San Lucas Leads 900-person Direct Action against Manpower, Inc. in Wash., D.C. March 27, 2004 On Monday, March 29th, San Lucas Workers Center's Randy Smith led hundreds of National Peoples Action supporters in a protest at the Connecticut Ave. (D.C.) office of Manpower, Inc. Worker-leaders decided to do the action after a Manpower executive blew off a long-planned meeting with community representatives of NPA's Jobs Team (including two San Lucas worker-leaders) on March 27th. Two days later San Lucas and its NPA supporters occupied Manpower and refused to leave until the manager called Manpower's CEO, Jeff Joerres, at the company's Milwaukee office, so that we could arrange a face-to-face meeting with him. The protest was covered by the Washington Post (see photo below). Manpower has long hyped its 'public partnerships', and last May Manpower and the federal Department of Labor (DOL) entered into a partnership around job training. San Lucas investigated Manpower's 'TechReach' program (see website) in Chicago, claimed to help workers with 'barriers', and found that the highly touted program had impacted a few dozen workers (at most) in the last few years. Now San Lucas Workers Center, its job allies in other states, and NPA are demanding that both DOL and Manpower come to the table with grassroots groups---the true experts on what systems work. We want a role in designing truly effective programs to move low-wage workers into good work. We need more than propaganda---we need results!