On the picket line

Youngstown strikers hold the line

Striking reporters, photographers, copy editors and truck drivers at Youngstown’s Vindicator newspaper voted 85 to 17 on July 27 to reject the company’s latest contract offer. The workers, represented by Local 34011 of the Newspaper Guild, an affiliate of the Com munication Workers, have been on strike since Nov. 16.

Even though the contract offered 6-percent raises over three years—which is 6 percent more than was offered last November—the workers don’t like new terms by which management can lay off staff. “The layoff language is the most important at this point,” said local Vice President Shaulis Flora. (Associated Press, July 28)

On July 28 the Vindicator announced it would begin hiring permanent replacements. Local 34011 President Anthony Markota countered that his members were so fed up with bad working conditions that “they’re willing to lose their jobs over it. That’s how bad it is.” (Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, July 29) For instance, Markota pointed out that the paper has 18 supervisors in the newsroom overseeing 53 workers.

Despite the company’s threat, only two reporters crossed the picket line that day to return to work. Since the strike began nearly nine months ago, only 24 of the 179 union members have done that. The strikers have received strong support from the community. On July 9 they were bolstered by a fundraiser hosted by the Detroit local of the Newspaper Guild, which organized the event to commemorate 10 years since its own hard-fought battle in Detroit.

Marchers protest farm worker deaths

Salud Zamudio-Rodriguez was the first California farm worker to die this summer from heatstroke. Working on July 13 in 105-degree heat, frantically trying to keep up with a tractor moving at triple time in order to finish a bell pepper field, Zamudio-Rodriguez collapsed just before his shift ended, his body shaking violently from heatstroke.

The United Farm Workers led a march July 24 in Arvin near the Kern County fields where, his family and co-workers said, the 24-year veteran had worked “like few other men could. Eight and 10 hours a day, he moved like a machine up and down the rows.” (Los Angeles Times, July 31) Since then, two other workers have died in 108-degree heat in the San Joaquin Valley—one picking melons, the other grapes.

The Farm Workers marched to demand passage of state law AB805, which would require growers to add rest periods and shade to protect workers when temperatures rise above 95 degrees. The growers oppose the proposal as “too burdensome.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on July 23 for the growers to voluntarily give workers breaks in the shade.

But the Farm Workers have already tried that. “Last year, after the death of Asuncion Valdivia from heatstroke, we sent letters to the major table grape growers,” UFW President Arturo Rodriguez told the L.A. Times. “We asked them to take voluntary steps to deal with the heat. Not one grower responded to our call or implemented changes.”

The workers, only too well aware of how the state favors the big growers, are determined to press for higher wages and tougher standards.

State says ‘No strike,’ California nurses picket

Some 9,000 nurses who work in University of Calif ornia hospitals had voted to strike for one day on July 21. But the state intervened. Gov. Arnold Schwarzen egger’s Public Employees Relations Board got a Superior Court judge to block the strike on July 20.

Undeterred, but really angry, the nurses rallied and picketed at six hospitals around the state on July 21.

“UC nurses are outraged that the University would go to court to block their democratic right to strike—an action taken against no other UC employees—on the heels of its refusal to negotiate with the nurses on the critical issue of safe patient care and its intent to sharply erode retirement and health benefits for the nurses,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, California Nurses Association executive director in a July 20 CNA press release.

A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 11 when the board and UC are demanding a permanent injunction against the nurses.