- The AFL-CIO placed the Mt. Olive Pickle Company on its national boycott list in February. Mt. Olive, the largest pickle company in the South, has been a target of the AFL-CIO’s Farm Labor Organizing Committee for two years due to the "squalid conditions" and low pay its workers receive.
- The World Methodist Peace Award this year will be presented to Latin Americans for the first time—the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. The Grandmothers organized in response to the "disappearances" of their children at the hands of the government and right-wing death squads.
- Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. David Bonior (D-Mich.) introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 1999 in January. The bills, S192 and HR 325, would increase the minimum wage by 50 cents on September 1, 1999, and by another 50 cents September 1, 2000. Currently a person working full-time on minimum wage will still earn $2,900 below the poverty line for a three-person family.
- The Mary of Mount Carmel Catholic Worker House opened in February in the former rectory of Queen of Peace Parish in Portland, Oregon. The North Portland house joined the 150 Catholic Worker houses—all but three in the United States—to open since the movement’s beginning in 1933.
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