TORONTO, November 2—Negotiators for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 have reached a tentative first contract agreement with Tyson-owned Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta. Workers will likely begin voting on the proposal as of November 4. “It’s not everything we needed, but it’s a union shop,” bargaining committee member Reuben Mayo told the Militant by phone. Picket lines have remained strong since the hard-fought strike began on October 12. “About 40 to 50 scabs have come over to the union,” striker Zacharia Ibrahim told the Militant Labor Forum by phone hookup October 30. “This morning seven more joined.”

With nearly 1,000 picketing and an equal number entering the plant, including several hundred office workers and management personnel, the bosses had been able to maintain a minimal level of production. Last week production ground to a halt for three days when unionized federal meat inspectors refused to cross the picket line. Production resumed when Tyson bosses won a court injunction ordering the union to let the inspectors cross. However, Tyson bosses had been unable to resume the slaughter on the second shift.

CBC news reported that Local 401 president Doug O’Halloran predicted a close ratification vote. “The contract is not all things to all people,” he said. After a defeated strike the union was decertified in the 1980s.

—John Steele

Sacked Gate Gourmet workers maintain protest pickets

LONDON—Eighty locked-out Gate Gourmet catering workers continued their daily picket line protest at Heathrow Airport October 31. The 713 sacked Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) members voted September 28 to accept a deal brokered by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the company. Return to work was offered to 187 workers, with a further 210 able to seek reemployment or paid voluntary redundancy (severance). An additional 172 workers had already signed for voluntary redundancy and an unnamed 144 face compulsory redundancy.

British Airways and Gate Gourmet, which supplies flight meals for the airline, finally signed a new catering contract October 20, which goes until 2010. For almost five weeks the increasingly angry workers have waited for confirmation of a return to work or redundancy payments.

Sacked workers told the Militant of their determination to maintain the protest pickets. “We are staying on the hill until this is sorted out,” said Paviter Sanghera, whose wife was also sacked. “We’re not giving up our fight for our rights. We’ll stay until we get our job or our money.” Another worker, Jaswinder Singh, added, “We’re proud we’ve stayed outside. They say we’re troublemakers, but we’re not slaves.”

—Celia Pugh

Striking parking lot attendants picket Pittsburgh garages

PITTSBURGH—“This garage is full, of injustice and greed,” was the favorite chant of more than 100 unionists whose picket stopped cars from entering a Pittsburgh Parking Authority garage for two hours here in the downtown section of the city on the morning of October 26. Pickets included members of the Teamsters, Service Employees International Union Local 3, United Food and Commercial Workers, United Steelworkers, and Laborers unions. City cops arrested 14 union members.

Teamsters Local 926 steward Tina Brocto told the Militant that there were strikers there from Alco Parking, Central Parking, Pittsburgh Parking Authority, and Grant Oliver garages. The parking lot attendants have been on strike for more than two months. Brotco said the companies are insisting on a wage freeze and demanding workers pay more for health-care premiums.

—Tony Lane

New York sanitation contract calls for one-person crews

NEW YORK—The Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association reached agreement October 12 with New York City on a new contract that provides a 17.5 percent pay raise over 51 months and what the Chief, a civil service employees weekly, calls “far-reaching productivity measures.” For the first time some garbage trucks will have only one worker—the driver—who will also unload the large, metal “roll-on” garbage bins. For this job workers will receive an extra $80 a day. Wages for new hires will be reduced below regulation pay for the first two years they’re on the job. Workers will now be required to pick up more garbage every day. These moves are projected to reduce the workforce by 200. The city’s 6,600 sanitation workers had been working without a contract since November 2002.

—Brian Williams

1,500 march in Stockholm in defense of union rights

STOCKHOLM—Some 1,500 people marched here October 20 to protest the firing of Per Johansson, the president of Local 119 of the Union for Service Communications (SEKO), which organizes the subway drivers here. Union members wore blue jackets with the inscription “We Refuse To Shut Up” on their backs. Connex, the private company that runs the subway, fired Johansson on the pretext he was “disloyal” when he informed the press of deficient safety and fire protection in the subway. “Fire Connex, not Per!” workers chanted. Two weeks earlier, subway workers had shut down 86 of 112 trains in a one-day strike to protest the firing.

—Catharina Tirsén

MSHA hearings focus on drug abuse, not real safety problems

SALT LAKE CITY—The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) held a public meeting here on October 24 on “alcohol and drug abuse by miners.” It’s the first of seven set to take place in coal mining states across the country, including Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Mike Dalpiaz, vice president of the United Mine Workers of America from Price, Utah, told the media when these hearings were announced, “Nobody wants drugs and alcohol in the workplace, period. But I’ve been in the industry for 30 years and I don’t see it as a problem.” He also said that MSHA would better serve coal miners by addressing the dangers of rock falls, methane gas explosions, and dust that causes black lung disease.

Company representatives were the main participants at the hearing here, asking MSHA for help in monitoring the behavior of miners.

—Paul Mailhot  
 
 
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