Participating in a rally of 200 striking workers and their families, Jorge Beltrán said in an interview, "The strike is not about money. It’s about safety issues and work rule changes. When I started 13 years ago in the distribution department, we had three- and four-man crews. Now they want to reduce it to one person. If you are working in a hole and you get gassed, you could pass out, and if there is no one there to help you, you could die."

Beltrán added, "They also want to get rid of union jobs in the clerical and storeroom positions. They want to freeze people at entry-level pay while forcing them to take on the workload of the experienced mechanics, and eliminate overtime pay for Saturdays."

A fact sheet distributed by the striking local states, "Peoples Gas has made almost $100 million in profit for the first six months of its fiscal year so far--up almost 15 percent from the previous period last year."

William Ocasio, alderman for the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood where the rally took place, told the demonstrators, "They’ve refused to meet with the union and they’re putting the city of Chicago at risk, forcing office employees to do work they are not trained for. They’ve sent letters to each union member asking them to resign from the union. How arrogant can a company be?"

Peoples Gas has recently come under fire for cutting off the gas service for tens of thousands of customers who could not pay their bills after a winter of record high gas prices.

Tom Brennan, the business manager of Local 18007, told the rally that his parents, who are in their 80s, have paid their Peoples Gas bills regularly for the last 60 years, but because they were unable to meet the high bills this winter they recently received a notice saying, "Pay up now or be disconnected."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home