We need all the help we can get. If we cannot get this thing organized it will destroy the Teamsters in five years. Could you do some coverage of the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers' fight against this capitalist enemy that is out to smash the union?

Edward Stephens
Kansas City, Missouri
 
 
Victory against railroad
One point regarding the lawsuit reported by Brian Williams in the February 26 issue on the fight to end Burlington Northern Railroad's use of genetic testing to deny claims for carpal tunnel was that it was the Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees (BMWE), the track workers union, who actually forced the issue.

Gary Avary, a track maintenance man with Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) in Alma, Nebraska, for 27 years, had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome last September. "It used to be there were enough workers that we could trade off and get a rest from the vibration," he explained in an article posted on the BMWE web site. With fewer workers, we just keep working, and the equipment keeps vibrating."

In the months after the surgery, Avary received several certified letters from the company for mandatory "further testing." Avary's wife Janice, a registered nurse, became suspicious and called the BMWE's attorney. When Gary refused to provide blood for the testing, he was charged by the company with insubordination and rules violations. As a result of Janice's inquiries the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed their lawsuit. At the same time the BMWE filed a similar lawsuit against BNSF and Athena Diagnostics, a commercial genetic-testing laboratory.

Janice Avary later said, "I had absolutely no idea what my phone calls were going to lead to. We are just normal people who want to do a good job in our work and enjoy our family. We had no idea we were going to be writing history for so many people." Gary Avary explained, "I have always watched out for the other men working around me, but I never thought we would be put in this position."

The Federal Railroad Administration is now investigating why the BNSF, which employs 40,000 people, has reported zero cases of carpal tunnel syndrome over the past five years. The company later disclosed that 125 workers filed carpal tunnel claims last year.

Bill Kalman
Albany, California
 
 
Enjoyed article on Mexico
I enjoyed the article "Mexican president probes shift in energy and land ownership" in the February 26 Militant and am looking forward to getting it around at the Swift plant where I work in Marshalltown, Iowa--a plant with a large number of Mexican workers. I thought other readers might be interested in some of the discussions I've had with these workers about newly elected Mexican president Vicente Fox.

Many told me they have great hope that Fox represents the kind of "strong hand" that will be needed to take on problems like government corruption and complicity in drug trafficking. This has led to some good discussions on how real social changes can only take place as the result of millions of hands in struggle--as was the case with the Cuban revolution--and not through the actions of individual strong men like Fox or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

One co-worker told me that Fox's promise to create more jobs by further opening the country to U.S. investment meant that "Mexican workers will have to start building stronger unions."

Pete Seidman
Des Moines, Iowa

 
The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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