10,000 Yale strike supporters rally in New Haven

Compiled by Wendy Hounsel

New Haven, Connecticut, Sept.14 — Ten thousand Yale strikers and labor supporters from across the Northeast shut down the center of the city on Sat., Sept. 13, shouting, chanting, waving banners and blocking major intersections.

The presidents of five powerful unions, along with more than a hundred rank-and-file members, were arrested at the close of the four-hour demonstration.

Throngs of strikers and supporters moved en masse through downtown streets, putting motor vehicle and human traffic at a standstill. Drivers leaned on their horns, some in support, some infuriated.

Hundreds of demonstrators converged at the intersection of York and Elm streets — in the heart of the Yale campus — locked arms and sat down on the pavement. Police, anticipating the civil disobedience, swooped in and made peaceful arrests.

The demonstration began at about noon on the Green, followed by a march through the Yale-New Haven Hospital and medical school complex. The procession stretched across six full blocks.

AFL-CIO national President John Sweeney; John Wilhelm, president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union; Bruce Raynor, president of UNITE; Douglas McCarron, president of United Brotherhood of Carpenters; and Andy Stern, president of SEIU, were arrested alongside 147 other demonstrators.

Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy accused the unions of giving priority to organizing workers instead of to the “quality of the contract” on the negotiating table.

Wilhelm responded, “Yale would be better served in coming to a reasonable agreement on pensions and other issues, than continue to try to divert attention from its shameful pensions and by talking about something that is not on a subject of bargaining.”

Sweeney and Wilhelm said the New Haven demonstration was the launch of a broader campaign that will target Yale University trustees where they live and work, as well as other university campuses.

Wilhelm said union members will stage protests, even at country clubs where trustees register memberships.

Yale clerical, technical, and maintenance workers, members of the university’s two largest unions, walked off their jobs Aug. 27. They were joined by university hospital workers from Local 1199.

Strikers were bolstered Saturday by the high spirits and bright banners of carpenters, laborers, food service workers, the needle trades, steelworkers, Teamsters and other trade union locals who arrived early in the morning from New Jersey, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Las Vegas.

Sam Cook and Gerri Ford, members of HERE Local 634 in Philadelphia, came by bus with 33 others from their local as a show of solidarity, they said.

“No matter what part of the country we live in, we all have the same issues,” Ford said.

Undergraduates and graduate student teachers from Harvard and Columbia universities held up signs, as did Graduate Employees and Students Organizing, which has been trying to form a union at Yale for more than a decade.

Wilhelm said there was a breakthrough last week on the issue of job security during meetings in Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s office. But the two sides are far apart on salary raises and pension benefit increases.

“We made a little bit of progress. A little bit of progress is a good thing, but it’s not enough,” Wilhelm said.

Scabs join strikers

Days after the University’s use of subcontracted Hispanic workers to replace striking employees incited controversy among some city and national leaders, 13 temporary replacement workers walked off the job and joined striking Yale employees on picket lines.

The 13 workers, who were hired by Sanitary Maintenance Services, Inc., were given a hero’s welcome at a union rally Saturday, a contrast from last week, when some picketers jeered the fill-in hires as they arrived at the university in buses. Some city leaders argued last week that the use of largely Hispanic temporary workers to cross picket lines of mostly black workers was designed to incite racial controversy in the city.

Some of the 13 are undocumented workers, and Conroy said Yale’s subcontractor hired to perform cleaning services during the strike said it will fire any of the workers found to have lied about their legal status.

“The issue is not the documentation status,” said Wilhelm. “While denying Latino workers good union jobs and benefits, Yale has been quick to use them as strikebreakers.

“Employers like Yale are happy to exploit them [illegals] and quick to hide behind the law when they are caught red-handed,” he continued.

Some of the workers who quit said Yale subcontractors treated them badly and this contributed to their decision to leave. Yale Facilities Management Job Coordinator Kenneth Rowe could not be reached for comment.

At the rally, amid chants of “Si, se puede” — yes, it is possible — the new picketers stood together. They will receive $250 per week now, the standard picket pay. While working at Yale through the subcontractor, workers said they received $10.61 per hour.

Gilbert Cintron, the first subcontracted worker to walk off the job Wednesday, said workers were given impossible tasks and told if they did not complete them, they would be fired.

Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said the unions are reaching out to — and paying — other groups of people to join them in their protest. She said the Hispanic workers’ decisions to quit reflected the unions’ desire to have as many picketers as possible.

Union spokesman Bill Meyerson said the unions want Yale to hire more Hispanic workers for regular jobs, not just to fill in during the strike.

“We want people to have regular full-time jobs at Yale,” Meyerson said, “not just to do dirty work.”

The workers who walked off their jobs said they will continue to speak with strikebreakers who are still working for Yale.

Sources: New Haven Register, Yale Daily News

Malawi women battle child labor

By Brian Ligomeka

Blantyre, Malawi, Sept. 15 (IPS)— Women activists in Malawi are waging war against child labor, saying it is one of the many forms of violence that women in the country suffer from.

In the fight against child labor — especially among girls — women activists, educationists, and entrepreneurs are using education as weapon to empower girls. They say the rampant violence in Malawi is partly due to the high levels of illiteracy among women and girls.

Catherine Munthali, executive director of the Society for the Advancement of Women, says women’s rights organizations have focused on rural areas where child labor is rampant so as to fight it from the grass-roots level all the way up.

“We are currently fighting child labor because most of the victims of the oppressive practice are girls,” said Munthali.

Efforts by the activists to uproot child labor appear to be bearing fruits. One woman in northern Malawi’s district of Rumphi has opened a community primary school on the district’s outskirts where children, who used to work on tobacco estates, are now attending school.

According to the businesswoman, Bessie Chirambo, about 300 children failed to attend school, and were subjected to all sorts of child abuse on the tobacco farms as well as at home where they do manual work all day.

The children attend school free of charge. The school, called Kapyolambavi, is located along the road leading to Nyika National Park. Chirambo says she decided to build the school because there is no school within the radius of 15 kilometers, and it is impossible for young children to walk to the nearest school, which is 17 kilometers away.

Malawian women activists are also mounting pressure on companies and estates to stop using child labor. Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC) executive director, Emmie Chanika, says with the progress made so far it was hoped that enough pressure would be applied on companies to eventually render the practice of child labor a thing of the past. Chanika says tea and tobacco estates are now employing adults to work for them.

Estate owners in the tea and tobacco growing districts of Southern Malawi say they have stopped using child labor because of the pressure being applied by the government and civil society.

Personnel Manager for Conforzi Tobacco, Tea & Tung Limited in Thyolo district, Maki Gondwe said; “We have stopped. In fact, some Ministry of Labor officers go round the estates to see if there are any underage workers. We attend all seminars on child labor.”

Chanika says the Creative Center for Community Mobilization (Creccom), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is playing a crucial role in complimenting efforts by women activists in fighting child labor.

A Creccom official, Levison Lijoni, says the main objective of the organization’s Social Mobilization Campaign for Education Quality program is to empower communities to seek their own solutions to problems which impede quality education in their areas.

Creccom officials, for instance, grilled stakeholders in the tobacco growing district of Mzimba at the Mbalachanda Tobacco Estate — including traditional, political, and civic leaders, educationists, and school committee members — on child labor and community empowerment.

In a few months, residents around Mbalachanda Tobacco Estate discussed the problem of child labor with estate owners and agreed to remove children from estates, and send them to school.

Currently in Mzimba district enrolments are 40 percent higher than eight years ago.

The fight against child labor was also boosted by some international tobacco buyers, who have threatened to stop buying Malawian tobacco if the country continues to use child labor in the industry.

The president of the Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA) told IPS that international companies have threatened to boycott buying “our tobacco if we continue using child labor.”

Malawi’s Labor and Vocational Training Minister, Alice Sumani, says that keeping children out of school to work is promoting and sustaining poverty in the country. She further agrees with women’s rights activists that providing children with an education would contribute to a drop in cases of poverty-induced violence against women. She said that studies indicate that there are high levels of domestic violence against women in countries where illiteracy levels are high. Currently about 60 percent of Malawi’s population of 11 million is illiterate.

Sumani says Sections 24-26 of the Employment Act of Malawi state that it is an offense punishable by law to offer employment to children under the age of 14.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training is carrying out spot checks on tea and tobacco estates to make sure that child labor is completely brought to a halt.

Malawi is one of the countries that ratified the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182 on child labor in 1999. The Convention resolved that all children under the age of 16 should not be given employment.

American dream turns sour, workers sue firm

By Vijay Singh

Mumbai, India, Sept. 14— They were paid $2 to $ 3.50 per hour for grueling work that any American would have charged up to $15 per hour for.

That’s what more than 50 workers sent to work in the United States have said, putting Mumbai-based placement agency Al Samit International squarely in the eye of a storm.

The Indian workers, employed as welders, fitters and electricians at John Pickles Company in Oklahoma, which manufactures boilers and pressure vessels for industrial use, have slapped a case against the company, describing their working conditions as “virtual slavery.”

Besides the low pay, the workers claim they were forcibly detained in the factory dorm after work hours.

They also say each paid $2,500 to Al Samit International to get them the jobs. The firm has denied charging the contract workers any sum.

Managing Partner of Al Samit International, Ghulam Mohammed, told Newsline from Dubai: “The Union Ministry of Labor has been inquiring whether we charged the 50 workers Rs 1.25 lakh each to send them to the US. But I have written undertakings from them that not a single penny was taken by Al Samit International.”

He added that the 50 workers sent to John Pickles nearly two years ago were also clearly informed they would not earn more than $3.50 per hour even though the federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour.

“They were sent free of cost to John Pickles Co. However, they did not like the work conditions, so the company decided to send them back. That’s when the trouble erupted and some boys ran away, and later misguided the entire group,” Mohammed said.

The US factory later shut down, apparently due to declining orders.

The trial got underway last Monday in a court in Tulsa, Oklahama. The company’s first line of argument was that the workers knew they were coming to the US as low-paid trainees and not as full-fledged employees entitled to a minimum wage.

Contesting this, the workers said they have a contract signed by the company’s executive vice-president, stating they were all “employees” and not “trainees” as was being made out now.

The lawsuit seeks arrears for back wages and damages.

John Pickles Co. had been using Al Samit to recruit workers for two years.

Joe Reeble, executive vice-president for John Pickles Co., reportedly acknowledged that the Indian recruiting agency may have misrepresented the nature of the jobs. But Mohammed denied this charge.

Reeble also reasoned that the workers were confined and “the precautions were necessary, because John Pickles had a contractual agreement to return the workers to the recruiting company in India.”

Source: Indian Express Newspapers

Striking Indonesian miners reject offer

Jakarta, Indonesia, Sept. 14— Striking workers at PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC) have rejected an offer of $6 million from company owners Rio Tinto and BP to go back to work.

Most of KPC’s 2,700 workers went on strike on Aug. 29 due to a dispute over their demands for compensation related to the firm’s impending takeover by Indonesian investment firm PT Bumi Resources.

The strike has brought a halt to production at the mine in East Kutai regency, East Kalimantan province, inflicting losses of about $500,000 a day on the company, while the government is losing about $20,000 a day in taxation revenue.

Rio Tinto and BP have agreed to sell KPC to Bumi Resources for $500 million, including assumed debt of $187 million. The sale is expected to be finalized by October 10, although it has faced opposition from the East Kalimantan provincial administration, which has long sought to buy a stake in the mine.

The strike started after the workers’ demand for $75 million (equivalent to 15 percent of the sale price) was rejected. They later reduced their demand to $40 million (eight percent of the sale price) – an amount still deemed too high by the owners.

KPC’s managers last week attempted to end the deadlock by offering the workers an “ex-gratia” payment worth a total of $6 million, on the condition they resume work by Friday, Sept. 12 and remain at work through to the completion of the sale to Bumi Resources.

Depending on how long they had been with the company, workers who accepted the offer were entitled to one of the following options: Rp2 million per year of service; or two months’ base salary (for employees with service less than 10 years); or three months’ base salary (for employees with service of 10 years or more).

The average KPC worker has been with the company for 8.5 years. KPC president director Noke Kiroyan appealed to the workers to accept the offer.

But on Friday KPC spokesperson Nunik Maharani Maulana said only a few of the workers had met the deadline to accept the non-negotiable bonus offer. “The majority of our work force is still on strike,” she was quoted as saying by AFX-Asia.

KPC produces about 18 million tons of coal annually, mostly for export to customers in Asia, the US and Europe.

The strike has forced the company to declare a force majeure to several of its customers – in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan – over the delay of coal shipments.

East Kutai’s regional legislative assembly last week offered to mediate in the dispute between KPC’s workers and shareholders.

East Kutai assembly deputy speaker Bahrid Buseng said the assembly plans to chair a meeting on Sept. 16 between officials of Rio Tinto and BP, representatives of the workers and the local manpower office.

Mining industry commentators have urged the central government to take swift, stern action against the workers to end the strike before any more damage is done to Indonesia’s investment climate.

There are concerns that workers at other mining firms will also go on strike if the government fails to act resolutely.

Source: Laksamana.net