Contract negotiations between the union and the company are scheduled to resume April 16 for the first time since the end of February. Strikers are demanding a pension plan and protesting low wage levels and poor working conditions. They have been on strike since March 8.

UNITE members at Hollander's plant in Frackville, Pennsylvania, have begun contract negotiations since the current pact expires at the end of April. In addition, UNITE members who work at the Hollander plant in Tignall, Georgia, continue to honor a picket line of strikers from here. Production in that plant has been shut down since March 13.

Strikers report that the number of union members crossing the picket lines has not gone up much over the last two weeks. Pickets estimate that about 50 unionists have returned to work at the Boyle Street plant and about a dozen have done so at the Seville plant. The overwhelming majority of the 450 workers at the two plants remain on strike and keep picket lines up six days a week.

On April 7 Linda Chavez-Thompson, the AFL-CIO's executive vice president, addressed strikers on the sidewalk outside the Seville Avenue plant. "I am here to tell you that the AFL-CIO supports you and we are prepared to help in any way we can," said Chavez-Thompson. Strikers responded with chants, including, "Somos mucho, seremos mas!" (We're a lot and we're going to be more!)

Three days earlier Vernon police had arrested several strikers and a union organizer at the plant. They were charged with trespassing for violating an injunction won by the company restricting the number of pickets to five at the entrance to the company's parking lot. A similar injunction was imposed during the first week of the strike but was lifted a few days later. Strikers explained they had not been informed of the new injunction.

Striker Marta Bonilla was one of those arrested. The police "asked if I was afraid to go to jail," she said. "I said no. And after getting arrested, I returned to the picket line even more determined." The most serious charges, of assault and battery, were made against union organizer Carlos Cordon.

Meanwhile, the strike continues to win support from other workers in the area. UNITE members are invited to speak at union meetings of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the National Association of Letter Carriers. Hollander strikers had earlier joined a March 28 IAM picket line organized at the airport by workers demanding a contract at United Airlines.  
 
Los Angeles sewing industry
The Hollander plant is one of the few organized by a union in the industria de costura [sewing industry] here.

A majority of the striking workers are sewing machine operators. Operators comprise about 80 percent of the 320 production workers at Hollander's Boyle Street plant and 30 percent of the 127 production workers at the Seville Avenue plant. Union officials say UNITE organizes about 2,000 workers in the Los Angeles area, including a Kmart distribution warehouse in Carson and other workers outside the garment or textile industry.

California is the largest garment manufacturing state in the country, employing more than 140,000 workers, the majority of whom are immigrants and women. The industry is also the second largest manufacturing employer in the state. Companies employing fewer than 50 workers account for more than 94 percent of the industry. Of the 19 sewing shops in the state that employ 500 or more workers, 16 are located in Los Angeles county.

In nonunion shops workers usually receive no health benefits and have little control over wages and hours. The Spanish-language daily La Opinión runs ads for sewing machine operators, a handful of which announce "We pay the minimum [wage]" as a selling point for the factory--a not-so-subtle acknowledgment that other employers do not.

Some nonunion workers have been attracted to the strike. Jesus, a sewing machine operator from a garment factory that employs 300 people in the nearby city of Gardena, stopped by the picket line with two friends after work one day. After shaking hands with several pickets he said he had heard about the strike from a friend who works there. "I wish you luck and I know that what you're doing is important for people like me," he told the union members.

A Cambodian-born sewing machine operator and two co-workers employed at a plant in nearby Carson visited the picket line another morning before they went to work.

Nan Bailey is a garment worker.  
 
 
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