—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

UMWA miners march against attack on retirees’ benefits

WAYNESBURG, Pa. — Some 3,000 miners marched and rallied here April 1 to protest the attempt by Alpha Natural Resources to tear up its contract with the United Mine Workers of America and end its pension and medical obligations for 2,600 retired miners through the bankruptcy courts.

April 1 is John Mitchell Day, a paid holiday for union miners honoring an early UMWA president and traditionally a day of union actions. Most of the marchers were retirees and their families. People came from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana.

About 30 members of the United Steelworkers who work at the Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, plant of Allegheny Technologies Inc. participated. They recently returned to work after a six-month lockout.

“Bankruptcy is just a way for corporations to rob the workers of everything they have earned,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts told participants. He recalled the fight in 2012 when miners held rallies around the coal fields during Patriot Coal’s attack on their contract and pensions using bankruptcy laws.

Alpha Natural Resources employs over 600 miners at the Cumberland Mine near here, and operates 50 mines around the country. The company filed a motion to gut the contract March 28.

In other developments, Donald Blankenship, former CEO of Massey Energy, was sentenced April 6 to a year in prison for his responsibility for the massive 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners at the nonunion Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia. The contempt for safety at that mine was a product of the decades-long drive by coal bosses in their drive for profit to push back safety rights and deal blows to the UMWA. This is the first time a top mining executive has been convicted for violating safety regulations.

— Ned Measel

Montreal unionists march to protest two-tier pensions

MONTREAL — Members of United Steelworkers Local 6658, on strike since Feb. 6 against attacks by Lafarge Cement on their pensions, led an April 4 march here of several hundred unionists. The action was called by the Quebec Federation of Labor youth committee to demand the provincial government ban companies from implementing pension plans with inferior benefits for newly hired workers, which demonstrators called “orphan clauses.”

Members of UNIFOR Local 145, locked out by furniture retail chain Brault & Martineau at its east end Montreal distribution center since Feb. 28, marched behind their union banner.

Steelworkers from across Canada, who were in Montreal for the union’s National Policy Conference and a Next Generation conference for younger union members, joined the action, as did small delegations of other unions.

“Our members remain united despite Lafarge’s efforts to divide us,” Steelworkers Local 6658 Vice President Francois Cardinal — a Lafarge worker and participant in the Next Generation conference — told the cheering crowd.

— Beverly Bernardo

Chicago teachers’ one-day strike protests cuts, attacks on union

CHICAGO — Thousands of members of the Chicago Teachers Union rallied and marched downtown with students, parents and other supporters April 1 demanding a contract that honors promises for wage increases from the previous contract that expired June 30. They snarled rush-hour traffic as they concluded a full day of picketing schools and joining afternoon protests against cutbacks at the city’s community colleges.

The Chicago Board of Education announced in February it would stop paying part of teachers’ pensions, which it has done since 1981, when the “pension pickup” was agreed to in lieu of raises. Teachers say this amounts to a pay cut.

School officials say that while negotiations continue they won’t implement pay increases from the last contract based on teachers’ education and seniority.

Teachers are also protesting anticipated school closings and bigger class sizes. Forty-nine public schools in Chicago were shuttered in 2013.

Many teachers and their supporters say the attacks amount to union busting. “If we lose our union we’re done,” Deborah Davis, an elementary school teacher for 20 years, told the Militant. “I’m tired of teachers being stepped on.”

— Ilona Gersh