The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.65/No.7            February 19, 2001 
 
 
Workers at Royal laundry make gains in union fight
(front page)
 
BY LISA POTASH AND LISA-MARIE ROTTACH  
CHICAGO--Workers at Royal Airlines Laundries in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco have taken a step bringing them closer to winning their fight for union recognition. Representatives of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) and Royal met at the end of January, the first meeting after five months of a UNITE organizing drive at these laundries. Royal specializes in cleaning and repackaging linens, blankets, and headphones for the airline industry. Some of its largest customers are United, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, and TWA airlines.

Royal has now handed UNITE a list of employees at these locations. The list will assist the union in its work of contacting these workers. Royal also agreed to meet again with the union in early February.

The union had organized a number of actions in various cities over the last several months in support of the Royal workers' fight to unionize. Among those union members who have brought solidarity to several such actions are workers at Hart, Schaffner and Marx, a large UNITE- organized men's suit plant a mile from Royal in Des Plaines, Illinois.  
 
Workers sign up for union
At that Royal facility approximately 65 percent of the 88 workers have signed cards in support of union recognition. Key issues facing the mostly Latino workforce involve safety conditions--including the extreme heat--the use of harsh chemicals, incomplete overtime payment, and low wages.

This organizing drive comes on the heels of a successful strike at Five Star Hotel Laundry in Chicago in July and August of last year. Through their six-week-long stoppage, workers won union recognition and a contract.

In March 1999, some 1,200 workers at 15 Chicago-area laundries also voted in UNITE. In September 1999 they signed their first contract at 13 of those laundries that provided some protection against the companies' use of the workers' immigration status to threaten to fire and discipline them, including a stipulation that the bosses must notify the union if Immigration and Naturalization Service agents contact the company.

Workers also gained medical coverage for their families, a modest wage increase, and participation in the National Textile Pension Fund.

The Five Star Hotel Laundry workers won a similar contract. Approximately 80 percent of the workforce in the industrial laundry industry in the Chicago area is now organized by UNITE. Chicago laundry workers join more than 20,000 UNITE workers in this industry nationwide.

Lisa Potash and Lisa-Marie Rottach are sewing machine operators and members of UNITE in Chicago.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home