Progressive bosses locked out the workers August 25 following a 48-hour strike. For four weeks the workers maintained 24-hour picket lines at the three distribution centers and organized flying pickets against trucks sent directly to the company’s supermarkets, gaining increasing solidarity from unions and working people more broadly.

While the unions did not achieve a single national contract covering the three sites, as they had demanded, NDU national secretary Laila Harré said that wage increases had gained the key aim of pay parity. According to a joint union press release, within two years incomes in Auckland and Christchurch will rise to within 95 percent of their equivalents in Palmerston North.

—Terry Coggan  
 
Alabama: 350 attend annual
miners memorial meeting
BROOKWOOD, Alabama—Three hundred fifty miners, family members, and supporters gathered here September 23 at a monument to 13 miners killed five years ago on that date in an explosion at the Jim Walter Resources No. 5 mine. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) holds an annual memorial meeting at the monument, just across a fence from the mine. UMWA locals at two area mines took mourning days, shutting the mines so members could participate in the event. Other locals arranged for miners who wished to attend to be excused from work on union business. More people came this year than in 2005. This year’s memorial service featured welcoming remarks from UMWA International Vice President Daryl Dewberry. He tied together the 2001 mine disaster with the long history of mining deaths in Alabama, and the mounting toll in U.S. coal mines this year.

Jim Walter Resources was fined $435,000 for violations of the law connected to the 2001 explosion. Those fines were reduced to $3,000 by an administrative law judge in November 2005. On August 30 the Mine Safety and Health Review Commission vacated the $3,000 fine and ordered the judge to reconsider the matter.

—Clay Dennison  
 
Judge rules flight attendants
can’t strike Northwest Airlines
A federal district judge on September 15 blocked flight attendants at Northwest Airlines from going on strike over $195 million in reduced wages and benefits that the airline has imposed on them. The 9,000 attendants have twice voted down a pact that would cut pay by 21 percent, reduce benefits, and lengthen work hours. “If workers were allowed to strike when terms were imposed by a bankrupt carrier, the right of companies to impose new terms would be a ‘suicide weapon,’” wrote U.S. District Court judge Victor Marrero in his ruling, according to an article in the September 16 New York Times. “That would undermine the bankruptcy law, he added, and make it harder for companies to avoid liquidation,” the Times said.

—Brian Williams  
 
 
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