—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Teamster airline mechanics picket United at aviation event

NEW YORK — Chanting “No contract, no flights!” and “What’ll we do? Strike!” more than 100 mechanics and other members of Teamsters Airline Division picketed March 8 in Midtown Manhattan outside the Aviation, Transportation and Industrials Conference hosted by J.P. Morgan investment bank.

Members of Local 210, who work at the three major airports here, were joined by mechanics who flew in from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and Houston.

“We are not rolling in cash,” said 29-year mechanic Vincent LoBiondo, who works at Newark Liberty International Airport. “We are just trying to make a living. The airlines are very profitable right now.” Seven years ago mechanics agreed to big pay cuts — some $500 per person per month — LoBiondo said, to keep the airline profitable. Now they have worked three years without a contract and without a raise.

The unionists are demanding a defined pension, which was replaced by a 401(k) plan during United’s 2002 bankruptcy. They oppose the company’s demand for wage and benefit cuts for new hires, higher medical payments and the option to contract out more work.

“One way or another we have to get it back to how it was before,” said Lino Hernández, a Newark mechanic with 30 years’ experience. “So we have to show the power of the workers. If we have to strike, we will.”

— Jacob Perasso

New Zealand meat workers protest union-busting layoff

RANGIURU, New Zealand — Meat giant AFFCO laid off 214 meat workers here March 4 in its latest anti-union move. Four days later members of the Meat Workers Union picketed outside the plant.

AFFCO disregarded seniority in the layoff. “This is a form of union busting,” union shed secretary Bertie Ratu told the Militant. “Union workers with 45 years’ experience are out of a job while staff on individual contracts with 45 days on the job are still working.” It is not the fault of the newer workers, she said. “A lot of them want to join the union, but we don’t have a contract to offer them.”

AFFCO has been imposing “Individual Employment Agreements” on union members at eight plants, rather than renegotiating the expired union contract. In November workers won a round in this battle when the Employment Court ruled AFFCO must abide by the union contract for those covered by it. In February the court confirmed this included seniority provisions, ending a five-month lockout of unionists at the Wairoa plant.

The company fired Ratu and delegate Charmaine Takai last year for union activities, but a court had just ordered them reinstated. Both had been working for less than a week.

“Told by court reinstate! 4 days later out the gate! Talley’s SHAME ON YOU!!!” read Takai’s placard. Talley’s is AFFCO’s parent company.

Workers at the 30-strong picket gave examples of the company’s disregard for safety. An inexperienced young German on a working holiday visa was injured Jan. 15 after being caught in a machine and knocked unconscious. Two years ago a machine hook impaled a cleaner’s head and carried him along a moving chain in the same area. A court just ruled that accident was a result of AFFCO’s violation of health and safety laws. Government statistics report 1,286 Talley’s workers were injured on the job in 2014.

The picket took place the day the company in this rural area invites its farmer suppliers to tour the plant. Workers called out to the farmers, “We’re your neighbors. Our kids go to school together. Would you want your kids to work under these conditions?”

“I’ve been in the union since day one. Otherwise you get treated like dirt, like nobody,” Iria Taite, a laid-off butcher with 11 years at the plant, told the Militant.

— Janet Roth

Teamster rail worker wins reinstatement in Alberta

CALGARY, Alberta — Teamsters union member Stephanie Katelnikoff, 26, was reinstated with back pay and benefits at Canadian Pacific Railway a year after she was fired. The company assigned her to work as a conductor less than five months into what is normally a six-month training period. On her second run, the train carrying grains and toxic fly ash, used to make concrete, derailed in Banff National Park Dec. 26, 2014.

Katelnikoff filed a union grievance after she was fired the following month. Arbitrator Maureen Flynn ruled that “the grounds cited for Ms. Katelnikoff’s dismissal are factually inaccurate and unfounded.” Canadian Pacific reported it fired her in part because she didn’t immediately report pulmonary problems resulting from inhaling fly ash dust after the derailment. Those allegations, Flynn wrote, “appear to be a camouflage of the Company’s actual reasons that are discriminatory and in bad faith.” The investigation revealed that a sexual harassment complaint Katelnikoff filed against a co-worker was a factor in the firing.

As she prepared to return to work, Katelnikoff briefly posted an open letter to Canadian Pacific CEO Hunter Harrison on YouTube demanding the railroad respect human rights and cease putting profits before safety and workers’ rights. “Hundreds of railroaders from all over North America sent me messages” of support, Katelnikoff told the Militant March 1.

Katelnikoff has requested the railroad complete her training before she is sent out again.

Train derailments and collisions are common here. On Feb. 18, 14 Canadian Pacific cars derailed in Inglewood, a Calgary neighborhood near the Alyth rail yard. Two CP tank cars full of propane collided Jan. 31 near Edmonton while being operated by a worker wearing a remote control “beltpack,” a technology whose use the company is expanding, CBC reported.

— Katy LeRougetel

Los Angeles port truck drivers strike at XPO Logistics, Pac 9

LOS ANGELES — Striking port truck drivers at XPO Logistics picketed their terminal in Commerce Feb. 29, protesting a new contract imposed on them by the company.

“XPO Logistics has us against the wall,” driver Humberto Canales said on the port truckers’ Facebook page. “They are forcing us to sign a contract that prevents us from defending ourselves in the future in the courts. But if we don’t sign it, XPO could use that as an excuse to lay us off. … This is retaliation. It is harassment.”

Drivers at Pacific 9 Transportation also picketed their terminal the same day to protest the company stalling on payment of millions of dollars in penalties for wage theft after the California Labor Commissioner ruled Dec. 14 that they should be classified as employees, not independent contractors.

— Bill Arth