Remembering 9/11: A Community Responds
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)by Kathleen
McKirchy
The awful events and aftermath of
9/11 – 10 years ago this Sunday -- presented
the Metro Washington Council’s Community
Services Agency with many challenges. First was
the unprecedented number of local workers who
lost jobs -- temporarily or permanently -- in
hospitality, transportation, and at the
airports. National Airport was closed
completely for five months, devastating the
lives of taxi drivers, machinists, airport
customer service workers, hotel and restaurant
workers (including many members of Unite Here
Local 25) and many more. Remember when we used
to get fed on airplanes? That stopped after
9/11 and 92 Gate Gourmet workers at Dulles
Airport -- members of Teamsters Local 639 --
lost their jobs completely.
Literally overnight, thousands of workers
needed short-term financial assistance,
longer-term extended unemployment compensation,
and some needed re-training because their jobs
had disappeared. CSA usually handles about 300
or so such requests each year: in the four
months after 9/11 we received over 2,000
requests for help, so our second challenge was
to ramp up our client capacity and to raise
lots of money fast to help workers pay for
shelter, food and other essentials. We trained
local union staff to be intake counselors to
assess worker’s needs and collect copies of
past due bills. We utilized lots of
volunteers -- some from the AFL-CIO Solidarity
Center, for example, who spoke the many
languages the workers spoke -- making our job,
and the workers’ experience with us, so much
easier and better. And we expanded our capacity
by obtaining grants and contracts to help
workers get retrained and
re-employed.
One of the things that kept us going was the
solidarity among the local unions directly
impacted, the support of the rest of the labor
movement, and the generosity of people all over
the world who sent in contributions ranging
from a single dollar bill from a retiree in
Pennsylvania to a $32,000 check which
represented worker contributions and
management’s match from Electric Boat in
Groton, Connecticut. In all, over $1
million came in over a few months, helping keep
Washington area workers and their unions going
through this incredibly trying time.
That day and the months thereafter were surely
the best of times and the worst of times. As we
said at the time in a thank-you letter to
Electric Boat’s workers and management,
“the heroism, caring and generosity of the
American people demonstrated in thousands of
ways since September 11 has already far
outweighed the evil done that day.”
- McKirchy has been Executive Director
of the Metro Council’s Community Services
Agency since 1991; this is the first in a
series about the local impact of the 9/11
attacks on the metro DC labor community. We
welcome your memories and comments at
streetheat@dclaborarchives.org