Student-Labor Week of Action Kicks Off Tonight

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Metro Council President Jos Williams and AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff will join students and labor activists for a rally tonight at 5:15P to kick-off the DC Student-Labor Week of Action. A picket outside the K St NW Burger King to support Florida farmworkers will follow the rally. "Farm workers who pick tomatoes for the fast-food industry are among this country's most exploited workers," says the AFL-CIO Working Families E-Activist Network. "They sometimes are held against their will, beaten and forced to work for little or no pay." Burger King has rejected working with the workers and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers - which represents the workers - to improve working conditions, going so far as to threaten "to impose a $100,000 fine on any grower who participates" in previous agreements workers have made with McDonald's and Taco Bell (Click here to sign a petition in support of farmworkers). The DC Week of Action - part of the National Student-Labor Week of Action that celebrate the lives and work of Cesar Chavez and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - continues Wednesday with a demonstration against Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and concludes next Wednesday, April 9 with a rally to support Montgomery College adjunct professors' organizing efforts. For more info on the Week of Action, email dcslapintern@yahoo.com