Vol. 70/No. 39
October 16, 2006
On the Picket Line
San Francisco: hotel workers win contract
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Militant/Lea Sherman
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SAN FRANCISCO—Hotel workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 2, overwhelmingly approved a new five-year pact on September 22 covering more than 4,200 workers at 13 area hotels. The agreement eliminates the employers’ demand for two-tier health benefits. Non-tipped workers will get a raise of $3 an hour over the next three years. Some 1,500 hotel workers (above) rallied in front of the Palace Hotel here August 31 as part of their fight for a new contract. The unionists had been fighting the San Francisco Multi-Employers Group’s concessionary demands for the past two years.
—BETSEY STONE
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Filipino sailors docked
in California win back pay
Eighteen Filipino sailors on strike September 7-10 on a ship docked at the Port of Long Beach in California, won a total of $227,000 in back pay and flights back to their home country at company expense. The ship’s crew members refused to work or sail after an inspection by the International Transport Workers Federation showed they were owed more than $300,000 in back pay, according to wire services.
The strike settlement also includes providing each crew member with letters of indemnity promising that they will not be blacklisted from future sailing jobs. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union supported the Filipino workers throughout their strike, refusing to load cargo on the ship as it sat in its berth.
—Brian Williams
Voortman Cookies workers
strike plant in Ontario
TORONTO—More than 230 workers at Voortman Cookies, members of Local 264 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, are striking the Burlington, Ontario, plant here in a fight for decent wage increases. On September 16 the workers voted 164-32 to walk out. They had been without a contract since June 1. The average wage is Can$14 an hour (US$12.54) at the plant, lowest among the three biggest cookie manufacturers in Canada, according to striking workers.
The last strike at Voortman Cookies lasted three days 21 years ago, but “we’re stronger now,” union members on the picket line added in a chorus. Workers have been receiving donations of food and firewood from the Teachers Union and workers at the adjacent Stelwire plant.
—Robert Simms
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