On the picket line

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.