On the picket line

Applesauce workers strike

Refusing to accept a $1.50 hourly pay cut, the 300 workers who make applesauce at the Mott plant east of Rochester, N.Y., launched an unfair labor practices strike on May 23. The workers, represented by Local 220 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store union (part of the Food and Commercial Workers union), rejected a concessions-riddled contract by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (DPS), which last year raked in $550 million in profits out of $1 billion in revenue. DPS’s head banked $6.5 million. RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum noted, “This is about a large company doing extraordinarily well, demonstrating outrageously greedy behavior. It’s beyond outrageous.” (AFL-CIO blog, May 25 & 28)

Shaw’s workers demand contract

Over 300 workers at Shaw’s Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass., who have been on strike since March 7, conducted a five-day, 60-mile march for justice in late May. Wearing bright yellow Food and Commercial Workers T-shirts, Local 791 workers were supported by many members of other unions and public officials who gathered at the Massachusetts State House in Boston to cheer on their struggle for a just and decent contract. (UFCW blogspot, May 28)

Miners protest, denounce nonunion Massey

Protesting the April 5 mining disaster that took the lives of 29 workers, more than 600 members of the Mine Workers and other unions converged in the teeming rain on May 17 at the corporate offices of Massey Energy Co. in Richmond, Va., to denounce its criminal record of safety violations. In the last 10 years 52 miners have died due to unsafe conditions in Massey mines. During the shareholders’ meeting the next day about 800 UMWA members and community allies rallied to demand the arrest of top Massey bosses, including CEO Don Blankenship (a major Tea Party supporter), who last year received $17 million in “compensation.” (www.defendersfje.org, May 17 & 18)

The May 24 Charlotte Daily Mail reported that UMWA members and family members of those who died, speaking at a congressional hearing investigating the disaster, said workers “at the Upper Big Branch Mine did not feel free to speak up about safety concerns as they would have at a union operation.” One worker testified, “As a union miner, I was able to refuse to work under unsafe conditions.” Recognizing Massey’s aggressively anti-union history, the head of the hearing assured witnesses that because they were “part of a congressional inquiry, retaliation against them would be considered a serious offence.”

New election rules for air, rail workers

The National Mediation Board ruled May 10 that air and rail workers were entitled to the same voting rules as other workers wishing to join unions. It finally overturned the viciously anti-union Rail Labor Act, which stipulated that every worker who did not cast a ballot in a representation election was automatically counted as a “no” vote. Now elections will be determined by the majority of votes cast. This will have immediate repercussions for more than 7,000 flight attendants at Northwest who lost union representation when Northwest merged with Delta last year. They plan to file for an election 30 days after the rule becomes effective. (AFL-CIO blog, May 10)

Unions demand ‘Boycott Arizona’

Many groups in all walks of life, including the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees union and the Food and Commercial Workers union, have jumped on the “Boycott Arizona” bandwagon to protest passage of racist profiling bill SB 1070. The Boston School Bus Drivers, Steelworkers Local 8751 was one of the first. It passed a unanimous resolution on April 29 that vowed, in the spirit of César Chávez, the late president of the Farm Workers union, to boycott the apartheid state of Arizona. Furthermore, it resolved: “That USW Local 8751 categorically rejects racist profiling and scapegoating of workers and that we, as workers, refuse to be divided to serve the corporate agenda of layoffs, givebacks and union-busting.”

The San Francisco Labor Council passed a resolution on May 24, noting that Arizona laws promoting racial profiling and banning the teaching of ethnic studies are measures reminiscent of South African apartheid and Nazi Germany. It noted that similar racist laws are being considered in at least 10 states and that labor and community groups must act decisively “before its contagion spreads.” The resolution supported the nationwide boycott of Arizona and the May 29 national march in Phoenix as well as the demonstration at the Arizona Diamondbacks’ game in San Francisco on the same day.

Catfish workers take defiant stand

On May 26, the approximately 600 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1529 voted to strike rather than accept a horrendous contract.

The Delta Pride Catfish workers have battled for more than a year and a half for an acceptable contract. The one offered by the company included a seven-day work week; eliminates overtime; ends severance pay should the plant close; and allows for job outsourcing while tripling employee contributions to health care benefits, among other things. And the employees haven’t even had a raise since 2006. The Delta Pride workers are mostly Black women in very poor Indianola, Miss. Ninety-nine percent of the union vote was in favor of a strike.

In 1990 the same plant was embroiled in a successful three-month struggle which drew national attention and is still considered a landmark strike for Southern and Black labor. Twenty years later, the workers are not going to allow the gains from 1990 to evaporate without a fight. If a reasonable contract isn’t offered, this could be another tremendously important strike.