On the picket line

Philly office cleaners win contract

The afternoon before a strike deadline was set to expire at one minute after midnight on Oct. 19, hundreds of Service Employees Local 32BJ janitors and building engineers, dressed in the union’s trademark purple, marched south on Philadelphia’s Broad Street to Locust Street for a rally outside the building where contract talks were being held. No wonder the owners of about 100 of the city’s biggest high-rise office buildings coughed up a decent four-year contract for the 2,650 workers at the eleventh hour. On-the-scene WW reporter Joe Piette speculated that what also helped avert the strike was that “the owners must have feared the presence of the Occupy Philly encampment as a ready-made source of bodies ready to help fight in solidarity.” The new contract will boost wages by 7 percent over the course of the contract, with a $600 bonus this year, while maintaining employer-aid pensions and health care coverage. An Oct. 19 Philadelphia Inquirer article noted: “Stakes were high for this round of negotiations — the contract in Philadelphia is among the first in a wave of contracts that come up this fall in East Coast cities.” May 32BJ continue to prevail!

AFL-CIO joins OWS in 200+ cities

Little did the AFL-CIO know when it called “America Wants to Work National Week of Action” starting Oct. 10 that the Occupy Wall Street movement would spread like wildfire all over the country. Union members from Minneapolis to Baton Rouge, La., and from Vermont to Oregon ended up joining the young activists to demand jobs and protest the big banks and corporate greed in more than 200 cities. As AFL-CIO official Dennis Le­Bounty told the Burlington Free Press in Vermont,
“The message needs to get through that the rich should pay their fair share and that you can’t balance the budget on the backs of working men and women.” (Oct. 15)

ILWU Local 21 struggle continues

International Longshore and Warehouse Union members at six Pacific Coast grain exporters approved a new, one-year contract on Oct. 19 with a pay increase, full medical benefits and contributions to the pension plan. Meanwhile, ILWU Local 21 members at the Port of Longview, Wash., and two terminals at the Port of Kalama, Wash., were not included in the agreement. Local 21 members are continuing the fight to save their jobs at the new EGT grain terminal in Longview. (www.tdn.com, Oct. 19)

Ohio women workers say ‘No’ on Issue 2

On Oct. 18, a panel of working women in Cleveland agreed that women workers will be hard hit if the Ohio law taking away collective bargaining rights from public sector workers is not overturned on Nov. 8. That’s why they urge everyone who cares about equality for women and good working conditions to vote “No” on Issue 2. For example, Tracey Wright, a firefighter with the Youngstown Fire Department and the first woman captain, stated that because of collective bargaining, “I am afforded the same wages, benefits and promotional opportunities as my brother firefighters.” The same applies to other oppressed workers — people of color and the lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer communities.

History textbooks ignore unions’ role

A new study, sponsored by the American Labor Studies Center, found that history textbooks present labor history in a biased, negative way. They focus on strikes and strike violence without any mention of the vile, oppressive working conditions and the employer abuse and violence that lead to strikes. In addition, “American Labor and U.S. History Textbooks: How Labor’s Story Is Distorted in High School History Textbooks,” shows that the four major textbooks in use today virtually ignore the role of unions in passing worker protections and reforms such as the eight-hour day, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, occupational safety and health, the end of child labor and environmental safeguards; that unions supported the Civil Rights movement; and that organizing public workers in the 1960s into unions gave rights and decent living standards to millions of public employees. (AFL-CIO Now Blog, Sept. 6)