—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

Ft. Lauderdale airport workers strike for higher wages, benefits

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Sandra Smith works as a skycap 25 hours a week and as a cabin cleaner 32 hours a week at the international airport here. She does two jobs to scrape by at the rock-bottom wages she receives.

Smith works for G2 Secure Staff and Eulen America, contractors to Southwest, Spirit, American and JetBlue airlines. She and other contract airport workers held a one-day strike Sept. 1 to draw attention to low pay and lack of benefits at the two companies. They average $8.14 an hour and get no medical coverage, holiday or vacation pay, according to the Service Employees International Union.

Smith told the Militant that when she went into the hospital for five days, she lost a whole week’s paycheck because she gets no sick pay. “It’s hard to rent an apartment because your paystubs show how little you make,” she said. “Your phone is always being turned off.”

Theotis Presley, a wheelchair attendant at the airport, said he joined the protest because at his current pay, “you’re not able to enjoy a life.”

Janitor Belkis Martinez, who takes home about $425 for two weeks’ work, said Eulen keeps employees below 40 hours a week.

After picketing in the morning the workers rallied outside the Broward County Commissioners meeting to demand that airport workers be covered by Broward’s Living Wage Ordinance, from which they are excluded. It mandates county employees be paid at least $11.68 an hour.

— Cindy Jaquith

Quebec teachers gain support fighting attacks on school funding

MONTREAL — Thousands of Quebec teachers will strike for one day Sept. 30 against the Liberal provincial government’s proposed budget cuts. On Sept. 8 Sylvain Mallette, head of the Fédération Autonome de L’Enseignement (Autonomous Teaching Federation), which represents 34,000 teachers, announced plans for the walkout.

Teachers have refused to organize extra-curricular sports and cultural activities since the beginning of the school year. “We feel terrible about this but this is something we have to do to be heard,” teacher Isabelle Daniels told CBC.

Parents have been participating in human chains around different schools to protest the cuts.

The teachers are part of a Common Front of more than 500,000 public workers, whose collective agreements expired March 31.

The government proposes increasing teachers’ workweek from 32 to 35 hours, enlarging class sizes and freezing wages for the first two years of a five-year contract. The proposal includes disciplinary action against teachers whose students’ performance is deemed inadequate.

Members of the teachers unions will vote on further actions Sept. 22. The provincial labor movement has called an Oct. 3 rally in Montreal.

— Josette Hurtubise, member of the Syndicat de l’enseignement de Champlain,

and Annette Kouri

Locked-out New Zealand meat workers protest union busting

WAIROA, New Zealand — Around 100 locked-out Meat Workers Union members demonstrated on the bridge in the center of this rural town Sept. 9, protesting the reopening — after a one-month seasonal closure — of the AFFCO meat processing plant under nonunion contracts. AFFCO is a major employer in the region.

Several dozen people, including children and teachers from a local school and unionists from AFFCO’s Horotiu plant, joined the action.

The company has refused to negotiate with the union since the contract expired in 2013, instead offering jobs only to workers who sign “Individual Employment Agreements.”

Union members at Wairoa — some 250 out of a workforce of 450 — refused to sign these contracts, which have already been imposed at the company’s works at Rangiuru, Whanganui, and Feilding, and hang over workers at four other AFFCO plants.

The company has reopened the plant with nonunion workers. “What we want is a rollover of our collective,” MWU Wairoa Shed Secretary Justin Kaimoana told the Militant, referring to the contract. “We are fighting for our jobs, our seniority and the future of our kids.”

“Some of the IEA conditions are unworkable,” Kaimoana said, including requiring workers to work different shifts, extended work periods before a break and speedup.

In 2012 the company locked out a layer of the workforce at several plants. The union fought back with strikes. The dispute was settled when some Maori iwi (tribal) authorities threatened to stop supplying AFFCO with livestock from their farms. Maori comprise the majority of AFFCO’s workforce.

“What happened in 2012 is starting again,” said Kaimoana. “It will be another long battle.”

Union membership fell in the years after the 2012 battle, said Peter Edwards, a shop steward. “We have been basically rebuilding the union.”

“We are not going to be just walked over,” said butcher Hilton Rohe, who has worked at AFFCO since 1969.

Two days later 150 locked-out workers went together to the Wairoa AFFCO plant to apply for jobs advertised in the local paper. “They only wanted to talk individual contracts,” said Kaimoana by phone Sept. 14. The unionists left and rallied again on the bridge.

— Patrick Brown

Teamsters fight lockout at printing plant near Montreal

MIRABEL, Quebec — Members of Teamsters Local 555M have been picketing since Quebecor, a printing and media company, locked out 44 press workers, mechanics, electricians and handlers at its plant in this town north of Montreal Sept. 1. The plant prints a number of newspapers, including Montreal French-language dailies Le Devoir and Le Journal de Montréal. The company, owned by Parti Quebecois leader Pierre Karl Péladeau, also locked out workers at this plant in 2006.

Negotiations began in March 2015. “We’re ready to make compromises on the job front and severance pay, but management won’t budge,” said Denis Fournier, Local 555M representative, in a statement on the union website.

“The company wants to lay off whoever it wants without respecting seniority,” Thérèse Moroni, a material handler, told the Militant Sept. 10 on the picket line. Quebecor laid off 15 workers in January and 35 more recently.

— Beverly Bernardo