Vol. 74/No. 8      March 1, 2010

The results of an election by workers at Continental Airlines were announced February 12. About 4,100 of some 7,600 eligible voters voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union.

The fleet service workers join 3,600 Continental mechanics who have been Teamsters for 12 years. Flight attendants and pilots at the company are also unionized.

Workers had unsuccessfully attempted to organize a union five times since 1998. Their efforts have been made harder by the 1926 Railway Act, which applies to them and other transportation workers. Under the antiworker law, a union must obtain a majority of eligible voters. Those who don’t vote are counted as voting against the union.

In 2008 workers fell 314 short of the needed majority.

“We’re finally going to get the respect, dignity, and the power that we deserve out there on the ramp,” Reginald Robinson, a ramp worker, told the Houston Chronicle.

—Doug Nelson

Canada nickel miners
strike in its 7th month
MONTREAL—Striking nickel miners, members of United Steelworkers Local 6500, mobilized amid subzero temperatures in the early morning of February 10 to block access to the Copper Cliff Smelter Complex and a number of mines owned by Vale Inco in the Sudbury, Ontario, region.

The strike by more than 3,000 workers began July 13 and is now into its seventh month. Vale Inco bosses have been trying to restart production using management, nonunion staff, unionized office and technical employees, and replacement workers. Vale Inco sent its first shipment of nickel matte to its refinery in Wales at the beginning of February.

Steelworkers members are also on strike at Vale Inco’s Port Colbourne, Ontario, refinery. Another 120 strikers at the company’s Voisey Bay facility in Newfoundland who have been on strike for six months voted unanimously February 11 to again reject the company’s concessions demands and maintain their strike.

Vale Inco’s final offer demands takeaways from the workers’ pensions, cost-of-living allowance, and the production bonus system. It also undermines job security through contracting-out provisions.

The strike is having an impact on Vale Inco’s bottom line. The company’s financial records show that hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost in revenue and hundreds of millions more incurred in extra costs because of the strike.

—Annette Kouri and John Steele

Strikers win wage increase
in Myanmar industrial zone
Three strikes in Myanmar (Burma) captured the attention of the government and the media there. They involve 3,600 workers and took place in the country’ largest industrial area where some 50,000-70,000 workers are employed at more than 400 factories.

About 1,400 workers at the Opal 2/Mya Fashion factory walked off the job at lunchtime February 8 demanding wage increases of 10,000 kyat ($10) per month, a reduction in the 16-hour work day, and cleaner working and eating facilities.

The following day, the strike spread to two other nearby factories. Some 1,700 workers at the Tai Yee Footwear factory staged a sit-in demanding increases in wages and overtime pay and time off for government holidays. Several hundred workers at Kya Lay garment factory struck over similar demands.

The three factories are located in Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial area seven miles from the country’s largest city and former capital, Yangon. Most of the strikers, and the country’s factory workers in general, are young women.

The military government responded by deploying fire engines, prison vans, and dozens of trucks full of riot cops armed with assault rifles to surround the area February 9. Organizations of workers and farmers not under direct control of the government have been banned in Myanmar since 1962.

Out of fear the strike would continue to spread, other nearby factories closed for Union Day February 10, a patriotic holiday unrelated to labor.

That day workers at Opal 2/Mya Fashion ended their strike after the bosses agreed to a 5,000 kyat per month raise, reported Irrawaddy, a news magazine published by Burmese exiles in Thailand.

Tai Yee workers followed up a day later with another sit-in strike and a list of demands that include a 200 percent wage increase.

—Doug Nelson
 
 
Related articles:
Washington State: Thousands protest cutbacks  
 
 
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