Shae Parker once had to fall to the floor of the Waffle House she worked at in Columbia, South Carolina “to avoid a bullet” late at night.  She dislocated her shoulder.  The company tried to prevent her from talking about safe working conditions there and when Workers took their cause to their bosses, they got a cold reception.  Parker said: “We brought petitions with (13,000) signatures on them and they threw them away.  The supervisors use any tactic they can to prevent you from speaking.”  After a Strike two years ago by Workers protesting the lack of protection against such hazards, she quit.  Parker now spends her time working for the Union of Southern Service Workers organizing other exploited Employees in the Deep South.  Asked what consumers can do to help Workers like her, her succinct answer was: “Hit ‘em in the pocketbook” by not patronizing Waffle House.  She added Publix Supermarkets, also a Southern Anti-Union Chain, to that list.  Parker and other speakers brought the trials, tribulations and wins to the National AFL-CIO’s annual Martin Luther King conference, which is winding up today (Sunday, January 12th) in Austin, Texas.  The Labor Federation chose the Texas Capital to emphasize dual goals: Organizing and its benefits and concentrating on the Nation’s most Union- and Worker-hostile region, the South.

To Read This Labor News Report In Its Entirety, Go To: At MLK conference, unionist tells how she had to duck to avoid bullets – People's World