Thousands of Quebec hotel workers strike for higher wages
MONTREAL — “Since the pandemic the price of a hotel room has gone up 67%. We’re asking for 36% over four years!” Michel Valiquette, representative of the Federation of Commerce, Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), told hundreds of hotel workers as they rallied in downtown Montreal in a one-day provincewide strike Aug. 8.
Some 3,500 CSN members at 30 hotels across Quebec have been negotiating together since April. Union members from 23 of the hotels participated in the one-day action. Rallies were held in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec City.
Strikers told the Militant the raise of 8% they got over the past four years meant they were losing money. Roberto Sangabriel, a houseman, has worked at Montreal’s Radisson Hotel near the airport for 15 years. “Inflation is a nationwide problem,” he said. “It’s the whole world.”
Union-won working conditions are key to defending life and limb. Housekeepers have won a limit of 12 rooms per shift to clean, sometimes less.
A thousand union members at three Montreal hotels went out on a further one-day strike Aug. 10. Send messages of solidarity to Michel Valiquette at infofc@csn.qc.ca.
Electrical workers fight for better pay, job safety in Australia
SYDNEY — More than 100 workers, members of the Electrical Trades Union, rallied here Aug. 8 at the head office of Ausgrid, a major electricity distribution outlet in New South Wales. ETU members at other power companies walked off the job across the state to fight for a wage increase that keeps up with the cost of living.
The actions “show solidarity across the power grid,” Electrical Trades Union organizer Tara Koot told the rally. Ausgrid workers also joined rallies outside Transgrid’s headquarters in Sydney, where ETU members have been holding a 24/7 protest, and outside Endeavour Energy’s offices in Parramatta, western Sydney.
The rallies also focused on the fight for safety and conditions. “We’ve lost workers but new apprentices have not been put on,” ETU delegate at Endeavuor Trent Smith told the Parramatta rally.
Park workers in Minneapolis win new contract, strengthen union
MINNEAPOLIS — Members of Laborers’ union Local 363 here ended their three-week strike against the city’s Park Board Aug. 1, voting to ratify a new contract.
The park bosses had tried to impose a “final offer” with minimal wage increases and to weaken the union.
Strikers took the issues in their strike to other workers, rallying and talking to people in the city’s parks. They spoke out at Park Board meetings.
The union says the new contract won wage increases, cost-of-living increases and protection of grievance and steward rights. It also expands fair overtime distribution, includes rights around sick leave, retains union rights for all seasonal workers and doubles the number of full-time positions.
“Our members’ sacrifices and solidarity yielded more than improved wages and benefits,” Local 363 Business Agent A.J. Lange said in a statement. “To everyone who supported us, your solidarity made a crucial difference.”
UK supermarket workers return to picket line over wages, safety
LOWESTOFT, England — Workers at the U.K. supermarket chain Asda walked out Aug. 9 in the third strike against conditions at the superstore here, 100 miles northeast of London.
The 170 members of the General Municipal and Boilermakers union say that no progress has been made in negotiations over their grievances, which range from low pay and reduced hours to speedup and safety.
The union is also pursuing a claim for equal pay with workers in Asda’s distribution warehouses for the overwhelming majority of workers who are female in their retail stores. Thirty GMB members staged a protest outside the Asda store in Kettering July 15. The company has said that jobs in warehousing and retail are not comparable, but the Supreme Court has ruled that a case can be made that they may be. The court will hold hearings starting Sept. 9.
Airplane parts workers strike over wages, health care costs
COMMERCE, Calif. — Some 300 workers at Monogram Aerospace Fasteners, members of United Auto Workers Local 509, went on strike here Aug. 4, halting production of parts for Boeing and Airbus. They are fighting for a three-year contract with a healthy wage increase and against bosses’ efforts to jack up already high health care costs.
Striker Lupe Zamayoa said the bosses have recently changed or eliminated job descriptions, demoting workers to lower pay grades. They claimed the old union contract’s Article 21 let them do it. Many workers now carry signs saying, “No to Article 21!”
“Everything costs so much more — gas, food,” another striker said. “My wife is a hotel worker and she was on strike. They got a $5 per hour wage raise.”