—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Minn. Teamsters picket trucking company over union busting

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — Workers from Lakeville Motor Express and other members of Teamsters Local 120 hit the picket lines here against union busting after the Roseville trucking company unexpectedly shut down production Nov. 21. The company locked out 95 drivers and dockworkers, moved trailers and freight, and reopened at a different location with nonunion workers doing business as Finish Line Express.

Lakeville Motor Express “didn’t close. The freight is still there, the trucks are still there. And the customers are still there. All they did was change the logo on the trucks,” Local 120 business agent Virgil Christoffersen told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “Now they are saying they won’t even pay employees for work they had already done or benefits that have been accrued.”

“Bosses are trying to bust unions all over the U.S.,” Jim Sperling, a former Lakeville driver, told the Militant on the picket line. He and other workers are owed two weeks’ pay. “We’re going to fight to the bitter end or it will be a domino effect.”

Kevin Bartlett and Mike Johnson, both workers at ABF Freight, were two Local 120 members who have joined teams that follow Finish Line Express drivers and set up pickets as they make pick-ups and deliveries. “One boss came out and said he didn’t have anything to do with this. I told him, ‘Yes, you do,’” Johnson said. Bartlett has visited companies doing business with Finish Line and convinced several to drop contracts with the “new” company.

More than 100 Teamsters and other unionists protested Dec. 1 outside Finish Line Express. Lt. Gov. Tina Smith announced Dec. 6 that the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry “will make sure that Lakeville Motor Express follows the law, including paying the back wages and benefits they owe to former employees.”

— Kevin Dwire

Iceland fishing crews strike over wages, staffing levels

At 8 p.m. Dec. 14 fishermen in Iceland hauled in their nets and headed to shore. Since then the country’s entire fleet of trawlers has been idled by a strike of some 3,500 crew members.

In mid-November union officials signed a contract and called off a four-day strike. But members of all four unions involved voted overwhelmingly against the contract, and the strike resumed.

The conflict revolves around bosses’ attempts to reduce manning levels on deck — an issue of safety as well as protecting jobs — as well as pricing the catch.

Fishermen get paid a share of the catch, so their incomes vary with ups and downs of the market. Unions estimate that wages have decreased by 30 percent since the recent strengthening of the krona, the national currency.

Bosses have started to lay off hundreds out of the 4,000 workers at fish processing plants across the country after running out of fish. Countering attempts to pit trawlermen and onshore workers against each other, Framsýn, the union that organizes both groups in the northeast, issued a statement backing fishermen’s demands and calling on processers to keep workers employed.

Fishing is a major source of the wealth of Iceland’s capitalist rulers. In 2001 the government ended the last fishermen’s strike through decree after six weeks.

— Ögmundur Jónsson