ANTIOCH, Calif. — After more than three weeks on the picket line, workers at the Georgia-Pacific Sheetrock plant here go back to work with a wage increase of 6% in the first year of a four-year contract, and 3% in each of the other three. The workers will get retroactive pay with the raise dating back to July when their contract expired.
This was the first time these workers, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6 and International Association of Machinists Local 1584, have been on strike. All the workers stayed out together and will go back in together.
The strikers got support from rail crews who refused to run trains to the plant. They were also successful in getting the crew of a ship carrying gypsum supplies to abort their delivery.
“My uncle and I are on strike against Georgia-Pacific, and we are also fishermen,” Yousaf Pasha told the Militant at the picket line Oct. 7. After learning the ship was scheduled to enter the San Francisco Bay, Pasha and his uncle decorated their fishing boat with “On Strike” picket signs and banners reading “ILWU Warehouse Local 6, An Injury to One is an Injury to All.” Joined by other strikers, they went out to meet the ship. When the ship’s crew saw the fishing boat, they turned the ship around and never entered the Golden Gate.
The decision to go back to work was not an easy one. The strikers had been demanding a bigger raise. And, workers said, they’ll need to take on unsafe conditions in the plant.
They’re now discussing how to strengthen the union in preparation for the next contract fight. “We’ve never had a strike fund and now it’s clear why we need to build one,” striker Darnell Webb said on the picket line Oct. 7. “That’s what I’ll be raising with other workers.”