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HUNTINGTON, West Virginia - The 840 members of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 40 are on strike against Inco Alloys, an alloy steel producer here. The strike began December 12. "We want to guarantee our people's pension and job security," Local 40 vice president Randy Moore told the Militant. Currently, workers receive a pension of $33 a month per year of service, plus a $22 a month supplement for workers who retire before they are eligible for Social Security benefits. The company refuses to put this in the contract, Moore said.
The company also refuses to guarantee union recognition if the plant is sold. In October, Inco was bought out by Special Metals Corp., and many workers suspect the plant may be sold again. Contracting-out of jobs is another dispute.
The walkout at Inco is the latest in a series of labor battles in this part of the Ohio River valley, including the just-victorious strike at MSI in Marietta, Ohio, and the ongoing strike at Monarch Rubber in Spencer, West Virginia. The strikers at Inco have linked up with these fighters, including unionists from Ravenswood, West Virginia, where steelworkers won a fight to defend their union in 1990-92 against Ravenswood Aluminum Corp.
"We're one of the biggest unions in the area," said Local 40 recording secretary Rick Jordan. "If they snooker us, where will it end?" He pointed to the upcoming contract at Steel of West Virginia, a Huntington mini-mill, and reported that Local 40 has made its strike headquarters available to unionists there. Other contracts in the area are also coming up this spring, including at Ravenswood.
The strike headquarters is a center of activity, with a kitchen serving hot meals for pickets and a well-stocked food pantry that supplies groceries for strikers and their families. A barber shop was set up with free haircuts donated by a supporter on the day that we visited. The kitchen and pantry are organized by the Women's Support Group and stocked by contributions from area merchants, unions, and workers said activist Misty Adkins.
The Women's Support Group is patterned on the Ravenswood Women's Support Group, which is still active backing workers struggles in the area. Other union committees organize everything from firewood for the picket shacks, to contact with the police, to reaching out to the community.
USWA Local 40 can be reached at: (304) 525-3611; or write to: 712-716 Buffington Street, Huntington, WV 25702.
Striking bus drivers get contract in Ontario
HAMILTON, Ontario - After a three-month strike against
Hamilton Streetcar Railway (HSR), bus drivers and maintenance
workers voted overwhelmingly to go back to work here on
January 19. They are members of the Amalgamated Transit Union
(ATU) Local 107.
With the new contract, the company will now contribute dollar for dollar the equivalent of the union's contributions to the pension fund. Before, HSR had refused to make any contribution. Another major issue of contracting out routes was dropped from the final agreement. The employers only withdrew the demand of contracting out an hour before union members met to vote on the contract. Workers will also receive a 4 percent wage increase over three years. The contract was approved with 87 percent in favor.
Under the new contract, "new hires will be guaranteed a run- time of 70 hours minimum over a two week period. For the older drivers it will remain at 80 hours guaranteed," said Biswas Ramessur, an ATU mechanic. The contract also introduces a graduated wage scale for new hires. Ramessur saw the outcome as a victory.
During the strike, ATU members organized a rally at city hall in November and successfully preventing an Internet cafe owner from organizing private transit service for customers. The strikers also received support from the Toronto bus drivers. "We are very grateful for the solidarity from Toronto's ATU Local 113," declared striker Dave Mercer. Local 113 donated enough money to the strikers so that they could each receive $20 more on their strike pay every week. The Toronto Transit Commission workers' own contract will expire in March 1999.
Calvin Klein warehouse workers fight shutdown
NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts - "I don't care if we win or
lose, but they are not leaving quietly," declared Julie
Mello, a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial
Textile and Employees (UNITE) and a worker at Calvin Klein
Jeans. She was coming out of her union meeting on January 20,
where they discussed the announcement of the closing of the
plant.
At work on January 5, all employees received a letter from the Chief Operating Officer at Warnaco Group, the parent company of Calvin Klein, telling them the plant would be closed. Some 230 people work at the plant and most are in the union. Since Warnaco bought Calvin Klein two years ago they have closed facilities around the country and moved them to a nonunion facility in New Jersey.
A week before the union meeting UNITE initiated an "Open letter to Linda Wachner, the Warnaco Corporation and Calvin Klein Jeanswear," and asked people to sign it. More than 2,000 people signed the "Open letter" by the time of the union meeting. Mello described how she stood in front of a store for an hour and a half and collected nearly 350 signatures.
The letter ends, "Your decision is motivated by little more than greed. It is corporate America at its worst. We will stand with our neighbors in their fight to save their jobs."
The day the union meeting took place a local radio talk show host said workers at Calvin Klein Jeans should offer to work for $5 an hour to keep the plant in New Bedford. At the union meeting, workers reported the union announced a bus would be going to New York the next day to meet with representatives from Warnaco.
Rhode Island hospital workers return to work
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island -At 7:00 a.m. January 20, over 200
members of New England Health Care Employees Union, District
1199, walked back into Women's and Infants Hospital together.
They had been locked out since December 23, the day after the
1,100 members of the union staged a one-day walkout in
support of their negotiating committee. Their contract
expired at the end of November.
The union's position is the old contract is in effect while they continue to negotiate a new one. The Providence Journal that morning reported the hospital has said contract changes they were seeking, including a wage freeze, would apply to the returning workers.
Cheryl Ross, a member of the negotiating committee who has worked at the hospital over 30 years said, "We have a contract. We don't work under proposals. The only reason we are going back in is to take care of our patients."
In a letter passed out to the members of the union as they prepared to walk back in, local vice president Stan Israel and Barbara Cotta, a union organizer, pointed to the hospital's "unilateral changes in our working conditions and ...discriminating against some of our leaders." The letter concluded, "Unfortunately, we will probably have to use our right to strike in the near future."
A dozen workers who were not scheduled to work that morning came out to be with their co-workers as they walked back in. Among them was Ann Marie DoVidio, a nurse who has worked six years at the hospital. When asked what she thought the union had gained so far in the fight against the hospital she explained, "We're more unified. We got to know people from other departments, other shifts. We could hear what was happening in the other areas."
Matthew Herreshoff, a member of the United Transportation Union in Cleveland; Vicky Mercier, a member of Canadian Auto Workers Local 1285 in Toronto; and Ted Leonard, a member of UNITE Local 311 in Boston, contributed to this column.