Cynthia Jaquith, a meat packer and SWP candidate for Pittsburgh City Council, and Ryan Scott, a laid-off coal miner and candidate for Allegheny County Council, talked with the strikers about the importance of fighting company divide-and-rule tactics, like the introduction of a permanent lower pay scale for new hires.

The two candidates later crossed the Ohio River to stop by the picket shack of United Steelworkers in Hannibal, Ohio, who have been on strike at the Ormet aluminum plant since November 2004.

Several pickets there spoke angrily of the role of Republican politicians and judges who have come to the aid of the company against them. Scott and Jaquith responded that a labor party is needed based on the unions that fights in the interests of working people as an alternative to both the Democratic and Republican parties.

That morning Scott and Jay Ressler, SWP candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh, brought solidarity to striking parking-lot workers organized by Teamsters Local 996 in downtown Pittsburgh. The 260 workers are defending seniority, bidding on jobs, and fighting for better wages.

The evening before Scott spoke during an open mike session at a benefit in Pittsburgh for Hurricane Katrina evacuees. “We need to press for a massive, federally funded, public works program at union-scale wages to rebuild homes, schools, hospitals, and other facilities and infrastructure destroyed by the hurricane and flood,” Scott told the crowd. The actions of working people in the Gulf Coast who took initiatives that saved thousands of lives despite government inaction at all levels point the road to the future, he said, the road to a self-confident, mobilized, and united working class that can take its destiny into its hands.

On September 21 Ressler participated in a program sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union at the University of Pittsburgh on the U.S. Patriot Act. Speaking from the floor, he pointed to the growing resistance of working people as the main target of laws like the Patriot Act. Ressler solicited support for the Militant Fighting Fund.
 
 
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W. Virginia: unionists strike PPG plant  
 
 
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