------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the May 11, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------

On the picket line

By Shelley Ettinger

Students back OSU strike

Almost 2,000 maintenance and service workers at Ohio State University in Columbus walked out on strike May 1.

On May 2, strikers got a boost when NAACP President Kweisi Mfume refused to cross picket lines to deliver a speech. Mfume was to have been the keynote speaker at a conference on affirmative action and diversity. Local 4501 is made up mostly of African American workers. Strike supporters say the OSU administration is using barely concealed appeals to racism to try to turn the student body against the strikers.

In the days leading up to the start of the strike, a mass mobilization of student and community supporters reached out to the workers in solidarity. On April 26, a group sat in at Bricker Hall, the OSU administration building. They stayed. The occupied building has been designated a "liberated area." Occupiers say they will remain inside until Local 4501's demands for a decent contract are met.

Over a thousand people attended a candlelight vigil and rally in front of the OSU administration building the night of April 30. A graduate student who is active in an organizing drive among graduate employees said the entire campus must be organized "because that's the only way to bring justice and democracy to OSU." After the rally, workers and students marched from the main campus to the university hospital, chanting, "No contract, no work." As midnight tolled, hospital workers walked out, joining the protest and starting the strike.

One of the OSU administration's most offensive contract proposals would establish a lower pay scale for the hospital workers. Local 4501 President Gary Josephson said the union is united against this "apartheid" tactic. The union also refuses to accept a " pay system the university is pushing. Workers want to make a decent wage. According to the union, average pay at OSU, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was 15 years ago.

Chicago janitors walk

Like their sisters and brothers in Los Angeles, the workers who clean buildings in Chicago's downtown Loop district walked out on strike in April--and won a new, improved contract. Negotiators for the Service Employees union say building owners had a quick change of heart within 24 hours of the start of the walkout. Janitors ratified a three-year contract featuring pay and benefit improvements, and returned to work on April 18.

But there was no peace for Chicago-area bosses. The same day that 5,500 Loop workers ended their strike, another 4,000 janitors walked out at buildings in the suburbs. The suburban strikers demand pay raises and health benefits. They make $6.65 an hour. They have no health insurance.

NYC janitors win without walking

The 27,000 members of Service Employees Local 32B-32J who work in the apartment buildings of New York won a new, improved contract without having to hit the pavement. Their strike mobilization was so effective, the threat of a walkout so real, that the city's real-estate barons saw the wisdom of making an acceptable offer. Two days before the strike deadline, a tentative agreement was announced. It features a 10.5-percent wage raise over three years, plus pension improvements. The settlement also includes an unusual offer for building-maintenance workers: for $200, each worker who requests it will be provided with computer and Internet training and a home computer.

After the agreement was settled, Local 32B-32J Trustee Michael Fishman announced that the union would now set its sights on organizing the thousands of workers who clean and maintain buildings in New York's suburbs

Nyack nurses defiant

After four months on strike, and under threat of being "permanently replaced," the 450 nurses at Nyack Hospital in Nyack, N.Y., have refused to buckle under to the bosses' threats. Angry and defiant at a May Day meeting, the striking nurses voted overwhelmingly to reject a contract settlement recommended by union officials. The workers have been on the picket lines since Dec. 21. They say they won't go back until they get a decent wage package--not the merit pay hospital administrators have offered under various guises--and no takebacks in sick benefits. The nurses are showing their stuff standing strong against an ultimatum. The administration says it will bring in "permanent replacement" scabs if the strike does not end. Instead of being cowed by the threat, strikers rallied in front of the hospital and set fire to the ultimatum letters.

Overnite strike at six months

As the Teamster strike against Overnite Transportation Co. hit the six-month mark, the union blasted the company for continuing to refuse to recognize its employees' right to representation. The strike began Oct. 24, 1999. On April 25, strikers and supporters held a rally at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City. Inside, Union Pacific's annual shareholders' meeting was taking place. Outside, truckers carried signs with the names of drivers UP subsidiary Overnite has fired for union activity. On April 27, Teamsters President James P. Hoffa called the Overnite strike the longest national freight strike in history. Hoffa said: "At this point, it appears that Overnite has no intention of obeying the law. Therefore, this Unfair Labor Practice strike will continue--for as long as it takes."

Actors on strike

The Screen Actors Guild and the Federation of Television and Radio Actors began a strike of television and radio commercials on May 1. At simultaneous strike rallies in Hollywood, San Francisco, Chicago and New York, striking actors vowed to stick together to defend their rights. After an overwhelming strike-authorization vote of 93 percent, a union mobilization termed Members on the Move prepared for the walkout. A SAG statement regarding the strike explained: "In striking the advertising industry, it is the membership's goal to convince the employers that their economic and business interests are best served by signing a contract that is fair and equitable to the performers. They will be convinced only if they have no access to the quality professional talent essential to the production of effective advertising messages."

SAG has pledges from Actors Equity and the American Guild of Variety Artistes that no member of these unions will take a job performing in a commercial for a struck producer. Nor will there be any auditions or interviews. Nor will producers be permitted to reinstate or renew old commercials.

The key issues in the strike center on new technologies and commercial advertisers' attempts to get more profit off the actors' labor. For example, the cable industry has refused to negotiate any aspect of a "pay-per-play" formula. This means that while actors are reimbursed according to the union contract for commercials each time they air on broadcast television networks, they are not getting paid for each commercial played on cable networks. Now that commercials are beginning to play on the Internet too, advertisers are ripping off actors even more. The unions are demanding new contracts that provide compensation for actors in commercials played on these new media as well as radio and TV.

Modern art, ancient wages

That's the chant outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where workers walked out on strike April 28. They set up picket lines. Passing out fliers explaining their struggle for decent pay and job security, strikers urged people not to enter the museum. Auto Workers Local 2110 represents the 250 archivists, assistant curators, librarians, clerks, bookstore workers and other MoMA staffers. They had worked without a contract since Oct. 31.

Strikers are demanding a 17-percent raise over five years. Just as important, they say, they won't go back to work until their jobs are guaranteed. MoMA is set to shut soon for a major remodeling project. During the projected two or more years of construction, the museum's collection will be temporarily housed in a site in Queens. Management has refused to pledge that everyone's job will be transferred to Queens, or even that all jobs will be reinstated when the Manhattan museum reopens.

Victory for immigrant workers

On April 25, in what AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson called "a great victory," a group of undocumented immigrant workers won their battle against being deported for the crime of organizing a union. The workers are all Mexican. All but one are women. They worked as low-paid maids and janitors at the Holiday Inn Express in Minneapolis--until they were fired and taken into custody last October. They had led a successful organizing drive to win representation by the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union. Then they were called into the hotel manager's office, one by one. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents were waiting. The INS took the workers into custody, charged them as "illegal aliens," and began deportation proceedings.

Because the labor movement is waking up to the vital importance of immigrant workers, the story didn't end there. Hotel union leaders got the workers out of jail. They mobilized the unions in Minneapolis. There was a mass rally in front of the hotel. Labor announced its solidarity with the workers, and denounced the bosses and the INS. "We don't want employers to believe they can hire undocumented workers, and then, if they begin a union, they can turn them in to the INS and walk away. This is a new slavery. This is economic slavery," said Hotel Employees Local 17 Secretary-Treasurer Jane Rykunyk.

The workers filed complaints with both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the NLRB, and won unprecedented rulings in their favor from both. Still, the INS pursued its case. A hearing was scheduled.

The mobilizing intensified. In the days before the April 25 hearing, thousands of phone calls, faxes, emails and letters poured in to the INS, demanding an end to the racist persecution of the Holiday Inn workers. With the spotlight on, the government finally backed off. The INS announced that the workers would be permitted to stay in this country. At the same time, the hotel agreed to pay each worker $8,000 in back pay.

Kaiser lockout ruled illegal

On April 26, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Leonard Page informed Kaiser Aluminum Corp. that he would charge the company with violating U.S. labor law. In a letter to Kaiser, Page said he would also order the company to reinstate all employees with full back pay and benefits retroactive to Jan. 14, 1999. That was the day Kaiser locked out some 3,000 members of the Steel Workers union after they ended a four-month strike.

Page sent his letter to Kaiser one day after Kaiser executives walked out of a negotiating session with the union. Steel Workers Negotiating Committee Chair David Foster commented: "I find it incredible that Kaiser has chosen to spurn a negotiated settlement while it continues its illegal lockout of 2,900 USW members. ... Kaiser has made very clear that its real agenda in its war on its workers is destruction of their union and an absolute right to cut off all health insurance for 9,000 retirees and their spouses."

Tentative NWA contract

Leaders of Teamsters Local 2000 announced April 20 that they had reached a tentative contract settlement at Northwest Airlines. It is the latest development in a long struggle by 11,000 NWA flight attendants to win wage and benefit improvements--after 10 years without a negotiated pay raise. Last summer, the rank and file rejected an earlier settlement by a three-to-one vote, sending negotiators back to the table. Now Local 2000 President Billie Davenport says the union got more. "The strongest part of this agreement is the retirement benefit, which is what our members told us to work on," she told reporters. That benefit nearly doubles in the tentative contract. The union also won slightly better pay raises than in the earlier settlement, the addition of a July 4 paid holiday, domestic-partner health benefits for same-sex couples, and some strengthened job-security language. However, the pact does not catch NWA workers up with flight attendants at other airlines, especially in terms of work rules and scheduling. And the provision for retroactive pay to 1996, which was seen as key, is considerably skimpier than what many had demanded.

Wal-Mart union yes!

It will be a long struggle. The Walton family--the country's richest--will fight it all along the way. But the struggle will not stop. And ultimately the workers will win. The entire Wal-Mart chain will be unionized. For now, the steps are small. The latest came April 24, when an NLRB hearing officer in Dallas upheld the workers' side and dismissed Wal-Mart's appeal of a union vote by meat cutters in nearby Jacksonville, Texas. The tiny group of workers--10 of them--had voted in the Food and Commercial Workers in February. After the vote, Wal-Mart announced it would eliminate the entire butchering operation at 179 stores in six states, selling prepackaged meat rather than deal with unionized butchers.

Meanwhile, meat and seafood workers at Wal-Mart stores in Palestine and Abilene, Texas, Normal, Ill., and Ocala, Fla., have petitioned for union-representation votes. Organizing efforts are under way at some 20 other sites around the country.

Workers Memorial Day

On April 28, 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Thirty years later, on April 28, 2000, workers around the country took part in rallies, demonstrations and other actions on Workers Memorial Day to call attention to the continuing scandal of on-the-job injury, illness and death in this country. The AFL-CIO released an annual report titled "Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect." According to the report, some 6,000 U.S. workers died from on-the-job injuries last year. Fifty thousand died from occupational diseases. How many people were injured at work? An astonishing 5.9 million. One in 17 workers suffered a work-related injury or illness.

It's hard to say which is the most dangerous job. Mining is an obvious candidate. Construction work is deadly, too. Farm labor is lethal. So is truck driving. Yet there's nothing inevitable about dying on the job. The culprit is capitalism. If workers' safety replaced owners' profit as paramount, there would be a steep drop in occupational illness, injury and death.

Occupational health and safety experts say the biggest non-fatal job safety problem in the United States today is repetitive strain injuries. Supermarket cashiers suffer from them. So do meat packers, auto assembly-line workers, and secretaries. Yet for 11 years Congress has refused to allow the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to institute a new ergonomics standard that would force employers to address the working conditions that give rise to repetitive strain injuries. The labor movement is currently making a big push to win passage of the new ergonomics standard.

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