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Strike

After Rejecting Fourth Union-Backed Contract, Carpenters Strike

September 17, 2021 Jerry White, WSWS. , , ,
An estimated 2,000 carpenters in Seattle and across the state of Washington began their first strike in nearly two decades Thursday after rejecting the fourth proposed contract agreed to by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC). Rank-and-file carpenters are seeking to expand their strike to other construction sites, where the union has signed no-strike pledges, and bring out the other 10,000 unionized carpenters who are currently being kept on the job. Over the weekend, carpenters voted by 56-44 percent to reject a four-year contract proposal that included below-inflation rate raises and a further erosion of pension benefits. Because of the skyrocketing cost of living in the Seattle area, construction workers are forced to live long distances from their worksites, sometimes spending three hours to travel back and forth and hundreds of dollars each week on gas and parking costs.

Striking Cookie Workers Refuse To Crumble

September 15, 2021 Roberta Wood, People's World. , , ,
Chicago - “We’re just tired!” April Flowers-Lewis told a rally in support of striking Mondelez workers*.* It’s not hard to see why the folks who make the nation’s cookies and crackers are exhausted and fed up. All through the pandemic, Flowers-Lewis, 48, and her co-workers, members of Bakery and Confectionary Workers Local 1, have been on their feet up to seven days a week, 16 hours a day baking and packing Wheat Thins, Chips Ahoy, Nutter Butter, Velveeta, and Animal Crackers here at what was the historic Nabisco plant on this city’s southwest side. Snack consumption during the pandemic skyrocketed; the plant’s owner, multi-national corporation Mondelez, took in $5.5 billion in profits in the second quarter of 2021, according to a report in Salon.

Ten Thousand UAW Members Gear Up For A Strike Vote At John Deere

September 10, 2021 Jonah Furman, Labor Notes. , , ,
Ten thousand production and warehouse workers for the farm equipment manufacturer John Deere will take a strike authorization vote September 12 across nine Auto Workers (UAW) locals in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas. Strike authorizations at bargaining time are not unusual for John Deere workers, and they haven’t struck in 35 years, but there are reasons to watch this round of negotiations closely. The last contract in 2015 passed very narrowly, by fewer than 200 votes out of 10,000 eligible voters, who traded rising health care costs for a small pay bump. The largest Deere local, Waterloo Local 838, rejected that contract 2 to 1; Ottumwa Local 74 also turned it down. Hundreds of laid-off workers were allowed to vote on it, though—and with a hefty $3,500 ratification bonus, many of them, unsure they’d have a job to return to either way, took the deal.

IATSE Gearing Up For Possible Strike Against Film And TV Industry

September 9, 2021 David Robb, Deadline. , , ,
IATSE is gearing up for a possible strike against the film and television industry, which would be the first industry-wide strike in the union’s history. The union and management’s AMPTP will return to the bargaining table on Thursday in an effort to reach an agreement on a new film and TV contract in advance of Friday’s expiration of their current deal. A strike, if it comes to that, would still be several weeks away, however, as IATSE continues to lay the groundwork for a possible walkout, which includes a text-messaging campaign to educate members about the negotiations and what’s at stake. “Our goal is to reach every single one of our members and make sure they know what is going on in negotiations; where to go get more information; and, when the moment comes, how to make their voices heard by voting,” the union said in a message to members Tuesday night.

Strike At Portland Nabisco Bakery Spreads To Five Other Facilities

August 27, 2021 Jamie Goldberg, Oregon Live. , , ,
Oregon - A strike that began at the Nabisco bakery in Northeast Portland on Aug. 10 has spread to five other facilities across the United States and gained national attention with both politicians and celebrities voicing support for the workers. Workers at the Nabisco distribution center in Norcross, Georgia, on Monday became the latest group of employees to go on strike. Approximately 1,000 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers union are now on strike across six Nabisco bakeries and distribution centers nationwide. The strike began in Portland earlier this month when about 200 workers walked off the job after Mondelez International, the parent company of Nabisco, proposed scheduling changes during contract negotiations that workers say would limit overtime pay and proposed providing new hires with a more costly healthcare plan.

High Rise Window Cleaners Enter Second Week Of Strike

August 26, 2021 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , , ,
In Minnesota, a strike by unionized high rise window cleaners at two companies has entered its second week — an example of the tensions growing across the country as workers seek to collect on promises that employers made to them before the pandemic. Around 40 cleaners are on strike, representing about half of the city’s entire work force in the specialized industry. They are members of SEIU Local 26, a vocal and politically active union with 8,000 members in the Twin Cities. Though the window cleaners are few in number, they have been able to generate outsized attention locally thanks to the union’s well-honed ability to pull off visible strikes in and around Minneapolis. Since the beginning of last week, the workers have rallied and held picket lines at major buildings in downtown Minneapolis and at the city’s airport, where some of them have worked cleaning handrails, walkways and glass.

Nabisco Workers In Georgia On Strike

August 24, 2021 BCTGM. , , ,
BCTGM International President Anthony Shelton issued the following statement in support of members of BCTGM Local 42 (Atlanta, Ga.) who are on strike against Nabisco in Norcross, Ga.: “Early this morning, members of Local 42 at the Nabisco distribution center outside Atlanta joined their Brothers and Sisters in Portland, Ore., Aurora, Col., Richmond, Va. and Chicago, Ill. in striking Nabisco. Nabisco workers in all five locations are saying strong and clear: stop exporting our jobs to Mexico and end your demands for contract concessions. The BCTGM will take all appropriate action necessary in order to reach a contract settlement that treats Nabisco workers fairly and equitably.

Chicago Area Mechanics Speak Out About Isolation Of Their Struggle

August 24, 2021 Jessica Goldstein, WSWS. , , ,
After more than three weeks on strike, mechanics in the Chicago area, members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Local 701, are being kept in the dark about negotiations and isolated from their brothers and sisters in the same local and the wider working class as a whole. The mechanics have shown their willingness to fight against the New Car Dealer Committee (NCDC) of Chicago and the car dealerships’ concession demands. On July 31, one day before the beginning of the strike, the mechanics voted down the NCDC’s contract proposal by 99 percent and voted by 97 percent to strike. But throughout the past month, the IAM leadership has isolated the strike and worked on behalf of the NCDC as conscious strikebreakers to an even greater extent than during the last strike in 2017, which lasted for seven weeks.

Chicago Nabisco Workers Join Strike In Four US States

August 21, 2021 James Martin, WSWS. , , ,
Over 1,000 workers are now currently on strike against Nabisco and its parent company, Mondelez International, Inc., part of a growing rebellion of workers in multiple industries. Over 200 workers in Portland were first to strike on August 10. Workers at Frito-Lay and its parent company PepsiCo recently struck against low wages, “suicide” work shifts, and higher health care costs in Kansas and Indiana, only to have their struggles betrayed by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and the Teamsters. The bakery workers on strike in Chicago also joined the strike of 800 mechanics in the Chicago metropolitan region. Nabisco workers, who produce and bake Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers and other popular snacks, have been forced to work 12- to 16-hour shifts, sometimes seven days a week, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Miners’ Strike Fed By Solidarity

August 18, 2021 Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times. , , ,
Over 1,100 union coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama, have been on an unfair labor practices strike against Warrior Met Coal for over five months. For five months, workers and their families have been holding the line, demanding to get back what was stolen from them with their last contract, demanding to actually have time to spend with their families, demanding to be treated with the respect they deserve for making this mine more productive than ever. The UMWA’s strike motto is ​“One day longer, one day stronger,” and workers are showing no signs that they plan to back down. In Part I of this special two-part update on the miners’ strike, our brother-in-arms Jacob Morrison from The Valley Labor Report interviews striking workers and supporters who attended a solidarity rally that the union held in Brookwood last week.

Striking Alabama Coal Miners Want Their $1.1 Billion Back

August 12, 2021 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , ,
History repeated itself as hundreds of miners spilled out of buses in June and July to leaflet the Manhattan offices of asset manager BlackRock, the largest shareholder in the mining company Warrior Met Coal. Some had traveled from the pine woods of Brookwood, Alabama, where 1,100 coal miners have been on strike against Warrior Met since April 1. Others came in solidarity from the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania and the hollows of West Virginia and Ohio. Among them was 90-year-old retired Ohio miner Jay Kolenc, in a wheelchair at the picket line—retracing his own steps from five decades ago. It was 1974 when Kentucky miners and their supporters came to fight Wall Street in the strike behind the film Harlan County USA.

Nurses Association Seeks End To Saint Vincent Nurses’ Strike

August 5, 2021 Mike Ingram, WSWS. , , ,
The press release says Monday’s talks ended with Tenet presenting a “disappointing” proposal that “failed to provide what the nurses need to end the strike.” It notes that it was “a proposal that the membership voiced strong opposition to at a meeting held last night.” No details of the new proposal have been published but the MNA previously pushed for nurses to concede their demands of 1:4 nurse-to-patient ratios on medical/surgical floors and telemetry units, as well as increased staffing in the emergency department and ancillary support in each unit.

Striking Miners In Alabama

July 29, 2021 Luis Feliz Leon, The American Prospect. , , ,
Miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama have been on strike for almost five months, struggling to reverse concessions in pay, health care, and safety. Strikers brought their picket lines from the piney woods of the South to the tony Manhattan offices of three hedge fund shareholders on June 22, and more than 1,000 mine workers and union allies return today to demonstrate outside the offices of the company’s largest shareholder, asset manager BlackRock. Miners have chanted, “No Contract, No Coal!” and “Warrior Met Has No Soul” on picket lines from the worksite in Brookwood, Alabama, to New York City. “We’re here to let the whole world know that we will take it from the bottom of the United States to the top. Where we have to take this fight, we’re going to take it,” Dedrick Gardner, a first-generation miner from a union household of teachers and postmasters, said on the New York picket line in June.

Rio Tinto Workers Strike In British Columbia

July 27, 2021 Roger Jordan, WSWS. , , ,
Around 900 workers walked off the job at mining conglomerate Rio Tinto’s aluminium smelting facility in Kitimat and power plant in Kemano, British Columbia early Sunday morning. The workers, for whom Unifor Local 2301 is the bargaining agent, are striking against the highly profitable company’s ever-expanding use of temporary contract labour and its refusal to grant workers hired since 2019 defined-benefit pensions. Talks between the Australia-based multinational, which is the third-largest mining corporation in the world, and union representatives began on June 7. Management immediately made clear its determination to enforce aggressive cost-cutting measures, even though the company raked in net profits of US $9.8 billion in 2020.

Gas Bill Strike Is Underway To Protest The North Brooklyn Pipeline

July 9, 2021 Erin Conlon, Green Pointers. , , ,
The No North Brooklyn Pipeline coalition is encouraging fellow community members to join a National Grid gas bill strike in the face of potential rate hikes meant to fund the aforementioned fracked gas pipeline. Since June 1, the campaign — which is organized and/or supported by the Sane Energy Project, Brownsville Residents Green Committee, Newtown Creek Alliance, and many more (including local politicians and representatives like Emily Gallagher, Jabari Brisport, and others) — has been in this phase of pipeline resistance, which urges residents to withhold $66 on monthly gas bills. This is in response to National Grid and New York State’s gas bill increase to fund the $185 million needed to complete the pipeline, as well as accusations of greenwashing against National Grid.
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