The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 26           July 11, 2005  
 
 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
July 11, 1980
NEW ORLEANS—The 1980 aluminum industry contract, signed May 30, offers a grim example of union retreat in an industry enjoying record profits.

The three-year package negotiated by the United Steelworkers of America and the smaller Aluminum Workers International Union covers Alcoa, Reynolds, and Kaiser, the big three aluminum companies in the United States. Smaller companies generally agree to similar contract terms.

The first news aluminum workers got came in a company flyer announcing a “substantial settlement” at the Miami, Florida, negotiations.

Aluminum workers in the Steelworkers union do not have the right to ratify our contract; it is decided by top union officials.

The new contract provides wage increases of twenty-five cents in the first year, twenty cents in the second, and fifteen cents in the third. This is less than 2 percent a year.  
 
July 11, 1955
Another advance for unionism was chalked up by Southern workers as the three-month strike of Greyhound bus drivers in ten Southern states and the District of Columbia ended victoriously. In Miami, Florida, and in Louisiana, however, bitter strikes by AFL hotel workers and CIO Sugar refinery workers continued.

The Southern bus drivers’ victory has resulted in the first union contract for the Greyhound company in this area.

In the feudal sugar baronies only a short distance from New Orleans, 1,500 Negro and white members of the CIO Packinghouse Workers have reached the three-month mark in their strikes against the Godchaux and Colonial Sugar companies. Company agents scoured the countryside for as far away as 200 miles in a scab recruiting campaign. Although they have succeeded to a limited extent in this dirty business, it has by no means broken the strike.  
 
July 12, 1930
The Supreme Court of California last week refused to recommend the release of Warren K. Billings, working class fighter who is serving a life sentence in the most notorious anti-labor frame-up that American history redolent with these crimes of capitalism has known for decades. Because Billings has been in prison before for his labor activities, the “governor cannot act on a pardon” until the Supreme Court makes a “favorable” recommendation.

The frame-up against [Tom] Mooney and Billings is one of the most dastardly monstrosities of American capitalist class justice. In the 13 years of their imprisonment, exhaustive investigation has proved to the hilt that they were tried in the most prejudiced atmosphere and convicted on the basis of corrupted, perjured evidence, bought and paid for by the manufacturing and industrial interests of the State.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home