On the picket line

Spirit Airline pilots strike

After four years of negotiations for a fair contract and two deadline extensions, 500 pilots at Spirit Airline hit the bricks on June 11. The Spirit pilots are the lowest paid at small airlines. Despite the fact that Spirit reported banking $83 million last year, management refused to meet the pilots’ demands for salaries comparable to those at other discount airlines and work rules that preserve safety.

Though management bragged that Spirit would keep flying during the strike, it announced on June 13 that all flights were cancelled through June 15. Informational picket lines were held in Atlantic City, N.J.; Detroit; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and New York the week before the strike, with pilots from a number of major airlines joining the picket lines. The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents the pilots, is planning daily picketing in several airports until Spirit offers a contract that respects the pilots’ essential services. (www.alpa.org)

Co-Op City workers locked out

More than 500 porters, maintenance workers, garbage attendants and groundskeepers at Co-Op City in the Bronx, N.Y., were locked out of their jobs at midnight on June 1, minutes after their contract expired with Riverbay Corp. The workers are represented by Service Employees Local 32BJ.

Despite the fact that 32BJ offered to extend contract negotiations for a week, Riverbay refused and pre-empted the workers’ right to strike for a living wage. The lockout affects 55,000 residents of the largest housing development in the U.S. and the largest cooperative housing development in the world.

Obviously Riverbay has as little regard for the residents’ needs, health and safety as it does for the workers’ right to keep up with the 10 percent rise in the cost of living since the last contract three years ago.

N.J. workers protest budget cuts

In the largest union rally in New Jersey history, about 40,000 union activists swarmed the state Capitol in Trenton in late May to denounce Gov. Chris Christie’s budget, which would devastate vital social services, public schools, health facilities and libraries. What added fuel to the workers’ outrage was that two days before the rally the governor vetoed a “millionaire’s tax” on people earning more than $400,000. Could that be more offensive?

Day care closings protested in N.Y.

Hundreds of unionists, community leaders and parents marched to New York’s City Hall on June 9 to protest billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed closing of 16 child care centers, cutting 1,165 child care slots and 725 jobs belonging to members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 1701. At a time when only 27 percent of children eligible for child care are being served and many parents, especially single mothers, need child care in order to work, the cutbacks are a callous blow to workers and working parents alike. Just cough up a couple of million for the vitally needed services, Mayor Scrooge!

California nurses join one-day strike

In order to emphasize the demand for safe nurse-to-patient ratios that prompted 12,000 nurses in the Twin Cities to hold a one-day strike on June 10, 13,000 members of the California Nurses Association went on strike the same day.

Though the California nurses, who work at five University of California medical centers and four other hospitals, fought a year-long battle for patient safety standards, which went into effect in 2004, a CNA spokesperson said UC is not implementing all of its provisions. A study released in April by University of Pennsylvania researchers found that the California law reduces patient deaths, allows nurses to spend more time with each patient, and helps keep experienced nurses on the job. That’s definitely worth fighting for! (afl-cio blog, June 1)

Temple nurses win unemployment pay

Temple University Hospital will have to pay its 1,500 nurses about $1.5 million in unemployment insurance for the 28-day work stoppage in April, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Unemployment Compensation announced on June 11. The workers are eligible because the PBUC ruled that the stoppage was actually a lockout, since Temple changed the terms of employment when it unilaterally canceled a tuition benefit for dependents in March.

Prior to the start of their strike on March 31, the union had notified management that they would continue to work under the terms of their old contract, which expired in September 2009, if management reinstated the benefit. Eager to break the union, even when it meant paying millions of dollars to bring in scab workers, management refused.

Temple announced it will appeal the decision. Stay tuned.