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ST. PAUL, Minnesota - Employees at two medical centers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area won two victories recently.

One week after more than 400 unionists rallied at the Nile Health Care Center, a nursing home in south Minneapolis, management dropped its refusal to negotiate a contract with some 180 workers.

Since June 19, when employees voted for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 113 to represent it, the nursing home owners had been waging an antiunion campaign and stalling talks.

On July 24 Nile administrators announced that they will sit down with union representatives by August 15.

The action on July 17 drew hundreds of union activists attending an AFL-CIO-organized regional conference in Minneapolis convened to discuss enrolling more members into unions. More than 800 participated in the conference, which was one of 13 such gatherings held around the country this summer.

AFL-CIO president John Sweeney presented the keynote address, which highlighted the example of the fight being conducted by strawberry pickers in California. Sweeney headed the march to the Nile Nursing home.

On July 31, 250 workers at the five facilities operated by Mork Clinic in several northern suburbs won a union recognition election. The vote was 135 - 59 in favor of representation by SEIU Local 113. The workers' organizing effort got a boost on July 22 when 60 unionists participated in a solidarity rally at the Anoka clinic. The action included members of the United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers of America, Amalgamated Transit Workers Union, and others.

The victory at Mork marked the health-care union's seventh victory this year. Some 1,200 new members have been added to the union's rolls bringing the total membership to 11,000. The SEIU has recently added six full-time organizers to its staff and played a major role in the AFL-CIO- organized conference.

Navistar to shut plant after union rejects offer
Navistar, the largest medium and heavy truck manufacturer in the United States, said August 19 it will close its Indianapolis Casting Corp. (ICC) foundry late next year and lay off 650 workers. The company made the announcement after United Auto Workers (UAW) members at the factory rejected the company's offer.

A week earlier the Chicago-based Navistar reached a master contract deal with the UAW, which was approved by union members by a vote of 63 percent in favor. The August 20 Wall Street Journal described the deal as a "cost-cutting plan." The company employs about 8,000 production workers nationally, organized by the UAW.

Workers at the Indianapolis foundry, however, rejected a related contract for that plant. The local pact would have frozen wages for all current employees for five years and lowered hourly pay for new hires. It would have also required some workers to move from Indianapolis to Navistar's truck-making facility in Springfield, Ohio.

Company officials said the ICC foundry would no longer be profitable enough "particularly in the face of competition from foundries in Latin America, where labor costs are significantly lower."

Navistar chairman John Horne said the company could still reopen negotiations with the union if the Indianapolis UAW members were willing to give in.

Shipyard workers in Maine approve contract
BATH, Maine - Members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local S6 at Bath Iron Works voted 1,979 - 1,831 to accept the new three-year contract proposed by management at a mass meeting Sunday August 24.

The vote - by secret ballot -followed two hours of lively debate in the Portland Civic. Bath Iron Works employs 7,300 workers, 5,200 of whom are members of the IAM. The shipyard, which builds destroyers for the U.S. Navy, is owned by defense giant General Dynamics.

The new contract includes a $1,000 signing bonus, a $700 bonus in 1998, and a 25-cent-an-hour raise in 1999. The management also agreed to increases in accident and sickness benefits and to up its contributions to the pension plan.

Many workers attending the meeting believed that an improved contract could have been won through strike action. For many securing an increase in wages, instead of getting one-off bonuses, was the main issue. One worker summed up his feelings by pointing to his T-shirt. It read "We Want More Money." The union negotiation committee unanimously proposed that management's offer be voted down and that a strike be organized.

In the days before the vote workers staged rallies and militant on-the-job protests in support of a better contract.

Workers told Militant reporters that they had made bonfires out of the copies of the contract distributed by management. Every hour on the hour workers began to "put the hammer down" by banging hammers and pipes on the ship's hulls or on tool boxes and scrap metal set up for the purpose. The clanging sound echoed for miles up the Kennebec River.

The August 21 Boston Globe reported that a number of people called the police "to say they've been awakened by the sound of a thousand hammers striking metal." Police eventually intervened and asked the union to stop the round- the-clock protest, which they did - only to start up again when negotiations reached an impasse.

Despite the deep differences of opinion reflected in the vote, the discussion was carried out in civil terms as workers weighed their options.

For many older workers the experience of the three-month strike in 1985, after which workers were forced to accept a concession contract, weighted heavily in the scales against taking action. Others pointed to the full order book at the yard and contrasted the big bonuses for BIW and General Dynamics executives to the modest raises offered to the workers.

Andy Buchanan, a member of United Auto Workers Local 1596, and Elena Tate, a high school student, in Boston; and Doug Jenness, a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 9198 in Roseville, Minnesota contributed to this column.  
 
 
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