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Strike

Community Members And Businesses Show Support For Frito-Lay Strikers

July 8, 2021 India Yarborough, Topeka Capital-Journal. , , ,
Community support is rolling in for Frito-Lay workers on strike in Topeka. Going into the second day of the first strike outside Topeka's Frito-Lay plant in nearly 50 years, a local relief fund had been set up to cover some union members' utility bills, as area businesses showed support for those on the front line. Members of Local 218 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers Union went on strike Monday after about 400 members voted down over the weekend a recent contract offer from Frito-Lay. The strike will last for an indefinite amount of time, and workers participating in the boycott are going without pay until it concludes. Given some union members may struggle financially during that time, a local relief fund organized by 785 Magazine aims to raise enough money to cover each union member's water bill for the month of July.

Members Of Topeka’s Local Frito-Lay Union Just Voted To Strike

June 29, 2021 India Yarborough, Topeka Capital-Journal. , , ,
Members of the local union representing Frito-Lay workers have voted to strike. After multiple rounds of mediated contract negotiations with the company yielded little progress, members of Local 218 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers Union on Saturday voted to strike starting early next month. According to Mark Benaka, business manager for Local 218, a total of 383 union members turned out for a series of membership meetings held Saturday in Topeka. He indicated a strike vote was taken during those meetings, with members overwhelmingly voting in favor of the boycott. "A vote of 353-30 took them into a strike direction," Benaka said. He said the strike is expected to take effect just after midnight on Monday, July 5. However, he noted Frito-Lay representatives indicated Sunday they wished to meet again with the union's contract negotiating committee before that date.

Mack And Ford Workers Call For Joint Action To Back Volvo Trucks Strikers

June 29, 2021 Jerry White and George Marlowe, World Socialist Web Site. , , ,
Aware of the anger over handling scab parts and growing sentiment for collective action in solidarity with the NRV strikers, UAW 677 posted a notice Monday, which read: “As the NRV strike continues, our brothers and sisters at Local 2069 need our support.” Far from calling the workers out or even calling for a ban on handling scab parts, the Local 677 officials instruct workers to donate money to striking Volvo workers during the general membership meeting Thursday at the local union hall. While workers will no doubt gladly contribute, even though they are facing the loss of income due to temporary layoffs, it is the UAW which is fully responsible for the precarious economic situation facing striking Volvo workers.

Indian Farmers’ Protest Completes 200 Days

June 25, 2021 La Via Campesina. , , ,
Early January this year, while responding to a journalist’s query about the perseverance displayed by India’s farmers even after several rounds of failed negotiations with the Government of India, Rakesh Tikait of Bhartiya Kisan Union had evoked the everyday struggle of a peasant in the field. “Resilience is in our blood. Every year after sowing seeds, we wait patiently for months on end to reap the harvest. It is back-breaking work in difficult conditions. Often, a drought or an untimely hailstorm wreaks it all and smashes all our hopes for a better yield and income. Yet, we persist. We do not give up. We do not run away. Come winter, and we plant again. In one village of Rajasthan, my people have waited 12 long years for rains. Farmers are the epitome of patience. Our farm is our life.

Striking Alabama Coal Miners Take Protest To Wall Street

June 23, 2021 William Thornton, AL.com. , , ,
About 14 striking Alabama mine workers have taken their case to Wall Street this morning. Chanting “no contract, no coal,” the miners today launched the latest step in a strike that began April 1 for a new contract with Warrior Met Coal. United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts and union members plan to protest in front of the Manhattan offices of several hedge funds the union says are the reason the contract negotiations are stalled. “These are the ones that can be responsible in seeing that we get a decent contract,” UMWA Legislative Director Phil Smith said by phone this morning. The miners, along with other supporters, plan to protest in front of BlackRock Fund Advisors, State Street Global Advisors, and Renaissance Technologies.

The Farmers’ Revolt In India

June 18, 2021 Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
India is gripped by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The daily confirmed cases crossed 400,000 in May as the health system convulsed, hospital beds filled up, and medical oxygen canisters emptied. The spike in the death rate has created queues at crematoriums. While the spotlight is on Delhi and other urban centres, silent deaths are spreading in rural north India. People are dying of ‘fever’ and ‘breathlessness’, the common-sense terms used to describe COVID-19 symptoms. Since many have not been tested for the disease, their deaths are not part of the official numbers. In September 2020, India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), passed three acts that directly impact agriculture.

Volvo Truck Workers In Virginia Return To The Picket Lines

June 11, 2021 David North, WSWS. , , ,
Following Sunday’s massive repudiation of the second sellout contract negotiated by the pro-corporate United Auto Workers, 3,000 workers at the Volvo Truck North America’s New River Valley Plant in Dublin, Virginia, are back on the picket line. Inasmuch as the struggle of the Volvo truck workers has been scarcely reported on in the national media and all but ignored in the publications of the middle-class pseudo-left organizations, it is necessary to provide a concise review of the events leading up to Sunday’s vote. Volvo workers originally went out on strike on April 17, determined to reverse the concessions that had been granted by the UAW to the Sweden-based transnational corporation over the last three contracts.

Puerto Rican Workers: No Peace If Energy Is Privatized

June 8, 2021 By  Worker's World. , , , ,
Union organizations today warned Governor Pedro Pierluisi and the Financial Oversight and Management Board that they will paralyze the country if the LUMA Energy contract — that increases rates, allows the consortium to leave Puerto Rico if a hurricane strikes and displaces thousands of workers — is not canceled. “We are warning the attorney for the Financial Oversight and Management Board, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, that there will be no peace in Puerto Rico if the contract is not repealed and they listen to the people who demand, not only a public and more efficient PREPA, but also one free of fossil fuels. Right now there is a favorable atmosphere for paralyzing the country, and if the governor continues to be deaf to the people, we will do so.

Union Painters Are Primed For A ‘Summer Of Chaos’

June 5, 2021 Don McIntosh, NW Labor Press. , , ,
At 5:45 a.m. Friday, May 21, painters started assembling outside under-reconstruction Madison High School in Northeast Portland, and picked up picket signs instead of paint sprayers. For the first time in over 40 years, members of Painters Local 10 were on strike. On the picket line were the 21 members scheduled to work there that day plus others who came to back them up. Painters District Council 5 field rep Scott Oldham says at first there was fear, not knowing what to expect. But when other union trades started to arrive in twos and threes, the mood shifted. “People from each crew would walk forward and say, ‘Hey, we’re with Local 16, and we respect what you’re doing. We absolutely will not be crossing the line today,” Oldham says. “Next time it could be me,” some workers said.

Across India, Protesters Mark Six Months Of Historic Farmers’ Agitation

May 27, 2021 NewsClick, People's Dispatch. , , ,
Hundreds of thousands of farmers, workers and members of trade unions, student and women organizations observed a protest at thousands of places across India on Wednesday, May 26. The day marked the completion of six months of the historic farmers’ protest against the three contentious farm laws passed by the government of Narendra Modi. Farmers across India have opposed the laws, saying it will dismantle vital state regulations, reduce the price they get for their produce and lead to greater corporate entry in agriculture.

Nurses In Massachusetts Are Waging The Longest Current Strike In The US

May 13, 2021 Nora De La Cour, Jacobin Magazine. , , ,
After two months on the picket line, over seven hundred unionized nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, are still out on strike. The walkout, which began on March 8, is the longest nurses’ strike in Massachusetts in decades and currently the longest active picket line in the United States. The nurses, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), are demanding that the hospital improve staffing ratios so they can adequately care for each patient. In the year leading up to the strike, nurses at Saint Vincent filed more than six hundred official “unsafe staffing” reports. A column in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette recounted one of these reports, wherein a nurse describes a shift in which she was assigned to care for...

Activists In Mississippi Challenge Constitutionality Of Anti-Strike Law

May 9, 2021 By Adam Ganucheau and Kate Royals, Mississippi Today. , , ,
A political time bomb is ticking in Greenville, and the explosion could transform the state’s public education environment for decades to come. Last Monday and Tuesday, between 13-20 bus drivers for the Greenville Public School District — some of the lowest paid employees in one of the most under-resourced school districts in one of the most under-resourced regions of America — skipped work to protest reduced pay and what they called poor work conditions. As far as anyone knows, this was the first organized work stoppage in Mississippi public schools since 9,429 teachers walked out in a 1985 strike, after which lawmakers passed the demanded pay increases but also enacted one of the nation’s most stringent strike laws. Lawmakers that year made it explicitly illegal for school employees to strike in Mississippi.

Montreal Dockers Strike: Defy Back-To-Work Legislation

April 28, 2021 La Riposte Syndicale, Fightback. , , ,
Since the end of the seven-month truce on March 21, the bosses have been in attack mode. On April 12, the Maritime Employers Association (MEA) decided to suspend the job security plan. The dockers organized in CUPE 375 retaliated with an overtime and weekend strike. Then, on April 23, another slap in the face: the MEA changed work schedules to increase hours worked and implement “shift schedules” that make it harder to balance work and family—which is one of the main issues in the negotiations! This tactic of changing schedules is a contemptuous frontal attack. This was also implemented in the fall of 2018, before the dockers had a strike mandate. Michel Murray, spokesperson for the union, said in his press conference on Friday that the anger of the membership had to be contained to avoid an illegal strike at that time. 

The Women Of The Warrior Met Strike

April 22, 2021 Madeleine Freeman and Luigi Morris, Left Voice. , , ,
Alabama - Just 40 miles to the west of where Amazon workers at the BHM1 facility in Bessemer, Alabama, were voting on whether to form a union, 1,100 mine workers at Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood began a strike for a fair contract and better working conditions. The strike is now entering its third week, and already the workers have surmounted their first significant obstacle: they voted overwhelmingly to reject a wretched deal presented by the company, one that many workers called “a slap in the face.” The tentative agreement (TA) presented by UMWA union representatives and the company fails to address the workers’ most important concerns: wages, job security, and paid time off. In response, the miners tore up the TA and returned to the picket lines, determined to force the company to offer a better contract.

Truck Drivers And Workers Strike At Southern California Ports

April 14, 2021 Kim Biggar, Splash 247. , , ,
Truck drivers at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, represented by the Teamsters union, started strike action against Universal Logistics Holdings (ULH) this week, adding further to extraordinary congestion woes at America’s principle west coast maritime gateways. According to the Teamsters website, ULH-affiliated companies at the ports “illegally fired truck drivers, denied them back pay, and refused to recognize and bargain with the union [the drivers] legally won.” The drivers have formed a picket line outside the ULH Southern Counties Express trucking yard in Compton, California.
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