On the picket line

NWA flight attendants continue CHAOS

Negotiators for Northwest Airlines flight attendants attended a mediation session on Sept. 27—the first since NWA imposed a 40-percent pay cut along with new work rules in July. The members have twice voted down these changes.

On Sept. 21, the union—American Flight Attendants-Communication Workers of America—asked the National Mediation Board to release it from further mediation because negotiations with management were at an impasse.

“The NMB was created to protect employees, not strip away their rights as the courts have done,” said Mollie Reiley, AFA-CWA’s interim master executive council president.

Her statement, in a union news release, continued: “Management has no motivation to negotiate—they have already taken over $200 million a year from us and the district court has prevented us from striking. If Northwest is allowed to get away with destroying our careers, you can be sure that this practice will soon spread and other companies will use this as a method to destroy the lives and the professions of thousands of employees. The right to strike is the only tool working women and men have to counter the greed of management that is eroding corporations across America—it’s the one thing that forces management to negotiate fairly.”

The mediation session was inconclusive; another is scheduled for the week of Oct. 9.

NWA flight attendants and their supporters are continuing to implement CHAOS—Create Havoc Around Our System—by holding informational picket lines at airports from San Francisco to Tampa. For more information on how to support CHAOS in your area, visit www.nwaafa.org.

Detroit teachers >strike for 16 days

Defying a court order to go back to work on Sept. 8, Detroit school teachers vowed to continue the strike they began Aug. 28 for a better contract. They were insulted by an offer that included a 5.5-percent pay cut and revised work rules after they had already agreed to $70 million in concessions to avoid a strike in 2005.

Then, on Sept. 13, after a 12-hour negotiating session in the mayor’s office, the teachers were offered a very different three-year contract. Although there will be no raises in 2006, seniority raises were restored. In 2007 the teachers will have a 1-percent raise, and a 2.5-percent raise the year after. But there were givebacks: 10-percent increases in health care co-pays and one prep period cut for elementary teachers. A significant improvement was a 60-day notice to teachers before a layoff (as opposed to 10 days) with provisions for legal representation.

Will the members of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 231, accept this contract? Results of the vote will be announced Oct. 6.

N.C. Kroger workers win health care

In late September grocery workers at Kroger stores in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area beat back the bosses’ attack and signed a contract that protects and even improves quality, affordable health care for workers and retirees.

During negotiations in July, Kroger had proposed a plan to raid employee health-care reserve funds and force 1,917 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 204 to pay $1.4 million from their own paychecks to cover the resulting shortfall.

Kroger backed down after the workers voted to strike in early August. The workers took their demand for a fair contract to area neighborhoods in early September, and initiated a national campaign that flooded Kroger with e-mails demanding protection for worker’s health benefits.

“We’re very satisfied with this contract,” said Local 204 member Nina Tilley in a Sept. 28 union news release. “I don’t think we would have an agreement like this without the support we got from the community here and from UFCW members all over the country.”

Huge sit-in targets L.A. hotels

On Sept. 28 more than 300 supporters of immigrant rights staged a sit-in, snarling traffic for three hours in front of two hotels near Los Angeles airport. Chanting, “Si se puede” (Yes, we can), “No justice, no peace” and “Boycott Hilton,” about 2,000 demonstrators protested the treatment of immigrant workers by 13 hotels near the airport. The action was organized by UNITE HERE and the We Are America Coalition.

The Los Angeles Times called the event “the largest civil disobedience in Los Angeles in a generation and one of the largest in the city’s history. The protest saw more arrests than any labor action in 60 years.” (Sept. 29)

The housekeepers, dishwashers and other employees, who are overwhelmingly Mexican and Central American immigrants, earn an average of $9.55 an hour, which is 20 percent less than similar workers make elsewhere in the city.

“I am happy, as happy as I’ve ever been,” Daniel Briones, a cook at the Glendale Hilton, told the Los Angeles Times as he sat in the middle of the street and prepared to be arrested for the first time in his life. “I’m doing this for my colleagues in the hotels down here.”

Though workers at the targeted hotels marched, they did not take part in the sit-ins due to the threat of being fired.

“The struggle of these hotel workers is the struggle of all cities and communities in Los Angeles,” Salvador Sanchez, a community college professor, told the New York Times before he was arrested. “People can’t afford rent or food. They have to have two jobs to pay for living expenses, and that’s ridiculous.” (Sept. 29)

Hotel workers win contracts

On Aug. 31, room attendants and other non-tipped workers at four Hilton hotels in Chicago won immediate raises of $1.10 per hour, with $3.90 over the life of the three-year contract. Workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 1 will also receive 47 additional cents an hour in their pension plan by the end of the contract. And their daily room quota was reduced for heavy checkout days.

Four days later four Hyatt hotels in Chicago agreed to the same terms for 1,900 workers. And 900 workers at five Starwood hotels won the same terms on Sept. 14. Eleven other Chicago hotels have signed “me-too” agreements with the union.

On Sept. 19, workers represented by Local 483 at two Hyatt hotels on the Monterey Peninsula in California won $5 per hour raises over the course of a four-year contract. That amounts to a 33-percent pay raise. Hyatt also agreed to increase the workers’ health insurance by 70 percent during the contract.

First union for pizza delivery workers

The American Union of Pizza Delivery Drivers is a first. Over the summer the union won recognition from the National Labor Relations Board as the bargaining agent for drivers at six Domino’s Pizza stores in Pensacola, Fla.

Domino’s driver Jim Pohle told the Associated Press on Sept. 22: “When they declared us tipped employees and refused to pay us the Florida minimum wage of $6.40, I was kind of angry. I came home that night and I told my buddy, `We are forming a union.’ ”

Using the Internet, Pohle found St. Louis labor attorney Mark Potashnick, who had worked on unsuccessful organizing efforts by pizza workers in St. Louis and in cities in Ohio and Michigan. Potashnick coached Pohle on submitting the successful petition to the NLRB. Besides fighting for livable wages, the workers are aiming for increased job safety, since they are often robbed.