—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Newark, New Jersey, airport workers rally for higher wages

Hundreds of airport workers and supporters marched through the Newark, New Jersey, airport Jan. 16, Martin Luther King Day, demanding higher pay.

“We don’t think it’s fair,” skycap Nancy Vazquez told the Militant in a phone interview. “Workers at JFK and LaGuardia airports in New York make $11 an hour. We’re still making $10.10, working for the same companies.”

Workers at the New York airports received the $2 increase in the city’s minimum wage Jan. 1. It will rise to $15 an hour at the end of 2018, in response to national protests over this issue.

After a fight by contract workers in collaboration with Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, the Port Authority mandated a $10.10 wage for airport workers on both sides of the Hudson River in 2014. The $8.44 New Jersey minimum wage lags far behind New York’s.

In December, 8,000 workers employed by private contractors at area airports represented by 32BJ signed their first union contract after a four-year fight. Now more than half of airport contract workers are in the union.

“This is definitely a work in progress,” Vazquez said. “We didn’t get raises or benefits. But now the companies can’t just get rid of whoever they want. We have protection.” Workers also won the right to company-provided protective clothing, and will receive schedules a week in advance. Full-time employees are guaranteed 32 hours per week.

—  Candace Wagner

West Coast crab fishermen end strike against price cut

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — Dungeness crab fishermen up and down the California, Oregon and Washington coasts ended their more than one week strike Jan. 6. Northern California crabbers initiated the action in the last days of December when a wholesaler cut the price offered for the traditional holiday delicacy from $3 to $2.75 a pound. San Francisco Bay Area fishermen joined in solidarity even though they were still getting the $3 price.

Oregon fishermen, in talks organized by the Oregon Department of Agriculture, settled for $2.875 a pound with processers, who imposed this price throughout the West Coast.

Crab fishers — rank and file members of the Half Moon Bay Seafood Marketing Association — at Pillar Point Harbor here told the Militant Jan. 19 that their solidarity action with their northern brothers was necessary, but they thought the $3 price could have been retained given the strength of the coast-wide action.

“It was a total eyesore that we banded together and didn’t even get the quarter,” fisherman Don Marshall told the Half Moon Bay Review Jan. 12. He said he was not happy with the way the negotiation was handled.

Crabber Jimmy Phillips “says that you don’t become a crab fisherman to get rich,” reported the Review. “He says when the stars align properly fishermen might make decent money but that is typically the exception over the rule.

“‘We work for a loss for a lot of times,’ Phillips said. ‘If you were to put an hourly wage on our scale it would be pretty gross.’”

—  Joel Britton