On the picket line

S. Calif. grocery workers win!

The 65,000 organized grocery workers from Bakersfield, Calif., to the Mexican border won a huge victory July 22 when they ratified a new four-year contract by 87 percent—without having to strike. Not only does the UFCW contract eliminate the hated two-tier system of wages and benefits for new workers, but it provides raises for the first time since 2002 and vital health care and pension benefits. The settlement restores almost all the losses in pay and health benefits that workers suffered three years ago after a 141-day lockout and strike against the major supermarket chains Ralphs, Albertson’s and Vons.

Peter Dreier, writing in the July 26 Los Angeles Daily News, attributed the union’s success to outreach to and support from labor, religious, community and academic leaders during seven months of negotiations. The UFCW organized a Walk for Respect campaign where workers went door to door to collect more than 50,000 signatures from shoppers pledging to boycott the chains in the event of a lockout or strike. “This effort helped transform the campaign from a labor-management fight into a moral crusade,” wrote Dreier.

As part of a parallel negotiating campaign in Washington state’s Puget Sound area, UFCW locals held a demonstration June 18 to illustrate the pay gap between grocery workers, who make $13 an hour (about $18,000 a year), and the CEOs of the three major supermarket chains, who each stashed away about $9 million last year. Figuring out that the pay gap was 500 to 1, the workers spread out 501 loaves of bread in front of a Safeway supermarket to show why they are demanding “more bread.”

Equal pay suit; Goodyear retaliates

The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 was quickly introduced in Congress to redress a recent anti-woman, anti-worker Supreme Court decision. The court ruled in May that Lilly Ledbetter could receive no back pay or damages from Goodyear even though a jury found that she had been paid less than male colleagues for many years. By invoking a very narrow interpretation of Title VII of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was designed to eliminate discrimination based on sex, race and national origin, the court severely restricted workers’ ability to file suits against employers. The new act counters that ruling by affirming workers’ right to fight discrimination.

But just as the bill was due to be voted on by the House of Representatives at the end of July, Goodyear sued Ledbetter. The Fortune 500 company, the largest tire producer in the world, which earned $4.9 billion in the second quarter of 2007, demanded that she pay its legal fees, which must total millions of dollars. Even though it may be legal custom for the losing side to pay the winner’s court fees, Goodyear’s audacity puts it in the running for the new On-the-picketline OGRE award: Outrageously Greedy, Ruthless Employer! To send Goodyear executives a “shame-on-you” message, sign a petition on the National Organization for Women website: www.now.org.

Minimum wage raise (finally)

The new federal minimum wage is now $5.85 an hour, up from $5.15 as of July 24, the first increase in a decade. It ends the longest period without an increase since the federal minimum wage was enacted in 1938. Each summer for the next two years the wage will increase by 70 cents until it reaches $7.25 an hour in 2009. Government figures show about 1.7 million workers, mostly young women of color, earned the minimum wage or less in 2006. If they worked a 40-hour week, they earned a yearly income of $10,700 before taxes. At $7.25 an hour they will make just over $15,000 a year before taxes.

In stark contrast, the political servants of the capitalist class, that is, members of the House of Representatives, received an automatic annual cost-of-living raise on June 28. Now they are paid almost $170,000 a year. Why can’t the minimum wage be at least above the poverty level and be tied to the cost of living index with annual raises? Under the corporate profit system the bosses resist this minor step as if their pocket were being picked. Just ask Goodyear bosses why they’re in favor of the status quo.

NYC taxi workers strike?

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission plans to install a high-tech GPS video-and-fare system in all of the city’s 13,000 yellow cabs by the end of the year. But not if the New York Taxi Workers Alliance has anything to say about it. Bhairavi Desai, NYTWA executive director, announced July 25 that the organization’s 8,400 members, mostly immigrants from India and Bangladesh, will strike in September if the system is forced on all the workers. They say it amounts to “spyware,” which can be used to track every trip driver’s take. Driver Lea Acey was quoted in the July 26 AFL-CIO blog (blog.aflcio.org) as saying, “Even if I want to drive with my family to the park, I have to log in. If I’m an independent contractor, why is it TLC’s or the garage’s business where I am when I’m off-duty? It beeps all day long if I don’t log in, like an ankle bracelet they put on criminals.” In a first for the AFL-CIO, the NYTWA, which is a workers’ organization, not an official union, joined the New York City Labor Council in February 2007.

New Orleans labor, community protest racism

On July 28 unionists joined residents and community activists to protest the racist plan for rebuilding levees along the Monticello Canal in New Orleans. A levee and flood wall was built along the affluent, mostly white Jefferson Parish side of the canal, but the poorer, mostly African-American Carrollton and Holly Grove neighborhoods on the opposite bank have been left unprotected. Even though both sides of the canal routinely flood during a heavy rainfall, let alone a hurricane, the levee along the opposite bank is not scheduled to be built for five years. Activists formed a human levee along the unprotected canal bank to call attention to this obvious racist discrimination. As Joe Sherman, who lives in the Carrollton/Holly Grove areas, said on the Tom Joyner Morning Show Web site (BlackAmericaWeb.com): “How can you say the community is not at risk when you have protected one half of the community and not the other? This is unacceptable.” (blog.aflcio.org, July 27)