This column is devoted to reporting the resistance by working people to the employers' assault on their living standards, working conditions, and unions.
We invite you to contribute short items to this column as a way for other fighting workers around the world to read about and learn from these important struggles. Jot down a few lines about what is happening in your union, at your workplace, or other workplaces in your area, including interesting political discussions.
Thousands of workers at Dunnes, Ireland's largest private employer, launched their first nationwide strike June 19. Pickets closed most Dunnes shops.
Workers are protesting the company's demand for "zero hour contracts." Under these contracts, employees must be available to work at all times, but are not guaranteed any work. Hours can vary from zero to 39 a week. Unionists also seek pensions, more full-time jobs, sick pay for part-time employees, and wage hikes, as well as resisting Dunnes's plan to introduce Sunday work at straight time. Mandate, the union that organizes the predominantly female workforce, estimates that union membership has shot up from 30 percent before the strike to 80 percent now.
A striker at the St. Stephens Green shopping mall in Central Dublin said management thought that because of their age and inexperience workers could be bullied into accepting the new conditions. "We have had about as much as we can take," the young worker said. "Now is the time for action."
In the mid 1980s, women workers at Dunnes were fired for refusing to handle South African products in protest of apartheid. The Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party sent messages of solidarity to the strikers.
Retail, bakery workers in Sweden win contracts
Retail and bakery workers in Sweden won wage hikes and
other benefits in recently signed contracts. Thousands of
workers in both industries walked out in May and June and
employers retaliated by locking others out.
Some 125,000 retail and storage workers in Sweden won a union pact June 13 after a 16-day strike. The three-year agreement contains wage hikes and increased vacation pay. The majority-female workforce defeated the employers' plan to lower pay for working inconvenient hours.
"Retail employers always had low-wage contracts so we are very pleased," said Annika Malmgren, one of 70 employees at ICA supermarket in Solna.
The Swedish Foodworkers Union signed a three-year contract with bakery owners June 26 after 6,000 workers went on strike or were locked out at all privately owned bakeries in Sweden. The agreement, which was not brought to the membership for a vote, includes annual raises of about 50 cents an hour.
At a union meeting just a few hours after the contract was signed, workers at Skogaholm bakery in Stockholm discussed the pact.
Most of the discussion centered on the lack of agreement on working hours. The law requires a local agreement for all night work, but the bakery owners want a clause that forbids local agreements on this question.
"I would like to know why the contract was signed without this question being solved," said one worker. Also unresolved at the Skogaholm bakery are company plans to lay off 70 of the 300 workers.
Although most workers expressed satisfaction with the wage increase, one said, "You don't know where the pirces end up. From that point of view a shorter agreement would have been better."
Unionists in Puerto Rico oppose `flexible hours'
In the last several weeks, unionists in Puerto Rico have
organized protests against proposed changes in the labor
law, including a public speakout of 500 people. The bosses'
goal is to have complete flexibility in the scheduling of
workers. One thousand protesters filled the gallery while
the Senate voted on the legislation June 23. Senate leaders
responded by calling the police riot squad and then voted
in favor of the bill.
On June 25 an assembly of more than 100 trade union officials, organized by the Labor Organizations Committee, voted to plan a general strike to protest the proposed changes.
Luis Fortuño, the head of the government-owned Puerto Rico Tourism Co., is leading the drive to change the labor laws. One proposal would allow employers to vary the starting hour by as much as four hours without incurring overtime penalties. A proposal to abolish local minimum wages was dropped. In addition to discussing strike action, the assembly voted on a series of activities to protest the proposed changes in the labor laws, including picketing tourist hotels and various government agencies.
Janitors mark rally that sparked organizing drive
Chants of "Si, se puede" (yes, we can do it) rang through
the streets of Beverly Hills June 15 as 200 janitors and
supporters marked the fifth anniversary of a vicious police
attack against a Culver City demonstration that sparked the
rise of the "Justice for Janitors" organizing campaign in
southern California. The demonstration was particularly
spirited after the recent negotiation of a contract
covering 6,000 janitors by Service Employees International
Union Local 399.
Marchers demanded authorities drop the charges against 49 union janitors arrested while demonstrating in front of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in March. They are charged with trespassing, failure to disperse, unlawful assembly, and resisting arrest and are facing possible jail time and fines totaling more than $30,000.
"They want us here to clean their office buildings at night in silence, but when we come here in the day to demand justice they want to arrest us," was how one demonstrator summed it up.
Contributors to this week's column include: Bill Loxton and Stewart Alexander in Dublin; Inger Nyman and Catharina Tirsén, members of the Foodworkers Union, and Lasse Johansson, a member of the Transport Workers Union in Stockholm; Ron Richards, a member of the American Federation of Government Employees in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Craig Honts, a member of United Transportation Union Local 1674 in Los Angeles.