—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

New Zealand call center workers strike for pay and against abuse

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Some 50 call center workers, members of the E tu union, carried out a three-hour strike here June 7 for higher pay and against abusive treatment. Most work for insurance giant IAG through the Sitel job agency. E tu means “stand tall” in Maori.

Negotiations began last November but the company has not offered any pay increase, union organizer Anita Rosentreter told the Militant.

Workers are angry that Sitel times toilet breaks and bullies sick employees to get them back to work. “This company takes invasions of employees’ privacy to new levels,” Rosentreter said in a union press release.

“Managers say things to workers like, ‘You should go on a diet and start exercising more to avoid getting sick again,’” she told the Militant. “We are out here to make management come back to the table with a pay raise and rules around how the company conducts itself when people take sick leave.”

— Baskaran Appu

Food workers in South Wales strike against new contracts

NEWPORT, South Wales — “We’re fighting for the minimum wage plus shift allowance,” said Jinny Baker, who has worked at the RF Brookes food plant here over 30 years. “We are just more and more exploited.” Around 80 workers picketed the plant June 2-3. Members of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, which represents half of the 800 shop floor workers, are refusing to sign Brookes’ contract proposal.

In the name of introducing the most recent national minimum wage increase — to £7.20 per hour ($10) for workers over 25 — the company would eliminate the night shift allowance; require work on more holidays, including Christmas and New Year’s Day; and lower overtime rates. Young workers’ pay would remain at £6.70. “Some workers are going to lose 20 to 25 percent of their wages,” said John James, union regional organizer.

Despite efforts by bosses and security guards to stop pickets talking with drivers, several trucks and a few workers turned around at the gate.

“It’s been brilliant, the young people, everyone’s been brilliant,” said Dai Mort, union branch secretary at the plant. He said there has been an increase in union members in the run-up to the strike, and that while some union members had crossed the picket line, some nonunion members had joined it.

Several pickets, including Mort, said immigrant workers, many of them Polish, had been bullied by bosses to sign the new contract. In response, the union has issued material in Polish as well as English.

RF Brookes is owned by the 2 Sisters Food Group, which is also facing union action at two other sites – Pennine Foods in Sheffield and Pizza Factory in Nottingham.

— Anne Howie

French unionists rally against anti-labor bill, defeat protest ban

PARIS — Longshoremen from Le Havre in northern France joined a march here June 14 to protest an anti-labor bill promoted by the government of French President François Hollande, leader of the Socialist Party. It was the 10th national action since late March. Tens of thousands of workers demonstrated again throughout France June 23. The proposed changes to the labor code make it easier for bosses to lay off workers, reduce pay and alter the 35-hour workweek.

The day before the June 23 action — called by several union federations including the CGT, the largest — the government announced the protest would be banned, claiming likely violence. This would have been the first banning of a labor demonstration since 1962 at the end of the Algerian war for independence from France.

A widespread outcry, including from the CFDT union federation, which backs the proposed law, forced the government to back down and authorize a one-mile march from the Bastille and back. Some 20,000 participated, watched by 2,000 riot police.

A final vote on the legislation will take place in the National Assembly in mid-July.

— Derek Jeffers