—ON THE PICKET LINE—

NY: Unionists on strike against Spectrum cable rally against cuts

NEW YORK — Hundreds of workers on strike against Spectrum-Time Warner Cable and their supporters rallied April 5 outside the company’s midtown offices here, demanding the bosses back off the concession demands they are insisting on. The company wants to stop paying into the union health and pension fund and to lay off union workers and replace them with lower-paid nonunion contractors.

“If you don’t fight you don’t win,” Edward Dandridge, a technician, told Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York mayor, who joined the protest.

The 1,700 warehouse workers, engineers and service technicians, members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, went on strike March 28. Their contract expired four years ago.

— Sara Lobman   

Quebec unionists march to support striking Steelworkers

SALABERRY-DE-VALLEYFIELD, Quebec — More than 400 people marched and rallied here March 29 in support of United Steelworkers on strike against CEZinc, one of the world’s largest zinc refineries. The 371 members of Local 6486 walked out Feb. 12 against company demands for pension cuts.

Among those marching were USW members from Lafarge Cement and Resco where workers were on strike last year.

A highlight of the action was the arrival of some 20 members of the Council of National Unions (CSN) who work for Glencore, a co-owner of CEZinc, in Rouyn-Noranda, some 435 miles north.

“We’re here in support, in solidarity. We have the same pension plan, the same employer, a big multinational company,” Stéphane Larente, who has worked in the mine at Rouyn-Noranda for 10 years, told the Militant.

“Companies all over Quebec are attacking our pension plans so solidarity helps strengthen our fight,” said Christian Dupuis, a 25-year bridge crane operator at Samuel & Fils in Laval. He and some 60 other workers have been on strike since early February to defend their pensions.

“We are fighting to preserve conditions that generations before us fought to win,” Local 6486 President Manon Castonguay told the rally.

— Beverly Bernardo