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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 4/11, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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There is a settlement in the two-and-a-half-year lockout at A.E. Staley Inc.'s corn-syrup-processing plant in Decatur, Ill. Some 350 workers are due to return to work in early January. According to local union activists who led the fight for justice at Staley, perhaps 100 of those expect to be quickly laid off or retire. So of the 760 workers the company locked out in June 1993, over 500 will be left without their jobs.
Those who do return will have to work side by side with scabs, who will be in charge of the unionists' retraining. And the contract under which they'll be working contains all the harsh takebacks that prompted the whole struggle in the first place. This includes 12-hour rotating shifts, unlimited subcontracting and unsafe working conditions. In addition, the company refused amnesty for those discharged for union activity.
In a Dec. 14 statement, the executive board of Paper Workers Local 7837 distanced itself from the contract settlement. The statement said in part: "After thoroughly studying this proposal, the current Executive Board and Bargaining Committee rejected the proposal unanimously for a clear lack of any substantial changes from the original June 30, 1995, proposal" [which the membership had rejected]. According to the statement, the executive board also voted overwhelmingly against presenting the Staley proposal for a membership vote. Paper Workers International President Wayne Glenn, however, overrode the local board and scheduled a ratification vote.
Results of the vote were announced on Dec. 22. By a narrow margin, the workers approved the contract. A month earlier by a similar margin, the workers had elected a new local president.
They had fought hard and long. But they were persuaded that a retreat was necessary. Mike Griffin, one of the "Road Warriors" who have carried news of the Staley workers' struggle around the country, told Workers World that the national union lobbied heavily for a "yes" vote. National union officials told workers there was really no other option, according to Griffin. However, Griffin and others at the Campaign for Justice were convinced the struggle wasn't over. In bitter, rancorous statements, they are now blaming the national union for abandoning the struggle at Staley.
Local 7837 President Dave Watts, who led the Staley struggle, leaves office in mid-January. In the course of the fight, labor activists around the country came to know him as a brave, angry, thoughtful working-class fighter. Most expect that he will remain on the scene, a proven soldier in the war against the bosses. The Staley workers as a whole won deep respect for fighting to defend their rights as workers.
Over 5,000 members of the Service Employees union in the San Francisco area celebrated the new year with the first raise to ever lift their pay above the minimum wage. The workers--almost all of them women of color, mostly immigrants--are home-care aides. That's grueling, demanding and socially necessary work. But it took a years-long fight to win a small increase in wages. As a result of the campaign, the state legislature passed a special law providing what a union statement called "this historic wage increase" of 15 percent. SEIU Local 250 is the biggest union local in California. Along with fighting for better pay and conditions for the home aides, Local 250 has been conducting a vigorous organizing campaign.
Yale University took anti-labor action at the end of 1995. The bosses lashed out at three graduate students who work as teaching assistants. The TAs were on a "grade strike"-- withholding final grades for fall courses--as the latest tactic in their long struggle for union recognition. The three face disciplinary hearings, set for Jan. 10, and they could be expelled. Union activists say they believe the university is trying to intimidate them by making an example of the three strikers.
Officials in Essex County, N.J., plan to sell the county- run 236-bed geriatric home to a private outfit called Health Care Management. One immediate result would be a 10-percent cut in wages and benefits, according to the Communications Workers union. CWA Local 1040 has been fighting the nursing- home sale. Workers have held marches and rallies. The union has also filed a complaint with the state's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging that the plan amounts to racist discrimination against the facility's workers, mostly Black and Latina women. If the home is transferred, 97 percent of those laid off will be women and Third-World workers. The union is also seeking to block the sale in court, with a lawsuit charging that it violates the state's public-auction right-to-know laws.
--Shelley Ettinger
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