On the picket line

Detroit teachers vote to strike

Chanting “No contract, no work,” more than 6,000 out of 9,500 teachers voted Aug. 27 to strike immediately rather than accept an across-the-board 5.55 percent pay cut.

The teachers accepted $70 million in concessions last year to avoid a strike, so they were in no mood to accept another $88.9 million in concessions this year. Teachers were expected to report for work Aug. 28, with schools opening on Sept. 5. This is the first time since 1999 that the teachers have walked out.

“Last year we decided not to strike because of the children, but this year we are not working: no contract, no work,” Emma Gibson, a teacher for 33 years, told the Aug. 23 Detroit News. “We are for our children. Last year we spent our [own] money getting supplies, books and paper.”

The union is demanding 5 percent pay increases. Detroit Federation of Teachers President Janna Garrison, who has participated in 49 negotiations since March, said the school district is not taking advantage of $114 million in cost savings that would cover the $105 million budget shortfall. On Aug. 25 the DFT filed an unfair labor charge against the district.

The district said it would seek a court order to force the teachers back to work. Striking by public employees, which includes teachers, is illegal in Michigan, as in many states. The union can be fined $5,000 a day, and teachers can be fined a day’s wages for each day they don’t report to school. However, that’s seldom invoked because it requires individual hearings for each teacher.

A number of districts in Michigan remain without contracts. On Aug. 7, the Michigan Education Associ ation said negotiations in 13 districts were at a critical stage—meaning bargaining had been unproductive.
Stay tuned.

NWA flight attendants picket in Detroit

Although the bankruptcy court refused to block a flight attendants’ strike at Northwest Airlines, a federal judge invoked a termporary injunction stopping the strike on Aug. 25. But it didn't stop flight attendants and their supporters in Detroit from staging a spirited rally that day at McNamara Terminal.

Wearing lime green T-shirts emblazoned with CHAOS, which stands for the AFA-CWA rolling-strike strategy—Create Havoc Around Our System—the flight attendants affirmed that they were ready to go on strike at a moment’s notice. Even though a permit limited pickets to 50 people, dozens more waited their turn or picketed in an area overlooking the gates.

Supporters included other unionists and NWA mechanics, who have been on strike since Aug. 20, 2005. The AMFA members provided shuttle service from nearby Auto Workers Local 174 headquarters. Saundra Williams, president of the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, announced that the NWA flight attendants would lead its Sept. 4 Labor Day parade.

The issues at stake are huge. The airline is demanding $195 million in givebacks, which amount to over
40 percent reductions in salary and benefits and as much as 25 percent additional work hours. The flight attendants voted down contracts with these terms not once but twice.

Four flight attendants interviewed in the Aug. 25 New York Times said they could not live on the reduced salary. Kerri Barz, who expected to make $42,000 this year, said that the new pay scale would give her less than her starting salary six years ago. ’s insulting what they want us to make,” she said. Richard McBride said accepting the contract meant “I would be subsidizing Northwest Airlines.”

“Something is terribly wrong when a company that just made a quarterly operating profit of nearly $200 million continues to insist on the same cuts it demanded from flight attendants when it was losing money,” said Mollie Reiley, AFA-CWA interim Master Executive Council president. “Management and the courts can stall us, but they cannot defeat us. Our crusade to
protect our careers has only begun. We will continue
to fight for Northwest flight attendants and all flight attendants who will walk in our footsteps.”

Immigrant workers sue New Orleans hotel magnate

Guest workers from Latin America, hired to maintain 15 New Orleans hotels after Hurricane Katrina, filed
a lawsuit on Aug. 16 charging Decatur Hotels’ owner F. Patrick Quinn III with reneging on their contracts.

The workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic were promised they would work 40 hours a week plus overtime. Instead they are working as little as 10 hours a week for as little as $6.14 an hour. Under the terms of their visas, they are not allowed to take other jobs.

“The amount of money we are earning [is] not enough to get our investment back and to send money home—it’s not enough to survive,” Rodolfo A. Valdez-Báez told the New York Times. (Aug. 17) He had to borrow $3,000 to get the job from an international recruitment company and to pay for travel to and from the Dominican Republic.

The lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of 82 workers asserts that Quinn’s goal was to “drive down wages and working conditions.”

Additional reporting by Cheryl LaBash.<