Vol. 74/No. 34 September 6, 2010
According to an article on the IBEW’s Web site, unsafe working conditions and forced overtime helped spur the unionization drive. “We had one employee lose his finger last month, an accident that shouldn’t have happened,” said Brian Heins, an IBEW district organizer. The IBEW also reported that the company forced some employees to work 14-hour days without prior notification.
Some Trinity workers contacted the IBEW in June, and within a week more than enough signatures were gathered to file for a union election.
Trinity hired antiunion consultants to help fight the unionization drive, the IBEW reported. Heins said that the company organized “almost daily antiunion captive audience meetings” in the plant.
Newton, a town of 15,000 near Des Moines, has still not recovered from the closure of the giant Maytag plant there in 2007. The plant employed 4,000 workers. Great fanfare greeted the opening of Trinity in part of the old Maytag facility, and of TPI, another nearby plant that produces the giant turbine blades that sit atop the towers manufactured at Trinity. President Barack Obama traveled to the Trinity plant to give an address on Earth Day in 2009.
The combined workforce at Trinity and TPI is only a fraction of the former Maytag workforce. In May, TPI announced it was laying off more that half its workers, slashing its workforce to just over 230.
—David Rosenfeld
Rallies in New Zealand
oppose antiunion law
AUCKLAND, New Zealand—Several hundred union supporters rallied here August 21 to oppose a new employment law that the government has introduced into parliament. Some 800 protested in Wellington, and 500 each in Christchurch and Dunedin. The actions were called by the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) as part of its Fairness at Work campaign.
The new legislation would extend provisions already in effect at workplaces of fewer than 20 employees. This would allow companies to arbitrarily fire a worker any time during the first 90 days of their employment, removing current legal rights workers have to appeal against unfair dismissals.
Speaking at the Auckland rally, Joanne Bartlett told of how she had worked at a fast food outlet for 89 days. She was then fired after she asked about her break times.
Under other provisions, union representatives would have to get an employer’s consent before entering a workplace, and employers could demand doctor’s certificates for workers taking even a single sick day.
“We have to support our working rights,” David Te Iringa told the Militant at the rally. He was one of the workers involved in a hard-fought dispute at a dairy plant in Waharoa last year.
—Janet Roth