On the picket line

SAG inches toward strike

The Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers met for contract talks Nov. 20-21 for the first time in four months. But even the intervention of a federal mediator couldn’t forge an agreement acceptable to SAG. The union says the producers “insist on terms we cannot possibly accept.” (New York Times, Nov. 23)

The actors are insisting on payment for work used in Internet videos and other new media—terms which the Writers Guild won after a three-month strike earlier this year. SAG is now in the process of educating its 120,000 members, who have been working without a contract since June 30, on why they should vote for a strike. Before one can be called, a strike must be approved by 75 percent of the members. Stay tuned.

Midwest flight attendants protest

On the busiest travel day of the year, the Sunday after “Thanksgiving,” Midwest Airlines’ flight attendants held an information picket at Milwaukee’s airport. Members of the Association of Flight Attendants, a unit of the Communications Workers, protested layoffs of their members as jobs were outsourced to nonunion workers. The AFA-CWA members also protested the company’s demand for wage cuts.

Labor Department lies exposed

A Government Accountability Office report released Nov. 24 found that the Bush Labor Department gave Congress false numbers on the supposed cost savings of hiring outside contractors, in an attempt to prove that outsourcing jobs to private companies was more efficient than keeping government employees on the federal payroll. This is yet another example of how the Bush administration has tried to use its muscle to further an anti-worker agenda. (blog.aflcio.org)

Union support for Cuban Five

Just months before the Cuba-Venezuela-Mexico-North America Labor Conference on Dec. 5-7, the Service Employees Union, representing more than 2 million workers in the U.S. and Canada, called on the Bush administration to grant entry visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, as well as other family members of the Cuban Five. SEIU is the first national U.S. union to support the five Cubans, who have been unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. on bogus charges for 10 years, despite the fact that their mission was to prevent terrorism against the Cuban people. In a related development, the largest union in Britain and Ireland has organized a campaign to demand freedom for the Cuban Five. (Workers World, Oct. 31)