—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

United Airlines mechanics say ‘No!’ to company takebacks

SAN FRANCISCO — For the second week in a row, hundreds of Teamster airline mechanics picketed at airports around the country Feb. 26, protesting the concession contract United Airlines is demanding. The workers had voted down by 93 percent United’s “closeout proposal” 10 days earlier.

Workers are outraged that despite its huge profits in 2016, United wants to impose wage and benefit cuts on new hires. It will take new employees eight and a half years to reach full scale, whereas now it takes five years. New hires will never achieve the same amount of vacation time as those currently working.

“United wants the old-timers to retire and replace them with younger, more poorly paid workers,” long-time mechanic Mikey Albertin told the Militant at the all-day picket here that drew about 200 people.

“Many workers voted for the B scale for new hires and regretted it later,” Albertin said, referring to the success United and other airlines had in the 1980s in dividing workers and weakening the union by paying new hires less. “Now is the chance to make up for this by rejecting this contract.”

Other concessions opposed by the workers include higher medical payments and opening the door to increased outsourcing of union work. Workers also want a defined pension. In the 2002 United bankruptcy their pension was replaced with a 401(k) plan.

“I am really happy to be out here protesting,” said Tony Vargas, a mechanic for 30 years at the United Airlines Maintenance Base here. “To feel the energy, with so many here.”

Mechanics and supporters will hold an informational picket at the J.P. Morgan Aviation, Transportation and Industrials Conference in New York City March 8 beginning at 7 a.m. Another national protest is scheduled for March 17, when members of the Association of Flight Attendants will join mechanics on the picket line.

— Betsey Stone and Tom Tomasko

Locked-out New Zealand meat workers win jobs back

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Locked-out members of the Meat Workers Union returned to work at the AFFCO plant in Wairoa Feb. 22 having pushed back the company’s attempts to weaken the union and impose a concession contract.

“We walked back in wearing our ‘Union Hard’ T-shirts,” butcher Hilton Rohe, who has worked at the plant since 1969, said in a phone interview Feb. 23.

In another victory, union shed secretary Bertie Ratu and shop steward Charmaine Takai, who had been fired for talking to union members on a different shift, won “interim reinstatement” at AFFCO’s Rangiuru plant Feb. 19.

Union members at Wairoa were locked out after their seasonal layoff last September when 200 refused to sign “Individual Employment Agreements” demanded by the company in lieu of renegotiating the union contract. The agreements include longer hours, fewer breaks, lower overtime rates and the removal of seniority on job allocation and recall from layoff.

Workers at most of AFFCO’s seven other plants signed Individual Employment Agreements last June and went back to work.

The union won an Employment Court ruling Feb. 11 ordering the company to reinstate the locked-out workers on their former jobs and shifts. In response to a similar ruling in November, the company had offered only night shift work in defiance of seniority, which the workers refused.

During the lockout the unionists operated a community center, distributed food bought with donations, traveled to Parliament in Wellington and to court hearings in Auckland to publicize their fight.

Tania Kenney, a lamb cuts worker at Rangiuru, told the Militant she organized raffles to benefit the Wairoa workers. “Some of us were also putting in money every week to help with their kids’ school uniforms,” she said.

While 160 union members returned to work, another 43, who joined the union recently and were on Individual Employment Agreements before the lockout, have been told that they must reapply for their jobs. “That’s our next battle,” said Rohe. “We’re going to look after them the way we were looked after.”

These victories put workers in a better position in the ongoing fight for a union contract at the AFFCO plants. “I think people have had enough and are starting to stand up,” said Takai.

— Felicity Coggan