LONDON - Workers at Ford Motor Co., including some of the 1,300 threatened with layoffs at the Halewood factory near Liverpool, rallied outside the company offices in London January 23. The company was meeting with union officials to discuss the future of the plant. More than 400 took to the streets, the majority from Halewood, where production was halted. Workers from the Dagenham, Bridgend (Wales), Southampton, and Daventry facilities also took part. The unions held mass meetings company-wide to endorse calls for a national strike ballot.

The company has announced plans to scale back the Halewood facility, and produce the model that will replace the Liverpool-built Escort in 1998 at its factories in Germany and Spain. The future of production at Halewood, according to the company, rests on a new multi-purpose vehicle coming on-line in 2000. Until then, the remaining Halewood workers will continue limited production of the "old" Escort.

Steve Riley, the union conveyor at the company's largest UK factory in Dagenham, London, rejected this assertion. Speaking to night shift workers at a mass meeting at the plant's Paint Trim and Assembly facility January 21, Riley claimed that until a month ago, plans for a new multi- activity vehicle were non-existent. Production of the "old" Fiesta model in Spain lasted just six months after the introduction of the new version in 1995, he said.

According to the Financial Times, production of the multi-purpose vehicle at Halewood remains contingent on the "productivity gap" being closed, and possible government financial aid.

"We've done more than they asked for," said Steve Farrer, a Halewood worker picketing the talks January 23. "They said if you do this you'll get the new car. Now we've not got it. If they can do it to us, they'll do it to you too."

Tim Bennett, another Halewood worker who travelled on the union buses from Liverpool to picket the talks, explained, "We've got to fight to get everyone out. They'll lay us off and get the British public to pay our dole: it stinks! If there is over-capacity as they say we should get a shorter working week."

Anthony Woodley, Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) national secretary for the motor industry, remarked with a nationalist tone, "This is a fight for Britain, Ford workers in Britain, and Halewood's future."

Flight attendants at Air Ontario walk out
TORONTO - On January 5, 146 Air Ontario flight attendants, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), set up picket lines after the company began to remove them from their flights and replaced them with scabs six hours prior to the strike deadline. The flight attendants have been working without a contract since Aug. 31, 1996. Air Ontario is one of several components of Air Canada.

The flight attendants are demanding the reduction of the 15-hour duty day, in which they work up to nine landings in a day, often alone. They are also responsible for cleaning the aircraft. There is no running water aboard the planes to wash their hands. One of the demands is wage parity with other regional carriers who operate the same aircraft, such as Air B.C., another regional carrier owned by Air Canada. The top pay there will be CAN$37,000 (US$27,750) by 1999, compared with CAN$29,000 today at Air Ontario.

Steve Smith, the president of Air Ontario, has rejected the request for parity. The airline's current offer is 3 percent a year increase over three years. "We can show them a whole bunch of airlines that pay less than us," Smith told the Toronto Star.

A number of flights were delayed or canceled on the evening of January 5, since the pilots refused to fly with replacement flight attendants. Some passengers were bussed to their destinations. Air Ontario began interviewing replacement workers in November in anticipation of a walkout.

The pilots at Air Ontario along with their counterparts at Air Canada's other regional airlines - Air Nova, Air B.C. and Air Alliance -went on strike on January 10. The striking pilots, members of Canadian Air Line Pilots Association (CALPA), are demanding that the seniority list of regional pilots be merged with that of pilots at Air Canada. This would allow the pilots to transfer without financial penalty to the parent company. The day after the pilots went on strike, Air Canada chartered a large number of independent carriers in hopes of providing about 70 percent of their normal services during the strike.

Donette Carty, who has worked for seven years as a flight attendant, said, "We have received solidarity from Canadian Auto Workers, the International Association of Machinists, and CALPA. According to what I was told by the baggage handlers, 70 percent of the flights have been canceled."

Montreal printing workers fight for contract
MONTREAL - Workers have been on strike against Sérigraphie Richford in Point-Claire, Quebec, since Dec. 4, 1996. The 103 workers, who won union certification in November 1995 for Local 145 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, are still fighting for their first union contract. On January 15, they rejected the company's latest offer, which included a pay hike of 1.5 percent over three years, and no guarantees to eliminate the 12-hour shift.

Strikers explained that the company had tried to divide workers with more seniority from new hires by offering a wage increase to the latter. But Stéphane Brunet said, "I've worked here for three months. After the first month and a half, the union came to talk to the new people. After I saw what the company was pulling, I signed my union card. I had better benefits when I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken."

Sérigraphie Richford is the only company in the province that specializes in printing bottles for wine, cosmetics, and other products. The average wage is only CAN$7.49 (US$5.61) an hour with 60 percent of the employees receiving an even lower minimum wage. According to striker Peter Brown, there has been no wage increase for the past two and a half years.

Workers put in 12-hour shifts, clocking 80.5 hours over a two week period: one week they work 23.5 hours, the next 57 hours without overtime pay.

Close to 90 percent of the workers are immigrants and 60 percent are women. Striker Hilarion Akoly explained that many women have had back problems because of the heavy work but have not qualified for work-related injury benefits. Health and safety are considered important contract issues.

The company also hires undocumented immigrants through a sub-contractor. Now the sub-contractor is supplying replacement workers. Gaetane Bolduc, the chief shop steward, told the Militant that a representative of Quebec's Ministry of Labor visited the plant before Christmas and saw the scabs operating machines. This is illegal under provincial anti-scab legislation. However, the government official has not yet submitted his report.

The union has also filed a complaint with the immigration department against the use of undocumented immigrants as replacement workers during the strike.

Ian Grant, member of the TGWU at Ford's Dagenham plant in London; Ahmad Haghighat in Toronto; and Patricia O'Beirne, member of United Steelworkers of America Local 9284 in Montreal, contributed to this column.  
 
 
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