Vol. 81/No. 39      October 23, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

 

October 23, 1992

MONTREAL — A fight by 450 flight attendants for a new collective agreement at Nationair, Canada’s largest charter airline, is continuing following company owner Robert Obadia’s rejection of a mediator’s proposed truce, which sends the workers back to work without a contract.

The flight attendants, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Montreal and Toronto, have been locked out since November 1991. They earn an average annual salary of $15,600, and have been seeking to negotiate better wages and working conditions. The workers have organized protest marches and spoken to scores of union gatherings.

The most recent rally on October 5 drew as many as 150 union members and supporters to a protest in front of the Nationair ticket counter at Dorval Airport in Montreal.

October 23, 1967

The murder of Major Ernesto “Che” Guevara by the Bolivian military dictatorship is a grievous blow to the world struggle for socialism. But the struggle will continue and it will inevitably triumph. That was Che’s deepest conviction and history will affirm him.

History will surely judge him one of the world’s great revolutionary figures. It will record his magnificent contributions to the victory and shaping of the Cuban Revolution and his dramatic departure to carry on the struggle in Bolivia. But it will say even more. Che’s greatness lay in the totality of his revolutionary consciousness. He was a thinker and a man of action. For Che the thought and the deed were inseparable.

His capacities sprang from his conviction that mankind could not lead a decent life until imperialism and capitalism were rooted out of this planet.

October 24, 1942

FLINT, Mich. — Auto workers of Chevrolet Plant 3, most militant union group in Flint General Motors plants, took another big step forward last week in winning production jobs and 15 cent hourly increases for all Negro janitors.

The decisive factor in this victory was militant action mapped out by the Negroes organized in the United Auto Workers, CIO, in support of the union negotiators. The recently organized Flint branch of the March-on-Washington Movement was centered mainly in that plant and its action actually forced the management to capitulate to the union demands.

The group arranged for a mass march on the main office, with all the Negro supporters they could muster in the city. This same group held mass meetings of as many as 200 and 300 Negroes from this area, and Chevrolet management knew of its influence and power.  
 
 
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