—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

British Columbia rail workers end four-month lockout

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — After 119 days on the picket line against a lockout by Southern Railway of British Columbia, workers voted May 4 to accept a new agreement. With 113 of 126 members of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 7000 present at a meeting to discuss the proposal, the unionists voted 68 percent in favor of a seven-year contract and began to return to work the next day.

Fatigue is a big issue for rail workers, who often haul dangerous substances through populated areas.

“For the last year they have been forcing people to work seven days a week,” conductor Aaron Cruikshank, a picket captain, told the Militant in January. “Track maintenance workers are being told if they don’t work 16 hours, they’ll contract out their work. It’s all about the bottom line, not about safety.”

Bill Magri, president of the local, told the Militant by phone May 19 that the employer agreed to train four engineers in the first year of the contract and two more in each subsequent year to address the union’s concerns about massive overtime.

The workers won a 10.97 percent wage increase over the life of the contract and pushed back company demands to eliminate restraints on lengthening the workday, Magri said.

“We are all far more unified,” locomotive engineer Craig Graham told the Militant May 13. “We were able to preserve post-retirement benefits. The boss wanted to deny new employees extended medical benefits in their retirement.”

—Dan Grant

Workers protest firings, harassment in Liberty, NY

LIBERTY, New York — More than 120 Ideal Snacks workers, their families and supporters marched through this small town 100 miles northwest of New York City May 18 to protest the sudden firing the first week of May of some 200 workers, about half the workforce.

The march and rally in front of the plant was organized by the Rural and Migrant Ministry with support from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 888, the Teamsters, the NAACP and the New York Workers Center.

According to the Times Herald-Record, the company said the workers were let go when an audit “turned up incomplete work authorization documents.”

“We worked in a smoky area of the plant,” Alejandro Velasquez told the rally, “and we would ask for masks and the plant manager would say, ‘Buy them!’ We had to wear hard hats and we had to pay for them.”

“For many years we were under pressure and threats and were afraid to speak up,” Araceli Díaz said. “We have suffered years of abuse. The manager has been harassing women. There is no insurance for injuries. This company was built on our backs. ... The least they can do is give me severance pay.”

During Díaz’s remarks the alarms of several cars in the management parking lot went off and she had to move to a spot where she could be heard. Cops from the sheriff’s department stood among the crowd, and several men in suits filmed the event.

“We demand an end to racial discrimination,” said the last speaker, María. “We demand a healthy and safe work environment. We demand the vacation earned by former and present workers be paid. We simply ask to be treated with the dignity and respect we deserve.”

An attorney for Ideal May 15 threatened “swift legal action” for what it called “slanderous statements meant to harm our reputation or bully our organization into unionization.”

— Lance Kelly

Seattle teachers strike for smaller class size, pay increase

SEATTLE — Some 2,000 teachers from the Seattle, Mercer Island and Issaquah school districts marched and rallied here May 19 during a one-day strike, part of rolling walkouts across the state by members of the Washington Education Association demanding lower class sizes, higher pay, cost of living increases and increased funding for public schools.

Teachers in some 40 districts have participated and about 20 more are expected to do so in the next few weeks.

The Washington state legislature is under state Supreme Court order to increase public funding by 2019, and a state ballot initiative last fall mandated smaller class sizes.

At a similar walk-out, Kim Mead, president of the Washington Education Association, spoke at a rally of the Shoreline District teachers held May 11.

“Teachers are taking a stand for students, the community and public education,” she said. Mead explained that teachers want cost-of-living allowances that were voted in but later rescinded by the legislature and oppose proposals to take away union bargaining rights and tie teacher evaluation to standardized testing.

Some 4,000 teachers and supporters rallied at the state Capitol in Olympia April 25.

—Edwin Fruit