On the picket line

Kohler workers fight concessions

After rejecting a concessionary contract on Oct. 1, the workers who make Kohler kitchen and bath products in Kohler, Wis., called a picket line on Oct. 6. The contract had included a five-year wage freeze, increased premiums and lower wages for new hires and any laid-off workers who are rehired.

Fed up with what they call “exploitation of the recession,” members of United Auto Workers Local 833 expected a turnout of maybe 500 but cheered when the line swelled to 2,000. As one union member told WBAY-TV, if Local 833 doesn’t fight back, it “could easily set in motion an area-wide epidemic of concessions, lower pay and benefits for all workers ... further decimating an already troubled economy.” (Oct. 6)

Meanwhile, Kohler recites the same old line that it needs concessions to stay “competitive.” Yet, with 50 plants employing more than 32,000 workers worldwide, Kohler boasts on its website that over the past 15 years it has provided more than 43,000 kitchen and bath products for Habitat for Humanity homes and more than 8,000 products for the television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” It doesn’t take a Harvard economist to figure out that if Kohler has been flush enough to give away thousands of dollars worth of products in the past, the least it can do is pay those who make those products a living wage. Go, Local 833!

Labor joins call to end ‘crimmigration’

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network reported Sept. 30 that, thanks to labor-community activism, two counties — Santa Clara, Calif., and Arlington, Va. — recently passed unanimous resolutions to opt out of the mass deportation program misnamed “Secure Communities.” According to the email report, “More and more places are stating clearly that Arizona policies have no place in our towns. ... Over 20 local campaigns across the country are building local power to turn the tide and demand an end to police/ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] collaboration, criminalization and family separation.” (www.ndlon.org) On Sept. 29 more than 500 groups in the immigrant rights, criminal justice and labor movements sent a letter to President Barack Obama demanding an end to police/ICE collaboration and pointing out that the existing racial disparity in the criminal injustice system is only heightened by targeting migrant communities.

Anti-war activists support S.F. hotel workers

On Oct. 6 between 150 and 200 people rallied at the downtown San Francisco cable car turnaround at Powell and Market streets to protest the ninth anniversary of the U.S. war against Afghanistan, as well as the U.S. wars against Iraq and Palestine. The group then marched a few blocks to the Hilton Hotel, where the hotel workers in UNITE-HERE Local 2 held a loud, spirited picket line at the lobby doorway, confronting a phalanx of cops.

The anti-war activists’ solidarity with the hotel workers highlighted the U.S. dollars misspent on the huge war machine while working people here need decent union contracts with health care benefits. Thousands of unemployed workers are no longer able to collect unemployment benefits because they’ve been jobless for more than 99 weeks. Many are no longer even counted as unemployed.

Over the last 14 months the hotel workers have been holding rolling strikes (two or three days at a time) against a group of fancy hotels in the San Francisco Bay Area while continuing to work without a contract. It’s only a matter of time before a full-blown hotel worker strike takes place in this city, as well as in other big cities like Chicago and Honolulu.