On Tuesday October, 20 - Tell Congress it’s time to DELIVER!

Today, Oct. 20 is a National Day of Action timed to deliver a big surge of support.  Throughout the state and Nation, activists are taking action in support of health care, and by 9 am we’ve already made the news!  Fox news.  Post-Dispatch.   Your earlier calls to Congress contributed to this historic opportunity.  Now we need you to call and tell Congress It’s Time to DELIVER!

Call your Senators
and Congressperson TODAY. 

Tell them:

IT’S TIME TO DELIVER quality, affordable health care.  And Congress must include a public health insurance option.

Sen. McCaskill, (202) 224-6154  

Sen. Bond, (202) 224-5721

or call toll-free at 1-800-828-0498 

–Look up your US Representative Here:  https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

After you have made your calls, tell us about it by contactng Amy Smoucha amy@mojwj.org

To understand FEDERAL HEALTH CARE REFORM: WHAT’S AT STAKE FOR WORKING PEOPLE click HERE.

Buy your tickets today!

Thursday, November 5, 2009
at 6PM

at IBEW Local 1, 5850 Elizabeth, 63110

Keynote Speaker State Treasurer and Teamster Clint Zweifel

Join St. Louis Jobs with Justice as we celebrate 10 years of key victories for economic justice and workers rights.

Tickets available now! $25 each, Table of 8 for $200. Available online or call 314.644.0466.

Click HERE to view the 10th Anniversary invitation and the list of Host Committee members.

Ticket price includes dinner featuring the Missouri Rural Crisis Center’s Patchwork Family Farms Pork (vegetarian and non-pork meat options also available) and cash bar. 

All attendees will receive a 2010 St. Louis JwJ 10th Anniversary Wall Calendar and an ad book. If you are interested in being included in the ad book please contact Jessica Pace, info@stl-jwj.org.

Can’t join us? Please consider sending a contribution in honor of the work JwJ’s leaders and activists accomplished over the last 10 years.

Donations can be mailed to 2725 Clifton, 63139 or ONLINE 

All 10th Anniversary donors will be recognized in the event’s program.

On Thursday, Oct. 8 We told the American Red Cross "Our blood supply is too important to cut corners!"

Missouri Jobs with Justice Workers’ Rights Board released a national report today that raises concerns about donor safety and the security of the nation’s blood supply at the country’s largest supplier of blood and blood products. Members of the Workers’ Rights Board also hand delivered the reports to the St. Louis Chapter of the American Red Cross.

TAKE ACTION NOW!  You too can tell the American Red Cross "Our blood supply is too important to cut corners!"

The investigative report, which also details the treatment of Red Cross employees and the impact this has on the organization’s work, underscores the need for a new round of reforms at the troubled organization.

“Few national institutions have a prouder name or a more storied history than the American Red Cross,” writes Philip Dine, an award-winning labor reporter and the author of the report. “But many frontline blood workers see the Red Cross as an employer that is increasingly determined to cut expenses and increase revenues, even to the potential detriment of donor safety, employee wellbeing and the security of the nation’s blood supply.”

Speakers at the event include State Representative, the Reverend James Morris, Missouri House District 58, Red Cross Workers James Plotts and Mary McDougall, and Joan Suarez, Missouri Jobs with Justice Workers’ Rights Board Chair.

Read the full report here.

 On Tues., Oct. 6, We told Big Insurance 
"It’s A Crime to Deny Healthcare"

Jobs with Justice joined Health Care for America Now (HCAN), GRO - Grass Roots Organizing, ACORN, and Missouri ProVote outside of the offices of Wellpoint Anthem in downtown St. Louis to expose the abuses of big insurance companies.

Activist staged a crime scene representing the 10 Missourians who die each week because they don’t have health insurance.

To understand FEDERAL HEALTH CARE REFORM: WHAT’S AT STAKE FOR WORKING PEOPLE click HERE.

For more information about health reform myths and facts, check out Missouri Health Care for All HERE.

The Missouri delegation includes: Jerry King, St. Louis Workers Rights Board and real estate developer; Christine Grande, Human Rights Office of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph; Rhonda Perry, a family farmer from Howard County and the Missouri Rural Crisis Center as well as JwJ State Board member; and Linda Meyer, former reporter of the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. Meyer was part of leading a union organizing campaign at the Suburban Journals that illustrates perfectly the need for the Employee Free Choice Act.

"Working people should have power to establish equal footing in their place of employment, in order to pursue a better quality of life, liberty, and happiness," says Reverend Walter Maddox, Lane Tabernacle CME Church who visited earlier this year with Congressmen William "Lacy" Clay about supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. "If we do not fight for working families, we will lose that part of the American Dream."

On Monday, September 7 Jobs with Justice Leaders and Staff  participated in the annual St. Louis Labor Day Parade in downtown St. Louis. JwJ’s top priority for this year’s celebration was to help raise the visibility of health care as a key issue for working people. Leaders and Staff worked hard canvassing the crowd and providing signs for other parade participants.

CLICK HERE to find out how our visibility work helped the Labor Day coverage include a critical policy issue of the day .

Jobs with Justice also sends a great THANKS TO OUR SISTERS AND BROTHERS IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT for their hard work organizing the parade and being welcoming to allies like JwJ as part of their festivities.

Each Labor Day weekend, in cities across the country, thousands of congregations participate in Labor in the Pulpits / on the Bimah / in the Minbar.  The goals of Labor in the Pulpits are to educate congregations about connections between faith and work, inspire new friendships between people in religious communities and unions, present congregations with opportunities for acting on the social teachings of their faith groups, and give union members a deeper experience of their faith in action.

The 2009 Labor in the Pulpits/ on the Bimah/ in the Minbar program concentrates on how the realities of the health care system are impacting millions of working families. Access to quality health care is a fundamental moral value, yet 47 million people in the United States, nearly 750,00 of them Missourians, lack health coverage. 

For more information and to see a list of participating congregations CLICK HERE.

Throughout Missouri, grassroots community, faith and labor leaders have come together to form a powerful statewide Missouri Jobs with Justice organization.   This joins the 9-year old St. Louis Jobs with Justice coalition with an energized new Kansas City Jobs with Justice coalition and links both with leaders from throughout Missouri in a statewide steering committee.

This new statewide organization is hiring a new organizer for its Kansas City JwJ Coalition.

Click here to download a fuller description and directions on how to apply.  All applications should include resume, cover letter, writing sample and at least two job references.

Throughout this search process we are fortunate to have a talented interim KC JwJ Organizer on board in JENNIFER GORMLEY. She can be reached at 816.805.2385 and jennifer@kcjwj.org.  

On Sunday, August 9 workers from the Lumiere and President Casinos had reason to stand tall as they learned the National Labor Relations board handed down a scathing ruling against their employer, Pinnacle Entertainment.  The rulings call on Pinnacle to finally begin bargaining with the workers’ union, Workers United Local 74.  The workers and their union had an “all star” cast of support on hand, including actor Danny Glover (pictured here).  Also on hand were members of the St. Louis Workers Rights board, elected officials and area union leaders from throughout the labor movement.

On Wednesday, July 29 We told Gov. Nixon "Don’t Cut Jobs and Services!"

100 community members, social workers, and the citizens they serve rallied with CWA 6355 and Jobs with Justice to protest proposals to cut over 25 Million dollars from the current year’s budget of the Department of Social Services and Health and Senior Services.

These cuts would be devastating; it would men further job loses on our struggling economy, as well as drastic cuts to the programs that help Missouri’s citizens in hard times like these.

Find out more about this rally and the proposed cuts HERE and HERE.

Sign the online petition opposing the proposed budget cuts to vital public services and jobs.