2011 Evening with Labor Winners: Organizing & Golden Picket

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)On Saturday the local labor community will come together for the 35th annual Evening with Labor to celebrate and honor local labor activists. This week Union City will highlight this year's award winners, selected for their outstanding contributions to the metro-area labor movement in 2011. Here are two of this year's winners:

ORGANIZING AWARD: Service Employees International Union 32BJ
SEIU Local 32BJ, which has grown to represent more than 16,000 workers in the metro area, organized over 600 new members in 2011, including security officers at the Smithsonian, and workers at the National Naval Medical Center, Fort Meade, GW Aramark and the FTC Building. Under the dynamic leadership of District Chair and Supervisor Jaime Contreras, Local 32BJ continues to set a blistering pace for organizing commercial, government and residential cleaners, security officers, and education facilities cleaners and maintenance workers.

GOLDEN PICKET SIGN: National Nurses United at Washington Hospital Center

Union nurses in their distinctive red scrubs were a ubiquitous presence at area picket-lines and rallies in 2011. Whether showing their support for Wisconsin workers, demanding a new "Main Street Contract" with America, supporting millions of striking public sector workers in England or staffing a medical tent at Occupy DC, nurses were there, picket signs in hand. In perhaps their most creative action, hundreds of area nurses bussed down to Richmond to stage a sit-in at House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Richmond district office, chanting “Hey hey ho ho, Cantor’s lies have got to go” and singing “This Land is Your Land.” “The only way we’re going to see change in this country is through a grassroots campaign,” said RN Meredith Gade, an NNU member at Washington Hospital Center who helped set up the union’s medical tent at Occupy DC.

- photos: October 12 SEIU 32BJ rally (top) and NNU at Unite Here 25 picketline at the Madison Hotel (below); photos by Chris Garlock