UNION YES!
South Jersey SEPTA Strikers Defend Stance on Health Benefits
By Richard Pearsall
The Courier-Post
Wednesday 02 November 2005
Philadelphia - Most South Jersey residents who work in Philadelphia continued to commute as usual Tuesday despite the SEPTA strike.
Authorities reported only small changes in the number of people using buses, trains and cars into the city.
Longer than usual lines at the Benjamin Franklin Bridge toll plaza Tuesday morning appeared to be the result of heavier-than-usual traffic at the other end, not a major increase in the number of cars crossing, said My Linh Nguyen, a spokeswoman for the Delaware River Port Authority.
But for one group of workers on the Jersey side, the strike by about 5,300 bus drivers, mechanics and other employees of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has turned life upside down.
"People think of SEPTA as Philadelphia," said Dino Parlapiano, 42, of Bellmawr, a mechanic who normally works out of SEPTA's garage at 2nd Street and Wyoming Avenue. "But there are a lot of us who live in New Jersey."
"They want to paint us as greedy," Parlapiano said. "But we are just people who pay our taxes and support the economy - people who are fighting for a decent-paying job."
The strike began early Monday. Negotiations resumed around 8 p.m. Tuesday but no deal had been reached by press time.
The main sticking point in the labor standoff between SEPTA and Transport Workers Union Local 234, which represents about 5,000 employees, and United Transportation Union Local 1594, which represents another 300, is health care.
SEPTA management wants the union members to pick up 5 percent of insurance premiums that SEPTA describes as skyrocketing.
The union believes it would be fairer to charge all SEPTA employees, union and management alike, 1 percent of their salaries so that the burden is more related to ability to pay.
"They want us to pay the same amount as managers making $150,000 and $175,000," said Mick Ostrowski, a 58-year-old Palmyra resident who normally drives a bus along Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia.
Rising health-care costs are a national problem, with workers everywhere being asked to shoulder a bigger part of the load - a point that unhappy SEPTA riders have not hesitated to hurl at SEPTA workers.
Parlapiano said he is not responsible for what other workers and other unions do.
"But why do working people have to keep giving back?" he asked. "Maybe we are fighting for other people, too."
Ostrowski, who was picketing Tuesday at SEPTA's Frankford Depot, noted that "there are 40 million people in this country who don't have health insurance."
"We shouldn't be having this strike," Ostrowski said. "Health care should be part of what you get as an American citizen."
For their part, SEPTA officials say they were hit with 15 percent increases in their health insurance premiums in 2002, 2003 and 2004, and a 19 percent hike this year. They say they are facing 18 percent increases in each of the next two years.
The 5 percent of those premiums they are asking from workers is more than reasonable, they contend, particularly when linked with the 9 percent increase in salary over three years they are offering.
Scott Plecker, 30, a bus driver whose route takes him from Frankford to the area of North Philadelphia around Temple University, said that over the years the union has settled for smaller pay raises in exchange for good health benefits.
"We want to keep them," Plecker, a Vineland resident, said of his health benefits. "Anybody would."
Plecker, who has two boys ages 11 and 12, said he and his fiancée "have been saving for the last year. We knew there was a definite possibility of a strike."
His union has no strike fund.
"They were a little worried at first," Plecker said of his sons and the strike. "But it's helped them get a perspective. They know it's not easy to pay the bills."
Northwest Pushes 'Permanent Solution' to Union Problem
By Chris Kutalik
Labor Notes
October 2005 Issue
The battle being waged at Northwest Airlines (NWA) by the independent Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) and its supporters rolls on into its second month. Northwest's management has increased the pressure on the 4,400 strikers, pushing demands further and further as the weeks progress, towards what a company spokesperson called "a permanent solution for that segment of the workforce."
Talks broke down September 11 after NWA pushed a proposal that AMFA Local 5 member Curt Booza characterized as an attempt "to completely eliminate us from the property."
NWA began moves to permanently replace strikers September 13. Shifting from its original proposal to cut over half of its 4,400 AMFA jobs (including all of the lower-paid cleaner jobs that employ a greater percentage of women and people of color), in mid-September NWA demanded a 75 percent job reduction.
Though AMFA negotiators appeared ready to accept large-scale job cuts, NWA refused to entertain the union's insistence on 20-weeks of severance pay for terminated workers. This refusal left negotiations at a stalemate, and workers remained on the lines.
Highlighting fears that larger givebacks would spread beyond the mechanics union, AMFA negotiator Jeff Mathews observed that NWA had raised its overall goal for wage and benefit concessions from all its unions from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion.
According to Mathews, "Some groups, including the IAM, may be asked to shoulder a disproportionately larger share of the new target amount." He added, "The company is intent on ... keeping the heel of its boot on each of our throats."
Despite mounting pressure, the strikers' morale remains high. A month into the strike, only 10 AMFA members have crossed the lines. In places where AMFA locals are active and cross-union support is organized, rallies, fundraisers, and other actions have kept spirits relatively up.
Hearts and Minds
In other unions, sharp divisions have developed over the strike, pitting irate rank and filers and local officers against International leaders who have either refused to endorse or actively undermined strike support efforts. Cross-union solidarity efforts in Detroit, Minneapolis, and San Francisco have run into such resistance.
Indeed, in the lead-up to the strike deadline, local labor bodies were explicitly ordered by the AFL-CIO not to participate in any efforts to assist strikers. In an August 15 memo, AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department Director Rick Bank ordered state federations and central labor councils not to organize or support boycotts, food banks, relief funds, turnout at AMFA picket lines, or rallies without the permission of the national AFL-CIO.
Local bodies were further told that they "have no power or authority to instruct affiliates to honor picket lines." All requests to honor pickets were to be referred to the two AFL-CIO unions still working at NWA: the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and the Machinists union (IAM).
Alarmed by what they see as a potential major defeat for the labor movement, many unionists have been backing the strike despite the ban. While some hold criticisms of AMFA as a craft-oriented union with a history of decertification battles with AFL-CIO unions, many of these critics also maintain that the stakes are high enough to warrant throwing support behind the strikers.
Lessons from 1981: PATCO
They point to the use of permanent replacements (which haven't been seen in airlines since the 1989 Eastern Airlines strike), the deteriorating situation for all airline unions since 9/11, and the recent AFL-CIO split as reasons to support the strike.
"If we don't [get behind the strikers], it shows that we haven't learned a lesson from PATCO and on," said Al Benchich, president of UAW Local 909 and co-chair of Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice. "If we don't stand together, we're going to fall as individuals."
In a boost for the strikers, the UAW International donated $880,000 from its strike fund. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, "Northwest Airlines' behavior toward AMFA is blatant union-busting and an insult to every American worker. The UAW is proud to offer this support to AMFA members."
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Aircraft Engineers International, the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (the union that represents FAA inspectors), the newly-formed Minnesota Change to Win Coalition (state affiliates of SEIU, Teamsters, UFCW, UNITE HERE, Laborers, and the Carpenters), four central labor councils (in Michigan, California, and Oregon), and a number of UAW locals have announced support for the strikers.
Additionally, UNITE HERE and Steelworkers District 2 have stopped flying Northwest.
Local Efforts
In a few cities, union and community members organized strike support on short order.
In Detroit - a Northwest hub - activists from the 1990s Detroit newspaper strike, Jobs with Justice, UAW, IBEW, Newspaper Guild (CWA), and Labor Notes joined with AMFA Local 5 members to organize an August 27 "ox roast" (a traditional fundraiser in which strikers' families and strike supporters are fed while funds are raised) at IBEW Local 58's hall.
IBEW International leaders intervened the day before the fundraiser, demanding that the local lock its doors for the weekend. Organizers scrambled to reschedule, moving the event to two local bars that had been used as support bases during the newspaper strike. Despite IBEW's interference, over 150 local activists attended and $3,900 was raised.
Strikers also took their message to Labor Day events. UAW Region 1-A invited hundreds of AMFA Local 5 members and their families to march in its contingent in Detroit's Labor Day parade. Marching UAW, AFSCME, SEIU, NALC, APWU, and CWA members gave a warm response to strike supporters handing out leaflets and collecting money around a sound truck parked on the parade route.
Nearly 200 rallied in a symbolic picket at a local casino near the parade's end, with signs saying, "Don't Gamble with NWA." AMFA Local 5 President Bob Rose called the Labor Day action "a shot in the arm."
Broadening Out
Besides building outside support, strikers have been trying to broaden out their fight from the well-controlled airport picket lines.
A group of 20 Local 5 members drove to the CSX rail yard in Toledo and set up pickets on September 6. Ninety-five percent of the yard's Detroit-bound freight traffic was snarled at this chokepoint after Teamster engineers and rail workers refused to cross the picket.
Teamsters only returned to work after CSX won a court order on September 8 that mandated that they cross the lines.
AMFA members will travel to the Jobs with Justice conference and the Change to Win convention in St. Louis at the end of September to network and rally labor activists and leaders to their cause.
Wild Cards
Although NWA has consistently claimed that the strike has not affected its operations, the airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (along with another major carrier, Delta) on September 14. Rising fuel costs (spiked by Hurricane Katrina) and the effects of the strike (sliding on-time flight performance, declining ticket revenues, and the $101 million price tag for NWA's union-busting strategy) led to losses estimated at $350-400 million in the third quarter.
Bankruptcy is a wild card for the strikers. US Air and United were able to use bankruptcy courts to force open contracts and extract hundreds of millions of dollars in concessions. AMFA leaders, however, see little to lose in the courts.
With the bankruptcy, strikers see the potential for a larger fight that would pull in other unions as NWA pushes even harder for concessions. If one or more of the unions representing flight attendants, pilots, or ramp and gate agents are drawn in, there is the chance that they may end up on the picket lines themselves. A broader strike involving flight crews could raise pressure on the company by grounding many of its flights.
Commenting on the need for urgent action, the Airline Workers News Service wrote: "Union members at Northwest are facing their own version of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, we are all below sea level. Time is running out ... If union members in the [Professional Flight Attendant Association] and IAM do not act soon to aid mechanics, cleaners and custodians, Northwest will simply dictate terms and destroy unions, contracts, and livelihoods."
The question is: will these unions act and will it be enough?
(Photo: Rashaun Rucker / DFP)
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