Vol. 77/No. 29      August 12, 2013

“I’m out here fighting for my rights,” said Hayat Selmani, a cashier at Subway who had her hours cut after she signed a union petition. She, along with workers at Auntie Annie’s, Jamba Juice and other companies, have been fighting around issues of overtime pay, vacation and sick days, breaks and work schedules.

HMS Host is looking to prevent unionization at nonunion food locations such as Subway and pressing concession contracts at outlets organized by UNITE HERE Local 2850, which represents a majority of fast-food workers at the airport.

HMS Host operates food and dining service in 112 airports around the world, as well 99 highway travel plazas in the U.S. and Canada, according to the company’s website.

Subway worker Hakima Arhab was fired last year after she began to work with UNITE HERE to stop violations of the Port of Oakland’s living wage ordinance that sets standards for wages, holiday and sick pay.

The union filed a complaint with the Port of Oakland that ruled in her favor, ordering that she and Diamond Ford, a Jamba Juice employee fired for union activity, be reinstated. But the workers have not been given their jobs back, despite an additional ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that Subway and other airport concessionaires violated federal labor laws, including firing and cutting the hours of workers trying to win union recognition.

“I decided to stand up for myself and my coworkers,” Arhab told those who gathered for a rally during the July 14 picket. “I’m fighting to get my job back. For me, for everyone. I’m tired of waiting. The NLRB is not taking action. So we have to take action.”

— Betsey Stone

Colombia is the fourth-largest coal exporter in the world. Alabama-based Drummond, the second-largest coal producer in Colombia, employs 5,000 workers directly and as many as 7,000 others through contractors, who pay lower wages and provide fewer benefits.

Drummond offered a 4.75 percent wage increase and a one-time bonus of about $3,700. Workers want a substantial wage increase, not a bonus, Ever Causado, secretary general of the Sintramienergética union, said by phone from Barranquilla July 26. “A bonus isn’t factored into wages; it’s not used for determining the pensions; it’s useless,” he said.

The union is also demanding that Drummond guarantee jobs for hundreds of Santa Marta port workers who will be laid off when the company finishes installing a conveyor belt loading system.

Miners work 12 hours a day, Causado said, but, the company only gives eight hours sick pay per day.

“This applies to 500 workers out due to job-related injuries,” heavy machine operator Alberto Solano Cordero told the Militant by phone from Cesar department. “Sixteen miners have died at the mine in the last 15 years.”

“The company doesn’t follow the safety rules,” he said. “They just want to organize production to be the most profitable and efficient for them.”

“Drummond is carrying off a non-renewable resource, damaging the environment and they are not investing anything in the country,” Solano said. “We want them to at least subsidize education to leave something to our children.”

— Seth Galinsky

The miners are battling Patriot Coal’s drive to gut miners’ union contracts and slash health care for 23,000 retired miners and their dependents. On May 29, a federal bankruptcy court in St. Louis ruled in favor of Patriot’s proposal to make cuts in wages and benefits and replace the current health care fund with a Voluntary Benefit Association.

In a well-calculated scheme, Peabody Energy created Patriot in 2007 by spinning off many of its mining operations in West Virginia and Kentucky, including all its union mines east of the Mississippi. A year later, Patriot bought Magnum Coal, a similar spinoff created by Arch Coal.

“What do we have to lose by fighting for the benefits of the older miners?” said Jim Harper, a miner at a local Consol Energy mine since 2007. “I will stand up for them. If we fight now, it sets a good example for the other workers as they consider fighting.”

— Janet Post

Earlier that day, the workers had rejected by 93 percent the bosses’ proposed seven-year agreement, which included contracting out 100 maintenance jobs and cuts to the pension plan, according to workers on the picket line.

“At a given moment you can’t just accept anything,” Steve Chagnon, an instrumentation technician at Kronos for two years, told the Militant June 15.

This is the first major contract fight in the 56-year-long history at the Kronos plant in this town about 12 miles southeast of Montreal. Kronos Worldwide, based in Dallas, Texas, manufactures pigments and other chemicals used in a variety of products and industrial processes.

The company has been trying to maintain some production with foremen from other Kronos facilities, Norman Nardini told the Militant. “We work with toxic chemicals,” Nardini said. “There could be an accident which could affect the community.”

“What happens here could affect the conditions of workers in other plants in the area,” said electrician Michel Arseneault who has worked for the company for 25 years. “In that sense our fight is a social struggle.”

— John Steele