On the picket line
By
Sue Davis
Published Aug 5, 2005 11:01 PM
Youngstown strikers hold the line
Striking reporters,
photographers, copy editors and truck drivers at Youngstown’s Vindicator
newspaper voted 85 to 17 on July 27 to reject the company’s latest
contract offer. The workers, represented by Local 34011 of the Newspaper Guild,
an affiliate of the Com munication Workers, have been on strike since Nov. 16.
Even though the contract offered 6-percent raises over three
years—which is 6 percent more than was offered last November—the
workers don’t like new terms by which management can lay off staff.
“The layoff language is the most important at this point,” said
local Vice President Shaulis Flora. (Associated Press, July 28)
On July
28 the Vindicator announced it would begin hiring permanent replacements. Local
34011 President Anthony Markota countered that his members were so fed up with
bad working conditions that “they’re willing to lose their jobs over
it. That’s how bad it is.” (Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, July 29) For
instance, Markota pointed out that the paper has 18 supervisors in the newsroom
overseeing 53 workers.
Despite the company’s threat, only two
reporters crossed the picket line that day to return to work. Since the strike
began nearly nine months ago, only 24 of the 179 union members have done that.
The strikers have received strong support from the community. On July 9 they
were bolstered by a fundraiser hosted by the Detroit local of the Newspaper
Guild, which organized the event to commemorate 10 years since its own
hard-fought battle in Detroit.
Marchers protest farm worker
deaths
Salud Zamudio-Rodriguez was the first California farm worker to
die this summer from heatstroke. Working on July 13 in 105-degree heat,
frantically trying to keep up with a tractor moving at triple time in order to
finish a bell pepper field, Zamudio-Rodriguez collapsed just before his shift
ended, his body shaking violently from heatstroke.
The United Farm
Workers led a march July 24 in Arvin near the Kern County fields where, his
family and co-workers said, the 24-year veteran had worked “like few other
men could. Eight and 10 hours a day, he moved like a machine up and down the
rows.” (Los Angeles Times, July 31) Since then, two other workers have
died in 108-degree heat in the San Joaquin Valley—one picking melons, the
other grapes.
The Farm Workers marched to demand passage of state law
AB805, which would require growers to add rest periods and shade to protect
workers when temperatures rise above 95 degrees. The growers oppose the proposal
as “too burdensome.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on July 23
for the growers to voluntarily give workers breaks in the shade.
But the
Farm Workers have already tried that. “Last year, after the death of
Asuncion Valdivia from heatstroke, we sent letters to the major table grape
growers,” UFW President Arturo Rodriguez told the L.A. Times. “We
asked them to take voluntary steps to deal with the heat. Not one grower
responded to our call or implemented changes.”
The workers, only too
well aware of how the state favors the big growers, are determined to press for
higher wages and tougher standards.
State says ‘No
strike,’ California nurses picket
Some 9,000 nurses who work in
University of Calif ornia hospitals had voted to strike for one day on July 21.
But the state intervened. Gov. Arnold Schwarzen egger’s Public Employees
Relations Board got a Superior Court judge to block the strike on July 20.
Undeterred, but really angry, the nurses rallied and picketed at six
hospitals around the state on July 21.
“UC nurses are outraged that
the University would go to court to block their democratic right to
strike—an action taken against no other UC employees—on the heels of
its refusal to negotiate with the nurses on the critical issue of safe patient
care and its intent to sharply erode retirement and health benefits for the
nurses,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, California Nurses Association executive
director in a July 20 CNA press release.
A hearing is scheduled for Aug.
11 when the board and UC are demanding a permanent injunction against the
nurses.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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