On Wednesday, November 18, about 2,000 airport workers at seven hubs went on strike to over bad wages and threats against unionizing. Among them were plane cleaners and baggage handlers at New York’s Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, as well as Newark Liberty, Chicago O’Hare, Boston, Philadelphia, and Fort Lauderdale. The strikes, part of a growing national campaign for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, were expected to last through Thursday.

The Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD), would expose senior executives who receive “golden parachutes” as incentives to leave Wall Street to go into government service. Executive compensation plans should be designed to retain talent, not encourage resignations. Why should shareholders subsidize the second career choice of executives, and more importantly, what are the motivations of these companies?

“Only in the Wonderland of Wall Street logic could one argue that this looks like anything other than a bribe. Once upon a time, part of the nobility of joining public service was the willingness to make the financial sacrifice. We want people entering public service because they want to serve the public. Frankly, if they need a [golden parachute], I’d rather them stay away,” said Sheila Blair, former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp in a Fortune article.

The AFM announced that New Line Productions, Inc. (New Line Cinema) has signed onto the AFM’s Basic Theatrical Motion Picture Agreement. This agreement sets wages, working conditions, healthcare, and pension contributions for musicians working in film recording, sidelining, and music preparation. The agreement requires theatrical motion pictures produced by New Line Cinema in the US or Canada to be scored in the US or Canada—a positive step in the Federation’s campaign to prevent the offshoring of sound recording work in the film industry. The addition of New Line Cinema as a signatory to the AFM’s Film Agreement will result in additional session work, health, and pension benefits and residual payments for musicians employed in the scoring of motion picture soundtracks.

Remembering the Greatest Labor Songwriter the Nation Has Ever Known

On November 19, musicians, activists, and civic leaders in Utah will join together to commemorate the life, death, and music of Joe Hill. “He’s the most famous labor martyr in American history, and he happens to be a musician,” says John McCutcheon, a member of Locals 1000 (Nongeographic) and 148-462 (Atlanta, GA).

McCutcheon plays the role of Joe Hill in the one-man play Joe Hill’s Last Will. Before a November 19 performance at The Stateroom in Salt Lake City there will be a discussion panel featuring McCutcheon, Joe Hill’s Last Will playwright and Local 1000 member Si Kahn, historian John Sillito, and William Adler, author of a Joe Hill biography.

The play is set in a 1915 Utah State Prison cell where Hill awaits his execution. A reporter has been sent to get Hill’s last words. In the role of Hill, McCutcheon recounts Hill’s life story through his songs.
Hill was born Joel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden. As a child, he worked in a rope factory following the death of his father. He immigrated to the US around the turn of the century and adopted the name Hill after being blacklisted for trying to start a union in Chicago. He became a songwriter for the Industrial Workers of the World (aka IWW or Wobblies), penning songs like “The Preacher and the Slave,” “Casey Jones—the Union Scab,” “Mr. Block,” “Workers of the World Awaken,” and “There is Power in a Union.”

“There were a lot of people writing songs,” McCutcheon explains. “They had The Little Red Songbook, which was designed small enough to fit in a worker’s pocket. When it was time for music, they all sang the songs, which were written to the music of popular songs. Joe Hill laid the blueprint for that.”

When Hill arrived in Utah with his friend Otto Appelquist in the fall of 1913, Salt Lake City was not welcoming due to a recent riot involving IWW members. “It was an important time in American history,” says McCutcheon. “There were anti-immigrant purges; it was the robber baron days.”

On the evening January 10, 1914, Hill sought medical treatment for a gunshot wound. He told the doctor that he had been shot “by a friend in a quarrel over a woman,” but refused to elaborate. On the same evening, a Salt Lake City grocer named John G. Morrison and his teenage son, Arling, were shot and killed by two masked men. Police thought Arling might have shot one of the intruders.

The doctor who had treated Hill reported his injury to the police, and Hill was arrested for the grocer’s murder four days later. Though no motive was given and there were no reliable witnesses, Hill was found guilty of first-degree murder based on only circumstantial evidence.

At his sentencing, Hill chose to die by firing squad. Appeals to the Utah Supreme Court and Utah Governor William Spry, as well as an IWW letter-writing campaign, failed to overturn the conviction. A prolific writer, Hill continued writing articles and songs during his imprisonment. The 36-year-old was executed November 19, 1915.

Hill’s last will was written in the form of a poem: “My last will is easy to decide; For there is nothing to divide; My kin don’t need to fuss and moan; ‘Moss does not cling to a rolling stone’; My body? Oh—If I could choose; I would to ashes it reduce; And let the merry breezes blow; My dust to where some flowers grow. Perhaps some fading flower then; Would come to life and bloom again. This is my last and final will; Good luck to all of you—Joe Hill.”

His final request was that he not be “found dead in Utah.” Hill was cremated and his ashes were sent to union halls to be scattered in every state except Utah.

“He’s inspired so many people,” says McCutcheon. “This was just an ordinary guy. What was extraordinary was that English was not his first language and yet his command of the language, his cleverness with it, was just breathtaking.”

McCutcheon hopes that people who see the play will think about how these events of 100 years ago still resonate today. “We have a situation today where worker rights are being taken away right and left. We have a huge immigrant work force that they are clamping down on and discriminating against. We still struggle with the death penalty and war on a global scale,” he says.

“I would love for people to think that music is instrumental, rather than just merely ornamental. The Wobblies got that and used it to great effect; the civil rights movement used it. We haven’t been very good about using it in modern social movements,” he continues. “Hopefully, there are some young Joe Hills out there that will pick up this gauntlet and say, ‘We want music to be useful, not only to be a means of profit, and we want it to reflect what people are thinking about and caring about.’ Nobody did that better than Joe Hill, and he’s been showing us how to do it for 100 years.”

Napster has reared its head again, but only in Canada, where it is now a subscription-based streaming service offering a catalogue of 35 million songs for a monthly fee of $9.99 CAN.

Even though a Department of Labor rule extending overtime and minimum wage protections to US home health care workers took effect on October 13, California home health care workers won’t see the benefit until February 2016. That’s when the California Department of Social Services says it will begin paying overtime to the more than 400,000 home care workers in the state. SEIU California President Laphonza Butler expressed her frustration with that decision, saying she believes caregivers deserve overtime pay for work currently being performed. Aside from Fight for $15, the union announced a new proposed ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2020 and ensure every full-time employee has at least six paid sick days per year.