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PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island - Members of New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199 have been locked out since staging a one-day walkout December 22 to protest concession demands by Women and Infants Hospital. Since then, union members have kept mass picketing going around the clock, organized a rally of 1,000 people, packed the galleries of the state legislature here, and won wide support from working people.
The 1,121 union members include 500 nurses as well as technical, clerical, maintenance, engineering, and food service workers. "We're helping to set a foundation for other unions," said Richard Olivieri, 18, who works in the receiving department. "We're showing our strength and standing up for what we believe in."
Patrick Quinn, staff organizer for 1199, said the struggle has "received support from the Teamsters, United Nurses and Allied Professionals, and Pipefitters. Job security is the biggest issue. The union wants to maintain its contract, current job levels, and job security provisions with the hospital after it merges with Life Span, a bigger hospital network that runs numerous nonunion facilities." Workers on the picket line point out the hospital administration is seeking to weaken the union and erode wages and rights in preparation for the takeover.
The hospital's demands include a wage freeze for the first year of the contract and future wage increases below the rate of inflation, allowing the hospital to subcontract services, cutbacks in contributions to health and pension funds, and more nurses working part-time. Many union members, the vast majority of whom are women, have experience from a 25-day strike against the company in 1988. In that strike they won a strong contract.
The hospital administration is keeping the facility open with supervisors and the help of the U.S. Nursing Corporation, a Denver-based scabbing outfit.
The union is fighting company attempts to limit picketing, through a claim of "union violence" during the mass rally January 5. Normally the company has taken scabs in the back way, but as a provocation to the union, the bosses made them walk through the picket lines that day. Company claims of supposed union violence fell flat in court, however, according to union members present, because even the video tape shown by the hospital revealed nothing the judge considered to be out of hand.
The union also won a victory by securing the right to unemployment benefits for the locked-out workers.
Waterside workers fight firings in New Zealand
AUCKLAND, New Zealand -Fourteen waterside workers
(stevedores) are picketing ships owned by Pacifica Shipping at
the Onehunga wharf here. They were given, in their words, "a
real sad Christmas" when they were laid off by the company on
December 23.
Pacifica's four ships ply the coastal shipping trade in New Zealand. Unlike most shippers, the firm often directly hires watersiders to load and unload its ships, rather than relying on workers employed by the ports.
After settling a contract with the majority of the watersiders in the middle of the year, Pacifica demanded in December that working hours be increased with no raise in salary. When, to a person, the workers refused to sign, they were sacked. Waterside Workers Union member Warren Sinel told the Militant January 3 the demand by the company was prompted by their purchase of a new ship, "fast on the water but very slow to load and unload."
Sinel is one of the four casual workers among the 14. The casual employees were working without a contract before the dispute.
The loading and unloading of the ship is performed by employees of the International Stevedoring Organisation, which supplies nonunion crews to shipping companies.
As we spoke, the Pacifica ship Spirit of Vison was entering the port. Draped over its side was the banner "NZSU [New Zealand Seafarers Union] only work with union labour." Sinel explained that the Seafarers' refusal to work alongside the scabs slows the work down considerably.
On the first day of the picket a confrontation between the pickets and scabs led to assault charges being laid against union members. These charges are being contested by the union, which is also mounting a legal challenge to the dismissals.
Reinforcements from other watersiders swelled the picket to 100 people on one occasion in the last week of December, reported Sinel. These unionists traveled the few kilometers from the major Auckland Port. Onehunga, where the dispute is centered, is a fraction of the size and typically services just a couple of ships a week, Sinel explained.
Pickets told the Militant they are determined to reclaim their jobs. "We are fighting to keep union labor on this wharf," Sinel said.
Movie projectionists protest 60 percent pay cut
COQUITLAM, British Columbia - "Famous Players and Odeon
Cineplex are trying to spread a cancer across this country.
Their attempt to cut back projectionists' wages 60 percent over
three years is outrageous," declared Ted Buranyai, a member of
Firefighters Union Local 1941 in Port Coquitlam. He was one of
more than 150 unionists and their families who mobilized
January 9 in front of the Famous Players Giant Silver City
Complex here to support the 60 projectionists locked out since
September across British Columbia.
The projectionists are members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 348. The previous evening over 100 unionists and supporters mobilized at the Richmond Silver City complex to picket and convince movie goers to support the projectionists' fight against wage rollbacks. Four high school students from Pinetree Secondary in the area told the Militant they were trying to convince young people not to go to the movies to support the projectionists. "It's disgusting what Famous Players is doing.... What future is there for young people if this happens," said Trisha Sopphusson
"We work seven days on seven days off and average 45 to 60 hours during the week we work," projectionists' representative Martin Hoare said. "We operate four to six screens at a time and get $30 an hour when we do so. Our base rate is $18.37 per hour. We also repair, do maintenance, and install. The bosses make it seem that we do nothing and get paid an outrageous amount, which is not true."
He added, "Famous Players owes us over $100,00 in back overtime pay for the last three years. We need solidarity in this fight. If it can happen to us, it can happen to anybody."
M.J. Rahn, a member of Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees Local 1999 in Woburn, Massachusetts; Patrick Brown, a member of the Meat Workers Union in Auckland; and Ned Dmytryshyn, a member of International Association of Machinists Local 11 in Delta, British Columbia, contributed to this column.