Labor movement rises from ashes of World Trade Center's Windows on the World restaurant
CBSN
The breathtaking views of New York City and beyond were famous inside the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center complex. So, too, was the seamless service, delivered day and night by a diverse crew of 400 restaurant workers who hailed from nearly every continent.
More than 70 Windows on the World employees perished on 9/11 — some jumping to their deaths with table cloths and napkins to help break their 1,000-foot falls, others incinerated by the rapidly rising heat. Back then, the minimum wage for tipped workers like them was $2.13 an hour. That figure — unchanged in much of the country these past 20 years —remains front-and-center in a labor battle that's still being waged two decades after the plight of displaced World Trade Center restaurant employees helped reignite a worker movement playing out across the country. While the ranks of traditional labor unions are much diminished from decades past, a different type of worker organization surfaced as 9/11 made more Americans aware of the trauma that can be inflicted on low-wage workers with almost no economic safety net.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.
The knock at the door came at nighttime on Mother's Day 2008 in Oregon, where Jessica Ellis' parents lived. It was around 9:20 p.m. and his wife, Linda, was already in bed; her father Steve Ellis told CBS News, that he thought someone let their animals out — but two soldiers in Class A uniforms were standing at the door.