The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.3           January 22, 1996 
 
 
Quebec Firestone Strikers: `We Have No Choice'  

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.

The strike of 750 workers at the Bridgestone/Firestone tire factory in Joliette, Quebec, continues with no end in sight.

"We have no choice but to continue the strike," said oil worker Philip Tremblay. "We can't work under the conditions that the company wants to impose."

Workers are striking for a wage increase and pension improvements, for relief from a crushing work schedule, and against an arbitrary attendance policy and other rules that the company is demanding. There has been no wage increase at the plant since 1991 and the pension plan pays only $23 a month per year of service.

Strikers are taking their fight to other workers in Quebec, appealing for financial support as well as a boycott of Bridgestone /Fire-stone tires. They are also traveling to other provinces and countries

In 1992, the company demanded and received concessions to run the plant all seven days a week with 12-hour shifts, imposing the same alternating 48-hour/36-hour workweeks on night shift workers as the day shift was already putting in.

The union is now demanding the right for night shift workers to take an occasional Saturday night off without pay, but the company refuses.

"More than anything this is a fight for the guys who work night shift," explained union executive committee member Alain Longpré. "The schedule the company is running is too hard, we can't do it. We are humans, not machines."

Liverpool dock workers fight for jobs
Some nine weeks after being sacked, 500 dockers in Liverpool, England, continue their fight for their jobs and against the union-busting operation of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company. The Mersey docks are the only unionized docks in Britain since a bitter and unsuccessful national dock strike in 1989.

On December 2, trade unionists from many parts of Britain joined dockers for a march and rally of 3,000 in downtown Liverpool. It was the sixth rally since the dispute began September 28, and the one with the largest and broadest support.

Rolls Royce engineering workers (machinists) from Bristol; rail workers from Perth, Scotland, and Manchester, England; Merseyside printing workers and bus drivers; and Ford auto workers from the local Halewood plant marched with many others behind their union banners.

The dockers keep up direct pressure on the harbor bosses, maintaining 24-hour picket lines at the dock gates with frequent mass mobilizations. A solidarity group made up predominantly of wives and companions of the dock workers, Women of the Waterfront, is becoming more and more a part of picket line activities, and organizes many of its own events.

30,000 janitorial workers strike in New York City
Picket lines went up January 4 in front of some 1,000 office buildings in New York, as more than 30,000 cleaning and maintenance workers walked off the job. The members of Service Employees International Union Local 32B-32J are fighting management's attempt to impose a two-tier wage setup and slash medical care, holidays, sick days, and other benefits.

"Their contract offer is the worst," said one of the strikers picketing the office buildings at Penn Station in midtown Manhattan the first day of the walkout. Under the contract that expired December 31, the janitors' wages were about $15 an hour.

The Realty Advisory Board, a coalition of building owners and managers, is demanding that new hires start at half of that, reaching wage parity only after six years. Strikers explained that management will use this to push out older workers and hire others at the lower rate.

"They want us to do double the work too," said a worker who has been cleaning the offices above Penn Station for 25 years. "You used to just have half a floor to clean, and now they want one person to do the entire floor."

Roger Annis, member of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union Local 841 in Montreal; Tim Rigby, member of the Transport & General Workers' Union in Manchester, England; and Militant staff writer Naomi Craine contributed to this column.

 
 
 
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