—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Quebec Steelworkers strike over attacks on new hires, pension cuts

GRENVILLE-SUR-LA-ROUGE, Quebec — Since voting to strike by 99 percent June 15, 92 members of United Steelworkers Local 6213 have picketed round-the-clock at the Resco plant here, which produces refractory bricks for steel and aluminum mills.

Press technician Julie Labelle, wearing a “femme d’acier” (woman of steel) T-shirt, told the Militant Sept. 18 the company is out to weaken the union by doubling the probation period to 90 days. “With layoffs every two months, new workers won’t ever get into the union,” Labelle said. Even with 13 years’ seniority, she works only seven to eight months a year. And the company wants to double the period before new workers receive full salary, she said.

Resco bosses also want to halve the pension benefits of existing workers and eliminate a defined benefit pension for new workers, replacing it with a fund dependent on how much the employer contributes.

Strikers said Steelworkers from Lafarge Cement in Saint-Constant, 80 miles away, visited the picket line. Those unionists waged a successful three-month strike against a similar attack on their pensions. USW members from ArcelorMittal in Montreal stopped by too. Their local has pledged $1 per week per member — $550 a week — for the duration of the strike.

Union employees of Resco Products in Tarentum, Pennsylvania, whose contract expired in March, face similar concession demands in their negotiations.

On Sept. 19 the Resco workers in Quebec voted to accept a new contract.

— Beverly Bernardo

London bus drivers organize protest strikes at Tower Transit

LONDON — Over 1,000 bus drivers, engineers and controllers, members of the Unite union, carried out three 24-hour strikes against Tower Transit beginning Aug. 26.

“The main thing is respect,” Ahmed Saleh, a union steward at the Westbourne Park depot, told the Militant Sept. 17. Tower Transit Chairman Neil Smith angered workers when he said during an interview in Singapore last year, “The problem in London is a very large immigrant workforce that you have to train to drive the bus,” in contrast to the “highly educated workforce of people with high aspirations” in Singapore. During a verbal confrontation with union convener Abdul Hanafi Aug. 26, Smith called strikers “bastards.”

The strikes were called over schedule changes that left drivers with less income, short-changing on overtime pay, and refusal to negotiate collectively at the company’s three depots.

Saleh said the company is cutting 60-minute lunch breaks to the contractual minimum of 40 minutes. “And the time to stretch your legs at the end of a route has been reduced from 12 to 15 minutes to three to four.”

A strike scheduled for Sept. 19 was called off when the company agreed to negotiations with all three depots.

“The strikes were growing more solid,” Saleh told the Militant. “When Smith called us ‘bastards,’ it made us more determined.”

— Ögmundur Jónsson