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SYDNEY, Australia - Warehouse workers who are members of the National Union of Workers have been picketing Davids, Australia's largest wholesale grocery distributor. They are on strike to defend their jobs and working conditions. Four hundred workers at Davids' centers in Sydney and Canberra walked off the job on July 8 protesting the company's attitude as they tried to negotiate an agreement.
Davids was recently taken over by Metro, a South African-owned company. Pushed by competition with other distributors, the bosses are demanding an increase in the normal working hours and the right to hire of unlimited numbers of casual (temporary) workers. The company also wants to introduce a system under which workers who do not meet new performance standards would get two warnings and then sacked. Already the workforce at the Blacktown warehouse has been reduced from 600 to 270 in the last six years through speedup.
There is a very high injury rate because of the work pace. Before the strike, one forklift driver was taken off the job because he refused to drive as fast as the bosses wanted.
Philip Mumby, a union delegate at the Blacktown warehouse, said that during the busy season 30 percent of the workforce is casual. Up to 2,000 different casuals go through the plant in one year. Mumby said that the company told casual workers who signed up to the union not to come back.
The union has been trying to negotiate a new agreement for eight months. Workers were on rolling stoppages for two weeks before they went out on strike.
On the first day of the strike truck drivers, members of the Transport Workers Union, honored the picket lines. The next day under pressure from the trucking company the drivers agreed to go through. But it took 60 cops to force the trucks through the picket line, though, and 41 workers were arrested as they tried to stop the trucks. They were released without charge but the company sacked everyone who was taken away by the police.
Casual workers are being bused to work every day. The first week a group of 15 casuals employed by Davids refused to cross the picket line, but when the company found out they sacked them. Strikers said that only about a quarter of the normal truck loads are getting out. However, Davids is shipping from their warehouses in Melbourne and Brisbane. Supporters from other unions have been coming down to the picket lines, particularly members of the Maritime Union whose recent battle on the picket lines won mass support and was an inspiration for other workers.
Workers demand Ottawa implement pay equity
In cities across Canada, angry federal government workers
called in sick or walked off the job August 27. The workers,
organized by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), held
protest rallies and noon hour demonstrations outside government
offices in Ottawa, Hull, Edmonton, Calgary, Leth-
bridge, Toronto, Vancouver, as well as in cities in New
Brunswick and Cape Breton. The protests were the immediate
response of hundreds of unionists to the government's
announcement that it is going to court to fight the July 29 pay
equity ruling that ordered Ottawa to address the wage gap
between female and male dominated public service jobs.
On July 29 a human rights tribunal ruled that the government must pay up to 13 years back wages and interest to almost 200,000 of its workers and retirees. The government announced its appeal August 27, complaining of the expense involved estimating the cost between $4 and $5 billion. Treasury Board President Marcel Masse explained the government's objections: "We believe that the formula used by the human rights tribunal is unfair and overcompensates."
More than 85 percent of the affected workers are women and 80 percent work in some of the lowest paid jobs in public service, earning less than $20,000 a year. "We are finally getting respect," Christine Collins, a clerical worker in Ottawa, Ontario said July 29, at a union-organized rally of celebration.
The ruling was the first major pay equity victory for the workers after being tied up for 14 years in court battles with the government's Treasury Board to apply the 1978 Human Rights Act. This Act ruled it illegal to pay women less than men for work of "equal value."
In 1985 PSAC filed a complaint against the Treasury Board with the Canadian Human Rights Commission to close the wage gap between female and male-dominated jobs in the public sector. While the unionists won a decision from the commission in 1991, the Treasury Board launched a series of legal attacks to derail the case. On the eve of the last election the board tried to get PSAC to settle for $800 million. Then the government used a March 1998 decision by a federal court judge quashing a tribunal hearing into pay discrimination at Bell Canada to pressure PSAC to settle. The union refused and instead held out for the tribunal decision.
Both the PSAC and the government have noted that the July 29 decision could have far-reaching implications for all federally regulated industries, including transportation and communication companies, and that its impact is being felt beyond the public sector. The unionists are demanding government drop its appeal and pay up.
Steelworkers strike at chemical plant in Ohio
Approximately 200 members of USWA Local 7334 have been on
strike at Millenium Inorganic Chemicals in Ashtabula, Ohio,
since May. The company is attempting to impose major changes in
work practices at the plant, including 12-hour shifts, job
combinations, and contracting out of several categories of
jobs. Millenium is a major producer of titanium dioxide.
At the Local 7334 annual retirees picnic August 15, the strikers' general mood was one of determination to see the strike through to the end, although several expressed a desire to get it over with after 15 weeks. No members of the local have crossed the picket line. A few workers said that the fact that jobs are relatively plentiful has helped them to hold out longer, as many have been found temporary jobs.
The company is trying to run the plant with scabs, but workers say production is nowhere near normal levels. One striker said that there was only one truck at the loading dock the last time he was on picket duty, as compared to a dozen or more before the strike.
The company has created an almost a military atmosphere around the plant. High-powered lights stand over the picket shanties. The pickets are under constant video surveillance, and they report that the company uses supersensitive microphones that can pick up the workers' conversations on the picket line. Trucks entering and leaving the plant are escorted by black-uniformed guards, who also patrol the entrances to the plant.
While the strikers do not know the details of where the negotiations stand now, the major bone of contention at this point seems to be over the "disciplinary" measures the company wants to take for cases of picket line "misbehavior." Initially the company wanted to fire several workers. It has backed off from that stance, but the union is insisting that all disciplinary charges be dropped.
New Zealand workers picket for 40-hour week
AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- "You don't know how to fix it - go
out onto the picket line" was the advice of workers at the
Sleepyhead factory in Otahuhu, Auckland, to the one
tradesperson who refused to join the strike. Sleepyhead
produces beds for local and export markets.
The story was passed on by two of the production workers from the plant who joined the picket line of five Engineers Union members during their lunch break August 12. The strike action began August 10 to protest Sleepyhead's proposals to pay overtime rates of time and a half after 47 hours, instead of 40 as at present.
The dispute, which has been simmering since the workers' contracts expired in May, involves the entire workforce of 250. Most production workers belong to Tradesec, which incorporates the former furniture workers union. The tradespeople belong to the Engineers Union, and the National Distribution Union covers the stores. A minority of workers are not union members.
On the recommendation of union officials, the maintenance workers took the strike action, while the production and stores workers are refusing overtime and have pledged to sustain the striking workers with financial and moral support.
About "30 to 40 percent of the production workers do overtime," said the Engineers Union delegate told the Militant. The tradespeople "do a lot of overtime - that's when the work is done - when the machines are stopped," he explained. Most production workers earn around NZ$9 an hour (NZ$1 = US$.48) Picket Garry Sands emphasized that "the working week is supposed to be 40 hours!"
On the fifth morning of the strike, 20 workers in the springs department spilled out onto the picket line, demanding the reinstatement of a worker just sacked on allegations of theft. They forced the company to reverse the firing on the same morning, and returned to work. On the same day, the protest was strengthened by several workers from the afternoon shift, who joined the picket after going home to sleep.
Local papers have given the dispute front-page coverage. The Manukau Daily News quoted general manager Alan Warner as saying "we need to be more efficient."
In the same report, a worker explained that "the factory is already close to third world conditions.... The toilets stink and there are no towels for people to dry their hands.... If we give in they will continue to chip away at our rights."
One picket sign reads "Beep your support," and many motorists do on this major Auckland road.
Raytheon workers win pay raise
LOWELL, Massachusetts -Some 2,700 members of the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local
1505 who work at 9 Raytheon Company plants in Massachusetts
ratified a new contract by about a 3-to-1 margin here August
30. The old contract had expired hours earlier.
Many workers came to the union meeting with T-shirts on that depicted a coiled snake and read "If provoked, I will strike." Workers had also been wearing the same T-shirts to work.
In the weeks leading up to the contract expiration the union had informational picket lines at various Raytheon plants. Raytheon is a manufacturer of reader and military equipment, including Patriot missiles. On August 20 an informational picket was hit by a car and died the next day. Some workers at the contract meeting wore IBEW buttons with black tape across them in memory of their fellow worker.
The new two-year contract covers 3,800 members and calls for raises of 5 percent in the first year and 4 percent in the second year. Workers had not had a raise in four years. Audry Lindsey, who has worked for Raytheon for 20 years, explained she "liked the contract" because of "the raises and because it (the company) threatened to go after sick days and vacation days and wasn't able to."
Lindsey also explained the new contract, "takes down some fences." That is, it expanded the recall rights of the union members.
Not everybody thought the contract was good. One worker explained, "we still have the two tier," referring to workers who do the same job but get paid a less.
Linda Harris, member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union in Sydney; Jacquie Henderson, member of the International Association of Machinists in Vancouver; Tony Prince, member of USWA Local 188 in Cleveland; Frank Evans in Auckland; and Ted Leonard in Boston, contributed to this column.