—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Minneapolis janitors fight retaliatory firings after strike

MINNEAPOLIS — Four janitors were fired in retaliation for striking for higher wages, medical benefits and paid sick leave. They were among some 50 who walked off the job June 9 and rallied in front of downtown Macy’s here, in front of the Best Buy shareholders’ meeting in Richfield and at other locations.

Alicia Yopihua, Romualdo Romero, Julio Romero and Demecio Romero — all related — worked for a subcontractor of ROC Commercial Cleaning and have eight years experience cleaning auto dealerships in nearby Wayzata. The day of the strike their employer told them it had lost its contract with ROC.

Demecio Romero had told a rally in St. Paul during the strike, “ROC is threatening to take retaliation against us when we go back to the dealerships that we clean. That’s not OK.”

The Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (Center of Workers United in Struggle), the Twin Cities-based advocacy group that has been organizing retail cleaning workers, filed a complaint against ROC with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging unfair treatment. Supporters are asked to call Lexus of Wayzata at (952) 476-6111 and Village Chevrolet at (952) 473-5444 to protest the firings. Contributions can be made by going to www.bit.ly/Romerofamily.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha is organizing delegations of workers and their supporters to visit the dealerships and other companies that use ROC cleaners.

—Helen Meyers

Massachusetts home care workers win $15 an hour

BOSTON — “When we fight, we win,” chanted 150 home care workers and their supporters here June 30 on the steps of the state Capitol. The workers, members of Service Employees International Union Local 1199, were celebrating an agreement reached days earlier with the state that would raise their starting wage to $15 an hour by July 2018.

The 35,000 home care workers currently start at $13.38 an hour. They will get an immediate 30-cent raise.

The attendants bathe, cook for, and run errands for elderly and disabled clients who qualify for Medicaid.

“We are coming for you McDonald’s, Walmart, Massport and we are going to get $15,” Veronica Turner, an SEIU executive vice president, told the rally.

“I’m inspired to be in this fight” for $15 an hour and a union, Kyle King, a fast-food worker at Burger King, said at the rally.

“We won the union!” Yan Mei Lei told those gathered. Earlier that day workers at Medical Resources Home Health Corp., who are home care workers, learned from the National Labor Relations Board that they had won the election recognizing 1199SEIU as their collective bargaining agent.

The Newton-based company has eight offices across the state and employs about 250 home care workers, the majority Chinese-born.

Speaking after the rally to the Militant through a translator, Yan Mei Lei, who has been working for four years at Medical Resources, said she had never been in a union before. She fought for the union because “I knew we needed to have unity to win.”

—Ted Leonard

Washington farmworkers strike on first day of blueberry season

MT. VERNON, Wash. — On the first day of the blueberry harvest, farmworkers July 1 struck Sakuma Brothers Farms in the Skagit Valley of Washington, angry over a new pay scale and starting times staggered 15 minutes apart over a three-hour period.

“We think Sakuma is retaliating against us by separating us so we can’t communicate as a group about the new pay scale,” farmworker Benito López Torrez said. Two years ago workers at Sakuma Farms formed Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent union, in the course of several strikes for better pay and working conditions.

“On Wednesday we all went on strike,” farmworker Tomás Ramón told the Militant in an interview at the United Steelworkers hall here where Familias Unidas meets. “Nobody went to work. There were about 200 of us.”

The company said the staggered start times were for one day only, to make communication with the workers easier. The next day about half the workforce struck again.

“We left work because they didn’t want to pay the price per pound we were asking for,” said Ramón. “About 100 of us protested in the street. Then the vice president of Familias Unidas arrived, and we went with him to speak with the manager of Sakuma Farms about a union contract. They didn’t want to talk with us about that. According to them everyone is making a lot of money, everyone is happy. They say people are making $33 an hour. But that is not true.” The company responded by calling the County Sheriff’s office.

The union wants breaks, paid overtime and an end to piece rate. The company responded with a sliding hourly pay scale depending on how much a worker picks per hour.

“They are demanding a minimum of 35 pounds of blueberries per hour to make $10 an hour. If you don’t do that you get a warning. Not many can pick that. They fired four workers in the strawberries for not picking the minimum,” said Ramón.

He added that the company demanded a minimum of 50 pounds per hour of the strawberry pickers. “To pick strawberries you work on your knees. In this heat it is very hard.”

“The fruit was very small so it was hard to pick the amount they wanted,” said Alfredo Juarez, a high school student who is on the union steering committee. “We don’t want the new pay system. What we want is a union contract that we negotiate with them.”

A union-organized “March for a Union Contract” July 11 will assemble at the corner of Cook Road and Old Highway 99 in nearby Burlington at 10:30 a.m.

—Clay Dennison