—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Baluchistan coal miners fight for rights, safety, higher pay

Some 60,000 coal miners in the Baluchistan region of southwestern Pakistan launched a countrywide campaign March 7 to win higher wages and improved safety conditions, just days after at least seven miners died in a mine explosion in the Duki area coalfields. Unsafe conditions, including high levels of methane gas in the region’s mines have killed hundreds of miners.

With no rescue facility nearby, some 15 workers from other mines rushed to the mine where the explosion took place. One volunteer died from suffocation from methane inhalation, bringing the death toll to eight. Some 14 other miners were also injured.

The National Labour Federation, which announced the miners’ campaign, will hold a convention in Lahore March 10 to press for greater safety measures in the mines, federation leader Shamsur Rehman Swati told the Associated Press of Pakistan.

“Coal miners die every day at the hands of tyrant masters,” Fazal Huda, a miner in Duki, said after the recent explosion. According to the Frontier Post, most miners working in the Duki area of Baluchistan are Afghan nationals.

—Sharon Lassen

Part-time university instructors organize national protests

CLEVELAND — On the first “National Adjunct Walkout Day” Feb. 25, part-time instructors in higher education, some of their students and other unionists participated in teach-ins, rallies and other actions to protest low pay and lack of benefits. Adjuncts at Seattle University, San Francisco Art Institute and the University of Arizona organized walkouts.

The action came after a series of union-organizing victories by adjuncts over the last couple of years, including at Boston University, Tufts, Hamline University in Minnesota, Georgetown University, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and Seattle University.

In Ohio part-time faculty passed out buttons imprinted with the scarlet letter A+ (for “Adjuncts Add”) and circulated flyers at Cleveland State University, Cuyahoga Community College, John Carroll University, Kent State University, Ohio University, Ohio State University and University of Cincinnati.

“Over the last 15 to 20 years colleges and universities have moved toward a corporate model of ‘just-in-time’ education by resorting to part-time instructors,” Andrew Bonthius, co-chair of the Tri-C Part-Time Faculty Association at Cuyahoga Community College, told the Militant Feb. 25.

—David Wilder