Sunday, April 15, 10am, 99% Spring Training for Labor & Community,
345 NE 8th Ave, Join thousands of others across the country in a
training designed to more deeply understand the economic crisis we are
in and prepare to engage to take creative, peaceful direct action for
economic justice.
Sunday, April 15- Sunday April 22 Most evenings, 6-9pm .JWJ Phone Bank – Annual reach out to pledgers. 30-40 people needed, dinner provided. Email chris@jwjpdx.org to volunteer!
Tuesday, April 24, 7pm, Democratizing The Grid - Clean Energy From The 99% First Unitarian Church, 1200 SW Salmon, Oregonians For Renewable Energy Policy and its partners present Paul Gipe.
Wednesday, April 25, 9am Occunomics Global Teach In First Unitarian Church, 1211 SW Main
Sat. May 5, 1pm-5pm Community Assembly for a People’s Budget (Portland), First Unitarian Church, SW 12th @ Yamhill
Sat. May 12, 6pm, Teamsters Hall, 1850 NE 162nd, Portland Jobs With Justice Annual Dinner Celebrating our 21st year. | | | | |
|
Upcoming Actions:
-The struggle continues, We need folks to leaflet Verizon stores Downtown, Mall 205 and Gresham on Wednesday and Saturdays!!!. 45,000
Verizon workers are fighting for a fair contract and to preserve the
middle class and the American Dream in the Northeast. If wealthy
corporations like Verizon continue to outsource jobs and hold down
worker wages, there is no hope for an economic recovery. This is why our
fight is your fight and why your support is so important. Join us as we support workers by leafleting at Verizon Wireless stores to get our message out, please sign up for a two hour shift by calling JWJ at 503-236-5573 or email Mary at marywinzig@hotmail.com Stand with Workers, Not Rich CEOs.
Hope to see you in one or many of these important actions.
Tell Congress: Tax Wall Street to heal Main Street, and put America back to work.
Our communities are devastated by
foreclosures and unemployment. Corporate-funded politicians are
gutting services and attacking worker rights, claiming our state and
national governments are broke – while Wall Street and corporate CEOs
are getting record bonuses and sitting on record cash reserves (and
often paying little or nothing in taxes). Despite
massive fraud and reckless greed that wrecked our economy, throwing
millions of Americans out of work and out of their homes, not a single
Wall Street "bankster" has gone to jail.
The fight back is growing!
National Nurses United (NNU) led a National Day of Action
in more than 60 cities, supported by Jobs with Justice coalitions and
other allies, demanding a Financial Speculation Tax (FST) which could
pay for millions of good jobs, making Wall Street speculators pay for
some of the damage they caused and restraining some of the more
dangerous speculative trading. One part of breaking the grip of Wall
Street, an FST is supported by many organizations, including the
AFL-CIO. NNU actions urged members of Congress to support a robust FST that would generate at least $350 Billion per year.
TAKE ACTION NOW!
In August, thousands of Hyatt hotel workers in four cities nationwide--Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu—went on strike.
They
are on strike not only to win a fair contract at their own hotels, but
to take a stand against Hyatt's abuse of hotel workers in cities across
the country.
Hyatt
has abused its housekeepers, replacing career housekeepers with minimum
wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on those
housekeepers who remain. Take for example Boston, where Hyatt fired its entire housekeeping staff
at three non-union hotels, replacing women who had worked at Hyatt for
decades with temporary workers earning minimum wage. Hyatt even turned heat lamps on striking workers in Chicago during a brutal heat wave this July.
The people who clean, staff and help make Hyatt Hotels successful are simply seeking protections on the job.
We heard from Hyatt worker Cathy Youngblood
at the JwJ National Conference in August. Today she and her coworkers
are on strike not just for a fair contract at their hotels, but for the
right to stand up to Hyatt wherever they are abusing housekeepers.
Cathy says:
I believe in hard work,
but living in pain is a different story. I have to take medication
regularly because my wrists and shoulders hurt from having to lift
100-pound mattresses over and over again every day as I change the
bedding. Other Hyatt housekeepers have been permanently injured by the
grueling work we do.
Not
far from my hotel in West Hollywood, at the Hyatt in Long Beach,
California, workers have no union. Conditions there are even worse. My
sisters are required to clean twice as many rooms in one eight-hour
shift, leaving them just 15 minutes for each room. That's 15 minutes to
change bedding, scrub the bathroom, dust, vacuum, empty the trash, and
change linens, among other things. It's no surprise that women are
getting hurt.
TAKE ACTION NOW TO SUPPORT HYATT HOUSEKEEPERS!
|
http://www.theportlandalliance.org/jwjupdates

|
JUSTICE @ VERIZON
Justice @ Verizon —Your Support Needed
CWA
and IBEW returned to the bargaining table with Verizon on August 31.
This “reset”of the company’s bargaining position was made possible by
the tremendous strike and mobilization efforts of union members and
allies like you across the country. Jobs with Justice coalitions,union
members,and allies continue to leaflet at Verizon stores across the country to let Verizon know that we won’t let them get away with gutting good jobs —especially on the heels of news that Verizon pays their CEO more than they pay in U.S. taxes!
But this fight is far from over. Verizon workers need OUR SUPPORT to keep the pressure on! How you can help:
- LEAFLET:
There is a new leaflet available for download &distribution at your
local Verizon Wireless store. Download a new flyer and organize a group
to leaflet. We are particularly focusing our efforts on Wireless
Wednesdays from 12-2pm and 5-7pm and Saturdays.
- ADOPT A STORE:
Can you commit to coordinating activities at a store near you? Can you
commit,at a minimum,to activities on Wireless Wednesdays from 12-2pm and
5-7pm and/or Saturdays? Adopt a Store!
- FIND A LEAFLETING ACTION NEAR YOU: Find stores that are already “adopted”and join planned activities.
- REPORT YOUR ACTIVITIES: Please use the form on the JwJ website to report on your activities.
For background on the situation at Verizon, see Stop Verizon Greed! 45,000 on Strike
Thank you for all you have done and all that you will continue to do!
JUSTICE AT HERSHEY’S
Student Guestworkers Sit-In at Hershey Factory –Your help needed!
On August 17, over 300 students from across the globe walked out
of the Hershey’s packaging plant in protest. The students paid
$3,000-$6,000 each to come to the U.S. this summer for what they thought
would be a cultural exchange program through the State Department’s J-1
visa. Instead,they found themselves packing chocolates at the Hershey’s
plant in deeply exploitative conditions. After automatic weekly
deductions for rent in company housing and other expenses,they net
between $40 and $140 per week for 40 hours of work. The workers talked about their struggle and asked for our support at the JwJ national conference. TAKE ACTION NOW!
JOBS WITH JUSTICE CONFERENCE
JwJ Conference: Building a Transformative Vision to Expand Workers’Rights
From
August 5-7,2011, Jobs with Justice held our National Conference in
Washington,DC. The Conference,which was attended by nearly 700 activists
from across the country, re-energized and recommitted workers’ rights
activists and advocates to working together in solidarity to address the
rights of workers everywhere and to collectively engage in strategy
discussions around the economy, corporate accountability, and
strengthening grassroots organizing base around a variety of issues.
Most importantly the event allowed Jobs with Justice,our
network,partners,and supporters to reflect on two critical questions:how
do we protect and expand the right to organize and collectively bargain
in this critical moment in our labor movement;and what is the role of
Jobs with Justice in mobilizing the network, its allies, partners, and everyday workers around workers justice issues during this period. Read more...
CARING ACROSS GENERATIONS
The Care We Imagine
On July 12th,over 700 participants gathered to launch the Caring Across Generations
campaign at the inaugural Care Congress in Washington,DC. The Caring
Across Generations (CARE) campaign calls us to transform the direct care
industry by providing the space to re-imagine care. Grounded in the ”Five Fingers of the Caring Hand”
the members of the CARE Campaign believe that the fight for job
creation, job quality, training and career pathways, comprehensive
immigration reform and support for individuals and families is central
to creating an industry where care-givers and care-receivers are
mutually respected. Read more...
MORE NEWS & UPDATES
| | |