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Vol. 74/No. 36      September 27, 2010

 
On the Picket Line
 
Spanish miners strike
demanding back pay
Coal miners in Spain blocked roads September 9 and are occupying two coal mines as part of a two-week strike demanding the bosses pay them back wages. The unpaid workers represent 35 percent of the country’s 7,400 coal miners. In the northwestern province of León, 52 striking miners have remained 1,640 feet underground for more than a week at one mine, and 14 have done the same at another. They have not been paid for two months.

Representatives of the Alonso and Viloria mining groups are claiming they have no funds. Backing a protectionist move, the Comisiones Oberas labor federation issued a statement backing the bosses’ calls for reducing imported coal and demanded that “the government once and for all get involved and seek a solution that would include boosting domestic coal stocks.”

Illinois: Explosion rocks
Honeywell uranium plant
A powerful explosion September 5 rocked the Honeywell uranium plant run by scab workers in Metropolis, Illinois. Some 220 members of United Steelworkers Local 7669 have been locked out by the company since June 28 after talks for a new contract broke down. The plant is the only uranium conversion plant in the country.

Honeywell is demanding that workers give up their retiree health-care coverage and pension plans. The company also wants to eliminate seniority, contract out about 20 percent of the work at the plant, and make changes in overtime pay.

The hydrogen explosion occurred the day after replacement workers started up core production at the facility. This was only the second time since nuclear power plants have gone into operation in the United States that a community surrounding a nuclear power reactor had to be evacuated, reported the Huffington Post. The first time was the 1979 partial meltdown disaster at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The replacement workers are employed by the Shaw Group. In 2009 a subsidiary of this outfit had to pay $6.2 million to the federal government for forcing its workers not to report safety violations when working at nuclear plant sites in Alabama and Tennessee, according to the Post.

—Compiled by Brian Williams  
 
 
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