Vol. 74/No. 7      February 22, 2010

Workers reporting for the 7:00 a.m. shift were blocked by managers and security guards reinforced by a phalanx of deputy sheriffs clad in riot gear. They were given their final paychecks, including accrued vacation pay.

The day before the lockout, ILWU Local 30 members rejected company demands that amount to a sweeping attack on the union. “After hours of analyzing and evaluating the contract, every one of the 500 workers at the meeting voted no,” union spokesman Craig Merrilees told the Los Angeles Times. The contract expired November 4.

A union fact sheet says that among company demands are “the power to convert full-time jobs, whenever management wants, into part-time positions,” the authority to arbitrarily “reduce employee pay” and the ability to “declare entire sections of the plant to be ‘nonunion’ areas where employees could be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.”

“I think the company had the impression we were going to roll over and let them feed us the poison,” Jim Freeman, 54, who has worked at the mine for 31 years, told the Times.

Signs all over town say, “We support the Borax miners. An injury to one is an injury to all.”

The workers have set up a round-the-clock picket at the mine gate. Rio Tinto bused in three busloads of scabs to take over operations along with management personnel on the first day of the lockout.

Boron, a town of 2,000 in the Mojave Desert, is about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The Rio Tinto mine is the second-largest borax mine in the world, producing about 40 percent of the world’s refined borates, used in many products from high-definition TVs to laundry detergent.

Company officials state they need contract changes to stay competitive in the global market. ILWU Local 30 executive director Jeri Lee said mine workers earn $18 to $29.30 per hour. Company spokesperson Susan Keefe said the company’s primary competitor pays mine workers in Turkey about $9.70 per hour.

The ILWU’s paper the Dispatcher reported that the union invited leaders of the Mine Workers’ Union of Turkey to sit in at negotiations with the company on Local 30’s contract. “Rio Tinto officials insulted the Turks,” the paper said, “stormed out of the meeting, and accused Local 30 of hosting ‘competitors from Turkey.’”

A contingent from ILWU Local 20 in Wilmington, which organizes workers at the Rio Tinto facility in the Los Angeles area, also attended the meeting today. A range of activities seeking solidarity are planned along with a weekly march by workers from the union hall to the plant gate.
 
 
Related articles:
Houston janitors prepare contract fight
Montreal newspaper workers press fight against media giant  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home