On the Picket Line: 10/23/97 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the October 23, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- ON THE PICKET LINE: OCTOBER 23, 1997 ILLINOIS TEACHER STRIKES Two teacher strikes in Illinois stretched into October. In East St. Louis at the beginning of the month, the month-long schools shutdown forced city officials to respond to the workers' demands. On Oct. 2, the City Council voted to allocate $500,000 to the school district. It took Federation of Teachers Local 1220 members a month on the picket lines to prompt the council members to find the money. In White Hall in Greene County, meanwhile, the bosses opted to bully strikers. The administration threatened to bring in scab replacements. So on Oct. 10 the North Greene Education Association filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint, seeking an order barring scab hiring. Union President Paul Hubbard said, "The hiring of unqualified babysitters will not end this strike or bring a quality education to the students." AUTO, RAIL STRIKE DEADLINES LOOM There may be another General Motors strike in the offing. The Auto Workers has set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Oct. 17. If there's no settlement between Local 696 and management at GM's Delphi Chassis Systems plant in Dayton, Ohio, 2,800 workers will walk. Although it's been almost a year since the national GM contract was settled, there is still no local settlement at the Dayton plant. The issues there are the same as at other factories hit by local strikes in the last year--and the same as during the March 1996 strike at the Dayton plant itself. It comes down to job security and health and safety. The workers' central concern is subcontracting, or "outsourcing." According to the union, GM continues shifting brake-assembly work to non-union suppliers. Still, the Dayton plant remains so key to GM production that a strike there would quickly bring much of the company's North American operation to a screeching halt. Workers who build, maintain and repair Amtrak's rail lines could walk out on strike Oct. 23. The Maintenance of Way Employees, representing 2,343 workers, has demanded that Amtrak raise pay so it's in line with wages at the freight railroads. The Amtrak bosses refuse--and they're throwing around the considerable weight of anti-union laws as well as an anti-worker propaganda campaign to try to block the strike. President Bill Clinton has already moved against the union. In August he imposed a "cooling-off" period during which a strike is illegal while a presidential review board prepares recommendations for a settlement. Now, as that period draws to a close, the workers have the legal right to strike. Supposedly. Actually, the president and/or Congress could move against them quickly, ordering strikers back to work as soon as they walk out. Clinton has already intervened against railroad workers' right to strike 12 times during his administration. A walkout would affect some 800,000 riders. A full-blown media campaign aimed at whipping them into a panic is now under way. The effort to build an anti-union sentiment is strategic; the bosses are keenly aware that public support for the UPS strike was a crucial ingredient in that victory. They don't want a replay. At the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh last month, delegates passed a resolution pledging solidarity with the Maintenance of Way Employees. What that might mean concretely in case of a strike remains to be seen. UPS PILOTS SAY `NO' The Independent Pilots Association announced Oct. 1 that its members had voted to reject United Parcel Service's "final" contract offer. The vote was close to unanimous: 1,861 to 39. IPA President Capt. Bob Miller said the pilots would prepare for an early-1998 walkout if the company doesn't come up with a better offer. Pilots are asking for wage raises of about 4 percent a year, to bring them up to parity with pilots at Federal Express and other companies. "If UPS has a strategy here, it's very much the same as it was with their drivers. The result will be no different," Miller said. The UPS bosses know what he's talking about. The August strike by 185,000 Teamsters ended in the greatest labor victory in many years. A big part of the strike's success was due to the pilots' solidarity. Not a single UPS plane lifted off during the strike by drivers and warehouse workers. Teamsters President Ron Carey has pledged his members will return the favor if the pilots strike. Carey announced Oct. 9 that Teamsters UPS workers had voted overwhelmingly to approve their new contract. The vote was 75,412 to 17,206. Carey called the contract "a victory for every Teamster and for all working families." AND AT FEDEX... Workers at UPS's primary competitor, Federal Express, want to join the Teamsters and win their own contract. FedEx workers, in the midst of a union organizing campaign, were mightily buoyed by the UPS strike. A bunch of them showed up at FedEx's annual shareholders' meeting in Memphis, Tenn., on Sept. 29, to serve notice that it's their turn. According to a Teamsters news release, Leanna Cochran, a 15-year FedEx dispatcher from Indianapolis, told shareholders, "We are concerned about more and more of our work going part-time, about subcontracting of our work, and about company efforts to intimidate FedEx workers who want to organize a union." Atlanta driver Mark Castilla said, "The company is taking people who have been working at FedEx for 20 years and making them work split shifts and weekends." And Memphis driver Mike McGowan said, "The same issues we fought for and won at UPS are the issues that worry FedEx workers--job security, part-time work, a retirement a family can count on." The Teamsters report that FedEx Chief Executive Officer Fred Smith "bellowed" in rage. He thundered, "I'm the only one who gets to stand up here," when worker after worker took the floor to demand union rights. The FedEx organizing drive is a major battleground. The capitalists know it. That's why last year their representatives in Congress, led by Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle, passed a special law making it harder to unionize FedEx. FedEx itself is playing hardball. The Teamsters report that as the organizing drive heats up: "The response of FedEx management has been to fire, suspend, and harass workers in an attempt to silence them. Last month, FedEx workers and their Teamsters Union filed suit in federal district court in Indianapolis to put a stop to illegal company interference in their workers' rights to organize." COLUMBIA STRIKE DEADLINE At a spirited rally Oct. 14, some 500 people demonstrated solidarity with clerical and technical workers at Columbia University. By an 89-percent majority, members of Auto Workers Local 2110 voted Sept. 30 to walk out on strike if there is no contract settlement by Oct. 16. The demonstration two days before the deadline was designed to show the Ivy League administration that there is strong support for the workers among students, faculty and other Columbia employees. According to a union statement: "After six months of negotiations, the union and the university remain far apart on many key issues. The sticking points include loss of jobs, benefit cuts and wages. ... Since [1985], the university has eliminated 300 clerical positions while increasing the number of higher-paid administrators by 550. The union has made the return of these positions to the bargaining unit a top priority." Local 2110--which has struck twice since it won recognition in 1985--is also fighting a university attempt to institute a lower pay scale for new employees. Supporters are asked to demand pay equity and job security for the secretaries and clerks who keep the prestigious school running. Readers can call Columbia University President George Rupp at (212) 854-2825, fax him at (212) 854-6466, or send him an email at rupp@columbia.edu. LABOR FOR MARTINEZ BILL A coalition led by labor unions will stage an Oct. 18 national day of action to demand that Congress pass a pro- labor jobs bill. The National Labor Community Coalition for Public Works Jobs backs the Martinez bill as a component of the living-wage campaign that has mostly focused on local and state laws. Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez is the coalition's national coordinator. Rodriguez says the Martinez jobs bill would provide "union-wage jobs rebuilding our nation's crumbling infrastructure, repairing our children's schools and renovating our cities' economically deprived communities." In a call to unionists to participate in the Oct. 18 actions, Rodriguez pointed out that the bill gives priority to hiring unemployed building-trades workers, those who lost jobs due to plant closings, young people in high- unemployment areas, and welfare recipients. He wrote: "The welfare reform act adds an emergency dimension to the crisis, with welfare recipients being forced into poverty workfare jobs, in many cases replacing union jobs. ... Solidarity with welfare recipients, unemployed, plant closure victims, minority communities and youth to pass this bill is in the best tradition of the labor movement's `an injury to one is an injury to all' principle." In New York, demonstrators demanding "Union jobs now--not workfare or sweatshops" will gather at noon at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, Canal and Chrystie Streets. They will march to a 2 p.m. rally at the federal building. Information on plans in other cities is available from the coalition's national office at (562) 806-9928. ANTI-GAY AIRLINES The airline industry's battle to defend its right to discriminate against lesbian and gay employees went to court in San Francisco Oct. 10. Under a local law that went into effect June 1, all employers doing business in the city are required to offer the same benefits to employees in same-sex relationships as they provide heterosexual employees. After initially indicating they would comply in order to keep flying out of the San Francisco airport, United Airlines bosses balked. They got the entire airline industry to back them in a lawsuit against the city. So lawyers for the Air Transport Association and the Airline Industrial Relations Conference argued in court Oct. 10 that airlines have every right to discriminate against employees in any way not barred by federal law. Since there is no federal law banning anti-gay discrimination, the lawyers said, San Francisco has no right to impose such a ban. On the workers' side, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and other groups joined what city attorneys called "a critical civil-rights case." San Francisco City Supervisor Tom Ammiano, a longtime gay activist, sponsored the law last year. It only applies in San Francisco. But the airlines are alarmed because they employ a great many gay workers, especially flight attendants and ticket and gate clerks, around the world. Providing them equal benefits would cost money--and remove a time-honored boss tool for keeping workers divided. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytlab-10.16.97-00:49:25-20036