Vol. 74/No. 12      March 29, 2010

“We know how the economic condition is, so we’re not asking too much,” striker Juan Arias told the Militant as he walked the picket line. “But they don’t want to give a good contract. It’s an offense to the employees.” Workers rejected the proposed contract by a vote of 228 to 8.

“They want to make this a sweatshop,” striker Steve Finno told the Militant. According to past work rules, “if it was over 60 pounds, you’d have two people to lift it. Now there are no limits, and if the equipment can’t be used, you can have 100 pounds to lift by yourself.”

Finno explained that the company’s “five-year contract would give a 25-cent raise now and another 25 cents in September, then nothing for the second and third years, then 5 cents, then 10 cents.”

Strikers have also set up picket lines at Shaw’s stores that aren’t organized by the UFCW in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, including several in the Boston area.

—Kevin Dwire

Stevedores’ strike in Finland
slows trade, paper production
Stevedores in Finland went on strike March 4 over job security and severance pay. The dockworkers, organized by the Finnish Transport Workers Union (AKT), are demanding severance pay equivalent to a year’s earnings for laid-off employees. The strike involves 3,000 permanently employed stevedores at Finnish harbors.

The walkout is estimated to have halted some 80 percent of all foreign trade. Five days into the strike, paper manufacturer UPM announced it was shutting down three of its mills in the country, which employ 2,000 workers, for lack of storage space. The paper giant Stora Enso has also shut down a paper machine in one of its plants.

By law paper companies had to pay workers at suspended plants for seven days after work stopped.

The AKT organized a demonstration on the first day of the strike, marching to the headquarters of the Confederation of Finnish Industries, where they held a rally. The national chairman of the Paperworkers Union has expressed support for the dockworkers.

The strike by the stevedores began the day after a one-day strike by transportation workers, which resulted in a settlement between the workers’ union and transportation companies.

—Anita Östling

Canada nickel miners
vote to continue strike
MONTREAL—A strike by 3,000 nickel miners and refinery workers at Vale Inco’s operations in Ontario, Canada, has entered its eighth month after workers voted down the company’s latest offer March 12. Members of United Steelworkers Local 6500 in Sudbury, representing most of the workers, rejected the company’s demands by 89 percent. As they left the meeting, strikers burned Vale Inco’s offer in their picket-line fire barrels. The union has called a mass demonstration and rally in Sudbury for March 22.

In Port Colborne, 106 members of Local 6200 voted to maintain the strike, while only two voted to accept the concession contract.

Vale Inco is demanding takeaways from workers’ pensions, cost-of-living allowance, and the production bonus system. Vale Inco is also pressing to undermine job security through contracting-out provisions. The company recently announced plans to bring in contract workers to restart production.

Another 200 workers at the company’s operations in Vosiey’s Bay, Newfoundland, have been on strike since August 1.

—John Steele

TJX workers in New England
rally to press contract demands
BLOOMFIELD, Connecticut—Some 200 workers at the Home Goods distribution center and their supporters rallied here March 10 to press their contract demands. Home Goods is a subsidiary of TJX, which also operates T.J. Maxx, A.J. Wright, and Marshalls.

Workers represented by UNITE HERE at four TJX locations—in Bloomfield and three others in Massachusetts—are fighting for higher wages, against mandatory overtime, and to maintain vacation/personal days.

Workers from the Massachusetts outlets arrived in two buses to attend the rally. Also participating were city workers from Hartford, organized by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and members of UNITE HERE from New Haven, Connecticut.

The rally was conducted in Spanish and English, with about 20 speakers, ranging from the president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO to rank-and-file workers from the four distribution centers. Workers emphasized that above all they were fighting for respect. They described being harassed by management when they take bathroom breaks, and they ridiculed attempts by the bosses to buy them off by offering free hot dogs.

—Tim Craine  
 
 
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