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.

ATHENS, Greece - After a six-day strike and mobilizations, 200 farm workers in the village of Aghios Giorgios won their demands May 27 for an eight-hour work day and wage increases. It is reportedly the first strike ever by immigrant farm workers in Greece.

The workers are immigrants from Albania and Romania. Most farm workers in Greece are undocumented immigrant workers. Besides being paid starvation wages they face racist attacks and the threat of deportation, especially on payday.

"We are paid 3,000 drachmas ($1=330dr) a day without food and we work nine hours," Seli Haki, a 32-year-old Albanian worker, told the Athens daily Eleftherotipia. "But things have changed. I won rights." Dimitri Biran, 33, said, "I brought my family from Tirana and I can't work for 10-12 hours a day for 4,000 drachmas."

The farm workers won the shorter work day with wages of 4,500 drachmas including one paid meal, or 4,000 drachmas with three paid meals. The bosses were forced to take back all striking workers.

The farm workers' fight is part of the response of working people to the austerity measures by the capitalists and their government, led by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). On May 27 public transportation, rail, hospital, dock, construction, bank, and other workers participated in a one-day general strike.

Riot police attacked a protest rally that was called in solidarity with bank workers, who have been on strike since May 11. They are fighting the sell-off of the state-owned Ionian Bank, which will result in mass layoffs - a probe by Greek capitalists to push through austerity measures to qualify as a member to the European Monetary Union by 2001. On May 28 a court declared the strike "illegal and abusive." The next day at dawn, the cops attacked the picket line at the computer center in Piraeus; the strikers fought back for about half an hour. Despite the court order, participation in the strike is about 70 percent.

Firefighters in Britain strike for jobs, service
LONDON - Nearly 1,000 firefighters in county Essex, southeastern England, went on strike June 8 against cuts in jobs and service. County officials are pressing a budget cut of 1.24 million ($2 million) that will mean removing an aerial ladder platform used for rescues and fighting fires in high buildings. The measure will also cut essential training and eliminate 16 jobs.

On June 5 the Essex Combined Fire Authority (CFA) sent letters to all firefighters threatening dismissal should they "breach their contract" by joining the strike. The Fire Brigades Union officials threatened a national strike if the Essex firefighters were sacked. Strike action was authorized by a 70 percent vote. After their four-hour strike June 8, the bosses locked them out for the rest of the shift.

Firefighters are planning to strike June 12 and June 15. In the meantime the CFA has called on the army to provide firefighting service. Soldiers have taken a "crash course" in firefighting.

Teamsters organize owner-operators in Washington state
SEATTLE - Nearly 250 truck drivers, owner-operators, and supporters rallied at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 19 hall in support of a Teamsters campaign to organize the drivers. The truckers - including many immigrants-haul freight at Seattle and Tacoma ports, and are feeling the worsening conditions in the trucking industry. Competition between truckers - nonunion and union - has increased as a result of the deregulation of the trucking industry instituted in 1979 by the Carter administration.

"I'm not really an owner - the truck owns me. I have no medical insurance; I have no money in my savings account; I have a five-acre farm that I can't support. That's why I'm in this for the duration," Darlene Raynolds, an owner- operator in the Eagle System, told the crowd at the rally. Most of the owner-operators can only work for one freight firm, such as Eagle, acting as their broker. Many of these companies won't allow truckers to go anywhere else even if there is no work at that firm. Truckers get paid by the load, no matter how much time they must wait to pick it up or unload it.

The National Labor Relations Board treats the owner- operators as businesses, exempt from the protection of labor laws. "I'm making the same money today as I did five years ago, but my costs have gone up 33 to 100 percent," said an operator who hauls for United Motor Freight. She said 90 percent of the owner-operators have no medical insurance.

The Teamsters are seeking a master agreement with the 50 trucking companies that bid on local container-shipping terminal work. The union will also target shipping lines and those who haul containers to and from the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe and Union Pacific railways.

The Teamsters are sponsoring Truck Rallies in Seattle on June 24 at 7:30 a.m., and in Tacoma on July 1 at 7:30 a.m. For more information contact Teamsters Local 174 at 1-800- 221-9952.

Toronto construction workers shut down sites
TORONTO - Some 2,000 drywall installers walked off the job May 1 after all housing construction contracts expired the day before, shutting down hundreds of residential construction sites throughout the Toronto area. They were joined two weeks later by 300 trim carpenters who together with the drywallers set up roving picket lines to shut down more than 200 residential construction sites. The strikers have also kept sites using nonunion labor from operating.

On June 4, at a meeting of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters-Drywall Acoustic Local 675, hundreds of workers voted down the latest employer offer by 82 percent. Three days before, some 3,500 member of Laborers' International Union Local 183 walked out against the contractors' paltry wage offer and their demand to lengthen the workweek. The strikers are residential house framers, drain workers, and low-rise concrete forming workers.

At the Local 675 meeting, striker Tony Loncar, who has been putting up drywall for 30 years, told the Militant, "They are offering nothing, very little." Their offer "amounts to just $25 more per house per man. That's three days' work putting up 10,000 square feet of board."

Lennox Niles, a drywaller for nine years, said, "We've been out almost five weeks and have lost $6,000. It is not worth it to go back now. The strike by Local 183 will help get the contractors back to the bargaining table."

A leaflet in English, Italian, Portuguese, and Czech, distributed at the Local 675 meeting, explained that the bosses are refusing to pay extra for work on corner beads, cathedral ceilings, showers, and pot lights. The drywallers are on a piece-work system slows them down, cutting take- home pay. Workers are demanding a rate of 17.5 cents a square foot, up from 14 cents. The drywallers have not had a raise in seven years.

The Local 183 strikers rejected an offer of a yearly 4 percent increase over three years. The bosses also demanded the workweek without overtime pay be extended to 48 hours from 44. The workers see this as a health and safety issue and rejected this demand.

Bobbis Misailides in Athens; Ian Grant and Jean-Louis Salfati, members of the Transport and General Workers' Union in London; Scott Breen, member of International Association of Machinists Local 751A in Seattle; and John Steele, member of IAM Local 2113 in Toronto, contributed to this column.  
 
 
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