Vol. 74/No. 48      December 20, 2010

The Prysmian strikers’ Web site says this is the result of “savage restructuring of jobs and conditions being imposed throughout workplaces in Australia in the fallout from the global financial crisis.”

Prysmian produces high-tech cables for energy and telecommunications systems. The company has cried poor as it seeks to attack working conditions and wages, including removing overtime rates for shift and weekend work. Prysmian also wants to introduce temporary workers at the minimum pay rate and cap severance pay at a maximum of 52 weeks’ pay.

“All we want is for the company to leave our conditions alone,” said Fea Moana, originally from Samoa, who has worked at the plant for 17 years. No union member has crossed the picket line. Production workers, covered by the National Union of Workers, are picketing alongside members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Electrical Trades Union.

—Ron Poulsen

Landlord locks out workers
at building complex in New York
BROOKLYN, New York—Building porters and maintenance workers are fighting back against a November 29 lockout by the Flatbush Gardens apartment complex here. The more than 70 workers, who clean and maintain the 59-building complex, are members of Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ. They say the complex owner, Renaissance Equity Holdings, aims to cut wages by 30 percent and require workers to pay to maintain health insurance.

“We even offered to freeze wages at their current level for a year and the company refused,” said Vernon Rampersad, a porter. “The porters used to cover two buildings each; now we cover three.”

In a statement broadcast on News 12 Brooklyn, the company said it would use temporary workers until Local 32BJ members ratify “the best and final proposal presented to them on September 1.”

Lucien Clarke, 46, is the only electrician at the complex. “They say take it or leave it,” he said. “But the prices go up and they want to cut us down. So we can’t take it. I’m not just fighting for myself; I’m fighting for my children’s future.”

Many of the 32BJ members live in the complex. “The Flatbush Gardens Tenants Association is 100 percent behind the union,” said Rudolph Chase, the association’s second vice president. “We joined the rally called by the union last week. This isn’t just an attack on the union, but an attack on the tenants. We’re all working people.”

—Mike Fitzsimmons

Montreal: unionists demonstrate
for locked-out newspaper workers
MONTREAL—Several thousand unionists and their supporters marched December 4 to the Journal de Montreal’s offices here in solidarity with 253 workers locked-out by the newspaper since January 2009 for refusing to accept major concessions. Leading the demonstration, locked out workers carried big red letters spelling out “Boycott the Journal de Montreal” in French.

In October the workers rejected by 89 percent the latest offer from the paper’s owner that would have permanently laid off 201 of them. The workers are members of the STIJM (union of news workers at the Journal de Montreal), which is affiliated to the CSN, one of Quebec’s labor federations.

The big majority of unionists who came out were in CSN-affiliated unions—from construction, meatpacking, and other sectors of the federation. But the FTQ and the CSQ, two other labor federations in Quebec, also organized contingents for the march.

—Beverly Bernardo
 
 
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Steelworkers in Illinois fight Honeywell lockout  
 
 
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