Vol. 79/No. 3      February 2, 2015

Help make this column a voice of workers’ resistance!
This column is dedicated to spreading the truth about the labor resistance that is unfolding today. It seeks to give voice to those engaged in battle and help build solidarity. Its success depends on input from readers. If you are involved in a labor struggle or have information on one, please contact me at 306 W. 37th St., 13th Floor, New York, NY 10018; or (212) 244-4899; or themilitant@mac.com. We’ll work together to ensure your story is told.

— Maggie Trowe

London bus drivers strike to end pay disparity
LONDON — Some 20,000 bus drivers, members of the UNITE union, carried out a 24-hour strike here Jan. 13 demanding an end to disparities in pay from the 18 companies that operate bus lines. According to UNITE, there are 80 different pay scales among drivers, with starting pay ranging from £9.30 to £12.34 per hour ($14.10 to $18.75).

There were picket lines at 70 depots across the city, affecting all but 40 of the 670 routes, according to BBC News. Each day 6.5 million bus trips are made.

At a picket line at the Tower Transit depot in Westbourne Park, Abdul Hanafi, a union steward, described how Tower Transit bosses have attacked the union in retaliation for raising grievances over contract violations. “They closed the [on-site] union desk and tried to stop me from consulting with my colleagues,” he said. “This started out over terms and conditions, but it’s now about defending the union.”

Strikers were passing around a letter of solidarity to UNITE from the Swedish municipal workers union Kommunal.

“You could say I have the least incentive to strike, since I’m at the top rate,” said Graham Herbert at the Bow garage, “but I see this as a platform for all drivers.”

The bosses have not yet agreed to contract talks. “This will take patience. It will be a drawn-out fight,” said driver Mohammed Sadiq.

— Ögmundur Jónsson

Vancouver port truckers fight to defend strike gains
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Close to 600 Vancouver port truckers met Jan. 11 in nearby Surrey to organize a fight for the implementation of the agreement they won at the end of a four-week strike last March.

The strike united some 1,500 union and nonunion port truckers who won significant raises for hourly paid truck drivers, and a rate hike and compensation for waiting time for owner-operators who are paid by the load.

However, that hard-won victory is under attack. Under newly announced rates bosses will pay owner-operators $50 for hauling a container less than three miles one way, not $112 as promised.

“They haven’t lived up to the agreement that ended the strike,” driver Randy Harpreet told the Militant. “The federal and provincial governments, the port and the trucking companies are cheating us.”

“Drivers should be paid by the hour, not by the trip,” Manny Dhillon, spokesperson for the United Truckers Association, said in a Jan. 13 phone interview. Up to 80 percent of employed drivers are being paid $40 a trip rather than by the hour.

“Since some trips can take three or four hours,” he said, “they may only make $10 to $13 an hour,” far less than the $25.13 per hour minimum set in the March agreement.

Truckers also oppose the government plan to cut the number of trucks licensed by the port by 25 to 40 percent, canceling all existing trucking licenses and requiring drivers to reapply.

“Companies get to choose whose licenses are cut,” Dhillon said. “It should be by seniority.”

“We have to stick together,” driver Inderjit Lally said. “We need to be prepared to strike again.”

— Steve Penner and Ned Dmytryshyn

Canada: Locked-out rail workers fight workforce cuts, overtime
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Southern Railway of British Columbia Jan. 5 locked out the 126 members of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 7000 who operate this short-haul rail service over 60 miles of track in southern British Columbia. The unionists voted 91 percent against the company’s final offer at the end of December. The rail workers organized flying pickets. Other port unions are honoring their picket lines.

Safety is a central issue. Southern Railway has cut the workforce and lengthened the workday with mandatory overtime.

“For the last year they have been forcing people to work seven days a week,” conductor Aaron Cruikshank, a picket captain, told the Militant Jan. 16. “Track maintenance workers are being told if they don’t work 16 hours, they’ll contract out their work. It’s all about the bottom line, not about safety.”

The bosses have reduced the workforce, but not the workload, Local 7000 President Bill Magri told the Militant in a phone interview Jan. 12. “In 2010, we had 178 members. In 2015, we have 126. We’re doing more work with 52 fewer people.”

The company’s proposal for a two-tier pay and benefit structure “will weaken the union,” mechanic Dan Tower said. “It’s the thin edge of the wedge.”

Magri said the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Teamsters have refused to cross the rail workers’ picket lines.

That solidarity is having an impact. A ship laden with Asian cars had to travel to Seattle to off-load, forcing the company to pay to truck the vehicles up the coast.

Southern Railway of British Columbia’s six office workers, members of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union Local 378, joined the locked-out workers on the picket line.

— Katy LeRougetel and Steve Penner

Airport workers across U.S. rally to demand higher pay
ATLANTA — “I’ve worked here eight years and all I’m making is $8 an hour,” Kathy Howard, a cleaner at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport, told the Militant at a Jan. 15 airport protest here. “I put out a petition to get a union.”

Some 75 union members, supporters, fast-food workers and several airport workers marched through the terminal chanting and carrying signs reading, “Airport Workers Fight for $15: Poverty Wages Don’t Fly.” There were actions at airports in several other cities on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday that day.

“It’s very hard not to know if you’re going to have money for your daughter,” Gian Lopez, 22, a baggage handler at LaGuardia Airport in New York, told Reuters. Lopez said he earns $9 an hour and depends on food stamps and rental assistance to support his family.

Actions supported by the Service Employees International Union brought out some 200 people at LaGuardia, about 100 in Philadelphia and a few hundred at Newark Liberty International Airport.

— Janice Lynn  
 
 
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