This report originally appeared on the Metropolitan Washington [D.C.] Council, AFL-CIO's Union City newsletter. 

Dozens of area federal workers carrying bag lunches staged an "eat-in" yesterday to demonstrate the financial impact of sequestration on workers and on the businesses they patronize. 

The first-ever Global Labor Film Festival (GLFF) kicks off on May Day, as festivals in the United States, Australia, England, Israel, Norway and Turkey host more than a dozen screenings of labor films. 

Chris Garlock, communications director of the Metropolitan Washington [D.C.] Council, AFL-CIO, and managing editor of Union City, sends us this.

If The Wall Street Journal is complaining about it, "The Newsroom" must be doing something right for working people.

“For the second week in a row, Charles and David Koch were strafed by HBO’s show ‘The Newsroom,’ the one-hour drama about a fictional cable TV news show and its volatile anchorman,” huffed The Wall Street Journal yesterday in “HBO’s ‘Newsroom’ Takes Aim at Koch Brothers.”

Chris Garlock is the coordinator of Union Cities Program of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO.

UFCW Local 400 is urging area activists to call Shoppers Food Warehouse – 1-855-746-7737 – to demand that management stop retaliating against workers.

It was Safeway worker Vivian Sigouin’s day off, but at noon on Tuesday she was walking through the Piney Branch Safeway in northwest Washington, D.C.,  passing out union buttons and lanyards to her fellow Safeway workers.

Sigouin and other Safeway workers leafleted at three pop-up storefront hiring halls set up next to company stores to recruit and train “replacement workers” or "scabs" to staff the supermarkets if the workers strike when their contract, which covers some 25,000 metro-Washington area Giant and Safeway workers, expires at the end of the month.

Cheerfully bobbing balloons and smiling transit workers greeted commuters Tuesday morning as they emerged from the Farragut West and Farragut North Metro stations in downtown Washington, D.C., to warn commuters of the impacts of cuts to mass transit funding in cities across the nation. 

While Giant supermarkets are demanding major givebacks from their workers, parent company Ahold has "too much cash," Ahold CFO Jeff Carr recently told investors.

A great new documentary film, "Trash Dance," depicts the grace and warmth of city sanitation workers and the dignity of their work. This is just the sort of film the DC Labor FilmFest has brought to metropolitan Washington, D.C., audiences each year since 2001, but "Trash Dance" needs a small amount of financial support to come to the silver screen.

Five area union hotels were rated among the best of the best by AAA for 2012. Local winners of the coveted Four Diamond Award included the Hay-Adams, Mayflower Hotel, the Omni Shoreham, the Fairfax at Embassy Row and Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center on the Potomac, National Harbor. Unite Here Local 25 represents workers at all five hotels.

Building Futures students are learning fast that when it comes to construction, “safety comes first.” The Metropolitan Washington Council Community Services Agency’s program features 10 hours of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) classes run by Sheet Metal Workers Local 100’s certified OSHA instructor Gerhard Klusmann, with the support of Local 100 staffer Ann Braham.