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Latin America
Venezuela shipyard staff proceed Puerto Cabello occupation
An occupation of a shipyard within the Caribbean Coast city of Puerto Cabello continued last week. The strikers are denouncing oppressive working conditions imposed by the management of the DIANCA company and the whole lack of response by the Maduro government.
Strikers demand an end to high risk working conditions, reminiscent of working in enclosed spaces, very high noise levels, constant exposure to fumes from welding and metal cutting, the dearth of emergency medical personnel and ambulance services, and the absence of fire-fighting equipment. “We confront an inhuman and insensitive government that placed the profits of capital over the health and lives of staff,” declared a striker.
Moreover, the employees report a history of unpaid wages, production incentive bonuses, lack of proper work equipment and uniforms, and attacks on the rights of retirees.
DIANCA is one among Venezuela’s largest enterprises. Yet management claims there isn’t a money to fulfill the employees’ demands. The corporate and government officials are holding over the employees the specter of sending the National Guard to expel the employees from the shipyard.
“White wave” of health protests and strikes in Argentina
Medical examiners carried out protest marches and strikes in Cordoba, an industrial province in central Argentina.
On Sunday, striking Jose Urrutia hospital staff blocked a significant highway. The employees are demanding wages that sustain with the rising cost of living. The hospital is the just one within the Sierras Chicas region, on the Eastern foothills of the Andes Mountains, on which greater than 60,000 people depend. Medical examiners there complain of conditions of maximum overwork. Many employees often are forced to work 20 or more hours a day.
The Urrutia Hospital struggle is one among 50 strikes and protests going down at hospitals in Buenos Aires and Cordoba provinces. The vast majority of these protest strikes confront the provincial governments in addition to the health care trade unions that, in alliance with the federal government, are pushing staff back to work.
Buenos Aires transit staff protest
Subway staff, demanding higher wages and higher working conditions, carried on a partial closure of major station hubs on this city of 13 million inhabitants. The strikers are demanding a shorter work week, that the corporate hire more staff, and that older, asbestos-laced, equipment get replaced with latest trains. The health of scores of staff has been damaged by the asbestos within the older trains. The usage of asbestos in trains and buildings was prohibited in 2001 in Argentina.
United States
Latest York Times staff set December 8 strike deadline
The union for 1,000 Latest York Times newsroom staff has set a December 8 deadline for a strike if management doesn’t comply with latest contract terms. NewsGuild of Latest York and Times management have been in talks for a 12 months and a half which have focused on economic issues.
Management has continued to advance insulting and inadequate pay offers at the same time as it lavishes dividends on its stockholders. One tweet from the union read, “In 2022, the @nytimes spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy Wordle and The Athletic and allocated $150 million in stock buybacks to its investors and yet it remains to be offering wage ‘increases’ that quantity to pay cuts during record-high inflation.”
The membership has voted authorization for the NewsGuild to call a 24-hour strike if progress will not be made in talks. The Times, for its part, expressed “disappointment” with the specter of a strike and claimed that it had offered “significant” pay increases.
Staff at Canton, North Carolina paper mill in position to strike
Staff on the Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Canton, North Carolina seem set to strike after rejecting one other management contract offer November 30. Some 850 members of the United Steelworkers voted down an agreement that might have done little to enhance conditions for the employees, who start on the poverty wage of $15.53 and hour. It was the second contract rejection by the employees in lower than two months. The corporate’s first offer was voted down in October.
When asked if a strike was being considered, Local 507 President Troy Dills refused to provide a direct answer to the media. “There’s a procedure, I don’t wish to get into that intimately obviously, but we attempt to avoid a strike. That’s the intention,” he stated. “It’s a possibility. Yes, it’s.”
Dill said that management and the union would resume talks, but refused to state a strike deadline.
Picket hit by automobile in Iowa food products strike
The union representing striking staff on the Ingredion food products plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said a employee on picket duty was hit by a automobile dropping off a scab employee. The president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Staff and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 100G told KCRG news that a cellphone video shows the striker walking on the sidewalk when he was hit. Other picketing staff allege the motive force pulled out a gun.
Some 120 Ingredion staff went on strike back on August 1 after the corporate demanded a bunch of concessions, including the best to unilaterally increase health care costs; cuts in vacation and seniority rights; and plans by management to outsource the corporate’s laboratory department. Staff also detest the present two-tier wage system.
In September, Ingredion had brought armed security guards into bargaining sessions with the BCTGM. Ingredion is a frontrunner in developing, producing and marketing specialty ingredients for industrial and food applications. It employs 12,000 staff at 44 facilities and has markets in 120 countries.
In line with the BCTGM, recent negotiations reduced the variety of contested contract issues from 26 to five, but neither side is providing over-all details. One issue the corporate has refused to think about is an amnesty clause whereupon on the conclusion of the strike no disciplinary actions or firings will happen.
Staff at a LaPorte, Indiana detergent plant locked out over demand to finish 60-hour work schedule
The corporate MonoSol locked out its workforce at its LaPorte, Indiana, facility after staff voted overwhelmingly to reject the corporate’s last contract offer. MonoSol’s proposal to Teamsters Local 135 called for a 17.6 percent wage increase over 4 years and a $5,000 signing bonus.
But what’s infuriating staff is a grueling 60-hour workweek. “It’s rough,” Tyler Darnell told the Northwest Indiana Times. He has worked 60 hours every week ever since he began working for MonoSol 11 years ago.
“They should hire more people, period,” said newly elected Local 135 president Dustin Roach. “They’re screwing these guys around. They don’t wish to call it an understaffing issue. It’s an understaffing issue.”
The LaPorte plant makes single-use detergents and dishwasher soaps. MonoSol is a subsidiary of chemical manufacturing company Kuraray, based in Tokyo, Japan.
Staff strike Pennsylvania automotive corporation over pay and advantages
Staff at Autoneum Automotive North America in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, launched a strike December 1 after eight months of fruitless negotiations have failed to provide an appropriate agreement. Members of Staff United Local 1700, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, are demanding wage increases to match inflation, increased health care advantages and any increases in wages to this point back to April when the old contract expired.
Brian Heverly, president of Local 1700, said the strike was the product of the corporate’s refusal to take staff’ demands “seriously.”
The Bloomsburg plant manufactures insulation products for cars and trucks. Autoneum operates 53 plants in 24 countries and employs nearly 12,000 staff concentrating on acoustic and thermal products for the automotive industry.
Canada
Federal public service staff reveal across the country
Members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) protested stalled negotiations last week which have left 230,000 federal civil servants and not using a contract since June 2021. Staff from Windsor, Toronto and Ottawa in Ontario, where greater than half the union’s members are positioned, demonstrated in front of major government installations. They were joined by other demonstrators in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Gatineau, Quebec and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Talks broke down last May after government negotiators offered a meager wage increase well below current and projected inflation rates and failed to handle key issues around distant working rights and provisions. The byzantine collective bargaining process for the federal government staff then saw the 2 sides handed over to a mediator for several more months.
With no agreement reached, negotiators now are in hearings with one more layer of the federal government’s collective bargaining bureaucracy. Hearings with the Federal Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board’s Public Interest Commission are expected to finish a set of non-binding recommendations later in December. Statements from the union indicate that this report will offer contract provisions well in need of the membership’s expectations.
If no settlement is reached, a strike vote won’t be taken until Spring 2023. Should staff vote to strike at the moment, they shall be in a legal strike position in June, two years after the expiration of their previous contract.