Transit workers' dispute

The wage improvements were unequally divided among TWU workers. While all work titles will get a percentage increase, maintainers got an extra $1 per hour.

The argument union officials gave for that "bonus" was that in a previous contract cleaners, who perform lower-paid car and shop cleaning, had gotten a similar increment. The sum of all these gains over a three-year contract would result in a wider gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers. Cleaners and others also suffer under harsh disciplinary codes--certified by this contract--speedup, and continued unsafe and unhealthy work conditions. Furthermore, erosion of health care plans, which are little improved in this contract, impact on lower paid workers more than others.

Sixty-two percent of those who returned ballots are said to have voted for the contract. In the weeks leading up to the date when ballots were due, transit workers received memos from the union warning of the consequences of a "no" vote. The memos included a copy of a restraining order issued by the courts that threatened jail terms for unnamed and named transit union officials who encouraged a strike, and a letter from the state governor offering a carrot or a club with respect to pension improvements.

At our rallies and demonstrations transit workers and their supporters, by their numbers and their discipline, showed the real face of the union and the potential for joint union activity. Efforts to divide transit workers from their brothers and sisters in other unions and the public as a whole were set back each time we got into the streets and showed who we really were.

George Alvarez-Bouse 
New York, New York  
 

Good Friday agreement

Unfortunately, the pretext used by the Unionists to destroy the GFA was successful. Although the Provisional Irish Republican Army has faithfully held to its cease-fire, David Trimble insisted upon the unilateral disarmament of this guerrilla army before the new institutions established by the GFA had shown that they were indeed working.

There are still paramilitary terrorist groups intimidating and harassing the nationalist population of the north as reports of violence about them attest. One need only cite the murder of civil rights attorney Rosemary Nelson who was murdered after the GFA was signed. David Trimble never demanded the immediate disarming of those sectarian terrorist gangs. It is regrettable that the mentality of the Reverend Ian Paisley, and the unrelenting anti-Catholic bigotry which he and Orange/Unionism represent, has triumphed. What is even more regrettable is that the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair has, in effect, given its blessing to Paisleyism at precisely the moment the commission headed by Canadian General de Chastelain reported valuable progress on the central question of "disarmament by the Irish Republican Army."

William Gartland 
Rio, Wisconsin  
 
 
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