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On the picket line
By
Sue Davis
Published Jun 5, 2005 11:13 PM
Boycott Coca-Cola!
[Editor’s note: The
Teamsters strike against Coke was settled at the end of May; details in a
forthcoming WW.]
Now there’s another reason to boycott Coke
products: to show solidarity with more than 2,000 Teamsters at bottling plants
and distribution centers in Los Angeles and East Hartford, Conn., on strike
since May 23. After negotiating with the bosses over health benefits since last
fall, the production workers and delivery drivers went out the week before
Memorial Day to pressure the company to negotiate or jeopardize summer sales.
The workers don’t want to pay more for health benefits, especially given
that they make $15 to $20 an hour. “We will not have our members pay high
costs for health care while Coca-Cola still gives out fat consulting agreements
to executives who no longer work for the company,” said Jack Cipriani,
director of Teamsters Brewery & Soft Drink Workers Conference, in a May 26
news release. The boycott of Coke products will still be needed after this
strike is won in order to stop Coke’s deadly anti-labor policy in
Colombia.
N.J. nurses win contract
It took the
threat of a strike a year after winning union representation for nearly 400
nurses in Lakewood and Toms River, N.J., to ratify their first contract in early
May. Now they’re the New Jersey Nurses Union/Communications Workers Local
1091. Only after the nurses began wearing scrubs with the CWA logo and stickers
with slogans promoting bargaining did negotiations pick up. The nurses also
signed a pledge not to work overtime after a certain date and registered with
temporary agencies to show management they were prepared to strike. They won
community support with a campaign for safe staffing levels and conducted lively
informational picketing in late April. In their new contract the nurses won wage
hikes and improved working conditions, a grievance and arbitration procedure,
and a policy spelling out just cause for terminations.
CSU teaching
associates win contract
It took seven months of intense
bargaining, after a hard-fought organizing drive, for 6,000 teaching associates,
graduate assistants and instructional student assistants to win their first
contract at California State University on May 12. This win by the California
Alliance of Academic Student Employ ees, a unit of the Auto Workers, is part of
the struggle across the country to win union recognition, higher pay and respect
for those who labor in the halls of academe.
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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