The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 15           April 17, 2006  
 
 
On the Picket Line
 
Auto workers in Ontario
end two-week strike
ST. THOMAS, Ontario—At a March 25 meeting here more than 2,000 members of Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) Local 1001 voted by a more than 90 percent margin to end their two-week strike against Sterling Trucks and accept a new three-year contract. Workers had walked out March 10 after the company stalled on issues around wages, job security, time off, and benefits. Sterling Trucks is owned by Freightliner. This was the local’s second strike since being organized in 2002. The first walkout involved a successful fight to eliminate the temporary worker classification that covered one-third of the workforce.

—Annette Kouri  
 
New York sanitation workers
strike over health-care cuts
BROOKLYN, New York—“It’s going on all across America,” said Teamsters Local 813 member Robert Ohlsson April 4 on the second day of a walkout at Waste Management Inc. (WMI). “We just can’t make it like this,” he said of the concessions on health coverage the company imposed on workers after the contract expired in November.

Pickets explain that the 120 sanitation truck drivers and helpers in New York and about 85 Teamsters in Washington, D.C., went on strike because the bosses’ change in the health plan will cost them about $300 per month. The Tuesday-Saturday workweek demanded by the company will cost workers another $105 per week in lost overtime pay, said local president Sylvester Needham.

The company has about 10,000 commercial accounts in the New York area, including the Sheraton Hotel, and Shea and Yankee stadiums.

—Michael Italie  
 
Teachers in Detroit stage
‘sick-out’ to protest pay cuts
DETROIT—Some 1,500 teachers staged a “sick-out” March 22, closing 54 public schools here for the day. The action came on the day teachers were to “loan” one day’s work without pay as part of the administration’s cost-cutting measures. The Board of Education promises it will pay teachers back next year. The Detroit Federation of Teachers last year agreed to “loan” the board five days in face of demands for a 10 percent pay cut. While teachers in Detroit have not received any pay raise for the last three years, on February 9 the school board voted a pay increase for school principals and administrators.

—Marshall Lambie  
 
Since copper strike in Arizona
more workers join union
KEARNY, Arizona—“You’re only as safe as your union is strong,” said G. Kelly Hunt, a heavy equipment operator for 34 years who is safety chairman of United Steelworkers Local 5252 at the Asarco Mine here. Some 1,500 copper workers at Asarco operations in Arizona and Texas went through a four-month strike last year to defeat a union-busting move by the company. Asarco sought to cut wages by $4 to $5 per hour, make huge cuts in medical coverage, do away with pensions for new hires, and freeze pensions for the rest of the workforce. Strikers returned to work under the existing contract, which was extended until Dec. 31, 2006.

Since the strike, Hunt said that a large percentage of the new hires are becoming union members. Arizona is an open shop state, so workers must sign up individually to join the union. “Many come up even before their 90 day probation is over and ask about joining the union,” Hunt said. He said he tells new workers, “Nothing you are getting on this job was or will be given to you by the company. It was all won by the union.”

—Wendy Lyons
 
 
Related articles:
Largest U.S. auto parts maker, Delphi, to void union contracts  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home