On the picket line
By
Sue Davis
Published May 19, 2005 10:22 PM
Farmworkers march on Albany, N.Y.
About 100 farmworkers and
their supporters held a “March for Justice” across upstate New York
from April 29 to May 3. Traveling more than 200 miles through apple-growing
country, the workers took their demands for the right to collective bargaining,
overtime pay, a day of rest each week and disability rights to the state
capital.
One of the marchers told the May 3 Finger Lakes Times that the
farmworkers, many of whom are immigrants, often labor 70 hours a week for only
$6 an hour. The average farmworker in that region makes less than $8,000 a year.
One worker, who wouldn’t risk losing her job by giving her name,
said through a translator, “My goals are to receive
better treatment
and have more rights.”
Vanessa Margan, who works with Farm worker
Legal Services in Roches ter, noted, “Without the right to collective
bargaining, farmworkers can be too
easily replaced.”
Marching
behind a banner that read “Farmworkers deserve equal rights,” the
workers chanted, “Si se puede”—It can be done!—and
“Que queremos? Justicia!” —What do we want? Justice!—as
they set off from Albion. A number of groups sponsored the march, including the
Centro Independiente de Trabajadores Agricolas and Rural Opportunities.
Workers win at Washington U.
Thanks to a 19-day student
sit-in, the workers at Washington University in St. Louis will be getting
significant raises. In a ground-breaking agreement finalized April 22, the
administration agreed to pay $1 million over the next two years toward salary
and benefits for low-paid contract workers.
A new joint
student/university committee will include representatives of the Student Worker
Alliance that organized the sit-in. The committee’s charge: to change
university policies to better meet the needs of lower-paid service workers.
These include protecting the right to bargain collectively and working toward
providing living wages and benefits for all those directly or indirectly
employed by the university.
“I’m so thrilled with what these
students have won!” said janitor Chyrstal Wells in an April 26 media
release issued by Jobs with Justice, which fights for higher wages and better
working conditions for janitors and other low-paid workers. “I’ve
never worked at a place where the people I perform services for take up for you
like this.”
SWA is part of the Student-Labor Action Project, a
national movement to promote workers’ rights on college
campuses.
Members of SLAP have won victories at Harvard, Stanford and most recently at
Georgetown. SLAP is a joint project of the United States Student Association and
Jobs with Justice.
Howard workers fight for living
wage
Custodians and housekeepers at Howard University, members of SEIU
Local 82, have been in contract negotiations for more than six months. Some
workers make just $8.65 an hour while President H. Patrick Swygert makes $203.85
an hour.
Take the case of Ollie Fulmore, who has to work 80 hours a week
to provide for his four children. Because Fulmore earns only $8.65 an hour for
his housekeeping job, he has to work a second job in food service just to pay
the bills.
Howard refuses to bring the wages of the lowest-paid workers
above $10 an hour, even though housekeepers at other universities in the area
already earn more. Workers at Georgetown University will be earning $14 an hour
by 2007, thanks to the recent dramatic hunger strike by Georgetown
students.
Subhead: CSU teaching associates win first 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 Employees, a unit
of the Auto Workers, is part of the struggle to win union recognition, higher
pay and respect for those who labor in the halls of academe.
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