http://www.mua.org.au/events/460_20080513.html

Back in the Gate: Howard Gone- MUA Here to Stay!

Event date: 31 May 2008
Type:
Location: Brett Park, Five Dock
Time: 11am-4pm
Cost: Free
The Sydney Branch of the MUA invites all members and their families to celebrate the 10 year anniversay of the return to work of Patrick workers with a family carnival and picnic day.

It is hard to believe that 10 years has passed since the Howard Government, Patrick owner Chris Corrigan and others engaged in their criminal conspiracy against the MUA to shed the Australian waterfront of unionised labour.

On April 7 1998, hundreds of guards and dogs stormed the wharves under cover of darkness as Patrick boss Chris Corrigan sacked his entire workforce of 2000 men and women nationwide with the aid of balaclava wearing goons and savage attack dogs. The Australian industrial relations landscape would never be the same again. This vicious attack on wharfies was undertaken with the complete support of the then Howard Government.

What followed was a monstrous battle to stop this criminal injustice perpetrated solely because the 2000 sacked wharfies were members of a union. The reactionary attempts to eradicate waterfront unionism failed because the Australian people rejected such inappropriate tactics that were fundamentally at odds with the aspirations of the Australian people who treasure the concept of a "fair go".

THE FREMANTLE PICKETS

The Patrick Lock-out, April 18th, 1998

And we were there, on Fremantle Harbour, in 1998;
A few at first in the dusk of that day as the hours ebbed
Away into advancing darkness; gathered at the gate to face
The threat of coming hostile force. We were one
Of the picket lines, with all hands on deck now
As we battened down for a stormy night

Near the wharves from which maritime workers',
The wharfies, had been driven by thugs with dogs -
The curs of Corrigan - and here outside high fences
We faced the wrecking of our rights, our working lives,
As all around the Australian coast our union, the MUA,
Would be fighting that same bitter battle tonight.

We were the Fremantle picket lines, the night watch
On the barricades of belief, tired out after
Long days and nights, but still there on guard
At the gates, shoulder to shoulder, and we were resolute.
All week we had heard that farmers were coming,
Truck on truck by the hundred to smash through

Our pickets, but we were a union united, we held the line.
We were steel fired in the furnace of solidarity -
Welded in the links of that living human chain -
Because we were shackled by belief to our principles

By Carl Bronski - 9 May 2008, wsws.org

Toronto’s Mayor David Miller has referred to the city’s Executive Committee a motion that would designate the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) an essential service. Such a designation would invite action by the provincial government to strip transit workers of the legal right to strike or to so restrict job action as to make it a token gesture.

The call to restrict the right to strike, put forth by two Toronto city councillors, follows closely on the heels of a day-and-a-half walkout by 9,000 transit workers organized in Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).

That job action began on the night of Friday, April 25, after workers overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement recommended by a thin majority of the union’s executive committee. The strike was abruptly ended the following Sunday afternoon when Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty marshalled the unanimous support of the opposition Conservative and New Democratic parties to force the workers back into the subway and bus barns and impose binding arbitration in the contract dispute.

Pittsburgh Transit Troubles Continue
Written by Karl Belin
Friday, 11 April 2008

On March 4, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported that the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce had alerted its members that a strike could be looming this summer for the city’s public transit workers, whose contract expires in June. The article further reported that many of Pittsburgh’s larger companies, such as Highmark, have been calling meetings to find ways to “solve” the issue of transit problems should a strike take place. One option they have come up with is “beefing up company carpool programs,” which in effect means developing a corporate-run scab shuttle service to break the strike

Developments like this are par for the course in Pittsburgh, where in 1992 the State Supreme Court ruled that the city government had the power to intervene and unilaterally break the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85’s 28-day strike, which brought the city to a stand-still.

Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAT) is the country’s 11th largest public transit system, with 220,000 daily riders who commute on over 1,200 buses and the city’s expanding light rail system (the “T”). PAT has come under increased pressure from the county’s Chief Executive, Dan Onorato, to cut costs, even after massive cuts to services and routes this past summer. For the company, this means cutting into employee benefits and wages.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/agency_fires_driver_over_new_buses/Content?oid=673932

Agency Fires Driver Over New Buses
But driver has last laugh, as court orders AC Transit to reinstate him to position.
By Robert Gammon

April 2, 2008
Ben Harbor.

Drivers can't pull all the way forward at this Solano Avenue bus stop.

Drivers also complain about the quality of their bathrooms.
Ben Harbor found out what happens when you cross a staunch supporter of AC Transit's expensive Belgian buses. The longtime bus driver got in a shouting match a few years ago with Jaimie Levin, the agency's director of marketing and chief cheerleader for the controversial Van Hool buses. After the argument, an angry Levin told Harbor he would regret what happened. Sure enough, a few months later, the public agency fired Harbor. But today, the bus driver is enjoying the last laugh.

The run-in began in early 2004. Harbor and other bus drivers had been complaining that the Van Hools' distinctive three-door design make them tough to maneuver because they require a wide turning radius. At the time, Harbor was driving the old No. 43 line from Oakland to Berkeley. Harbor said that one stop in particular, at Solano and Peralta avenues in North Berkeley, was so tight that it was unsafe to pull a Van Hool completely to the curb.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/can-a28.shtml

Toronto Transit workers forced back to work by strike-breaking law

By Carl Bronski
28 April 2008

A thirty-six hour strike by the nine thousand members of Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Workers union ended abruptly Sunday afternoon, when the trade union-backed New Democratic Party joined with the other two parties in the Ontario legislature to unanimously pass an emergency back-to-work order.

The legislation, initiated by Liberal provincial Premier Dalton McGuinty, calls for the appointment of a labour arbitrator to decide outstanding issues in the dispute between the union and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). The order also threatened a two thousand dollar per day fine for any transit worker defying the law and a twenty-five thousand dollar per day penalty for the union should it resist the order.

Just as they did with the garbage strike in Toronto in 2002, Howard Hampton and the other New Democratic Party members of the assembly wholeheartedly supported the Liberals and Conservatives in their rush to crush the strike. The legislation was also heralded by Toronto Mayor David Miller, a Clintonesque politician who has received support from the unofficial NDP group in city council, even whilst overseeing a fifteen year tax plan that is geared toward massively redistributing wealth in the city from tenants and homeowners to big commercial interests.

China Daily/Xinhua (4/7/08)

CAAC starts investigation on 'return flights'

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) launched its investigation Sunday into China Eastern Airlines' pilots, who turned back midway on flights to airports they had set off from.

Last Monday, 18 flights returned to their departure points in southwestern Yunnan province, affecting more than 1,000 passengers.

Media reports said that the pilots, who work for China Eastern Airlines' Yunnan branch, were protesting over their pay and working conditions, but the company insisted that poor weather was the reason.

A CAAC team will talk with the pilots, passengers, air traffic controllers, ground crew and airport staff to get the truth about the incident, Xinhua News Agency said.

A CAAC spokesman said earlier that the administration required its southwest bureau to deal with the issue last Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, the airline resumed normal operations.

The spokesman said the agency will ask the authorities to impose severe penalties on the pilots if they disrupted flights on purpose.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines Inc said on Tuesday its flight attendants are set to vote between April 23 and June 3 on whether to join a labor union.

The No. 3 U.S. carrier cautioned the workers, saying Delta flight attendants currently have a better working relationship with management than unionized peers at rival airlines.

Currently, Delta's only major unionized labor group is its pilots. If the flight attendants vote to join the Association of Flight Attendants, the workers will rely on that union for representation in contract talks.

Delta, which is seeking to lower its costs to offset its fuel bill, announced last week that it plans to cut 2,000 jobs. The carrier plans to achieve that target through voluntary retirement and buyout packages, which it plans to offer to 30,000 employees.

Delta and its rivals have been battered this year by persistently high fuel prices that erode the stability carriers gained through years of massive restructuring.

Delta shares were up 8 cents at $10.09 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Kyle Peterson; Editing by Andre Grenon) - originally published here.

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the TWSC. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

Dave Carpenter - Associated Press, Saturday, February 23, 2008.

United Airlines' unions are stepping up their hard-line talk about a possible merger as the carrier stands poised to participate in industry consolidation, warning that management will have to pay a steep price to win their support.

While the militant stance won't necessarily thwart United's hopes of a deal, it foreshadows the likelihood of tough, costly labor negotiations for a company whose employees are as dissatisfied as any airline's workers.

UAL Corp.'s United continues to hold talks with Continental Airlines Inc. about a possible combination, a person familiar with the negotiations said Friday. The specifics remain closely held and both are still awaiting the outcome of negotiations between Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp., according to the source, who was not authorized by the companies to talk about the deal.

United employees are upset about the tens of millions of dollars reaped by the company's executives since the carrier emerged two years ago this month from a bankruptcy restructuring in which they had to swallow substantial pay cuts and other concessions.

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the TWSC. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Matt Smith - San Francisco Weekly, February 6, 2008

Imploding U.S. mortgage markets leave behind trillions of dollars in economic damage. The dollar's slide against the euro and the yuan raises fears of a currency collapse. January job losses portend recession.

To these threats to U.S. economic stability, add a new and severe one that is brewing in the conference rooms of the Cathedral Hill Hotel, a blue-collar establishment on Van Ness. There, West Coast dockworkers' representatives are devising a strategy to renegotiate a unified ports agreement with shipping companies that is scheduled to expire July 1. If the renegotiation is as fractious as it was in 2002 — when shippers attempted to break the union by shutting down 29 West Coast ports for 10 days — an extended dispute could paralyze U.S. economic activity and send financial markets tumbling.

A shutdown like the last one "carries the very real risk of triggering a sudden crisis in international financial markets," U.C. Berkeley professor Stephen Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, wrote in a 2002 paper. When I spoke with him last week, he said he'd be watching the situation this time, too: "I don't think the significance is any different. At some point, you start running out of parts, and the factory stops, and the factory that relies on that factory for components stops, and you have a chain reaction that's really rather a nightmare."