JAN. 18: Detroit school bus drivers hold one day wildcat
strike protesting Board of Educations' refusal to pay out a
scheduled pay bonus. The strike forced the school board to
suddenly come up with bonus checks.
JAN. 20: A four day strike by 6,700 auto workers at GM's AC
Delco Complex in Flint, Michigan ( a key supplier of parts
used by all three auto companies) rapidly shuts down 10 other
plants. The strike suceeded in forcing company to agree to
hire 663 workers over the next 18 months.
EARLY FEB.: Bakery workers at Klosterman Bakery in
Cincinnati, Ohio return to work after bitter seven months
strike over company attempts to cut or eliminate most major
benefits. While workers suceeded in preventing cuts to their
benefits, union was not able to prevent pay concessions: 50
cent to $1 an hour over the course of the new three year
contract.
FEB.6: Workers at Planned Parenthood Clinics in Hayward,
Oakland, and San Francisco stage a "Sick-in" to back up
demands that management recognize the union after a union
certification vote. The Hayward and Oakland clinics are shut
entirely (100% of workers call in) while 80% of San Francisco
office follows suit.
FEB.7: 200 Rutgers University students, protesting racist
remarks of university president, hold sit-in during a major
college basketball game being held at Rutgers, bringing game
to a halt. The following day, 700 students walked out of
class in support of demands calling for president to resign.
FEB. 7: Five hundred janitors march through downtown Los
Angeles demanding a living wage and an end to widespread pay
differentials with-in the building maintenance industry. Some
janitors earn $6.80 to $9 per hour with full benefits while
others work at minimum wage ( $4.25 per hour )
FEB. 15: Management at White Cap Co. (makers of bottle caps
for food industry) in Chicago resume contract negotiations
after twelve weeks of an illegal lock-out of workforce, who
maintained solid picketlines around the plant despite
freezing bitter weather. Company admitted that it had set up
lock-out to occur during the slow season when demand for
bottlecaps was down and to prevent a strike by the union.
FEB. 16: 500 mushroom pickers hold march through Watsonville,
California demanding the right to join the United Famr
Workers union and protesting 25% wage cuts in the past two
years.
FEB. 17: 150 mostly Latin workers walk out of Simkins Paper
Co. in Philadelphia over company attempts to severely cut
back health benefits and institute a two track hiring scheme.
Workers, many whom live in surrounding community, have been
able to maintain 24 picketlines and have blocked traffic in
support of strike.
FEB. 18: One thousand students, organized by the Four Winds
student movement, a group opposed to the anti-immigrant
Propostion 167 march through Los Angeles in support of an
ongoing hunger strike by seven students.
FEB. 20: Three thousand steelworkers walked out of Kaisers
Aluminum Corporations 5 plants nationwide after voting down a
propsed contract that would have offered modest pay increase
in return for gutting of exisiting job structure. Strike is
settled nine days later.
FEB. 24: Police shoot Black youth in the back of the head
sparking 3 days of riots in Paterson, New Jersey, a decaying
industrial city west of New York City.
FEB 15 : Workers at the D.L.Clark plant in
Pittsburgh (makers of Clark candy bars) were informed they
were to be laid off. A week later, two union members passing
by the plant saw trailors lined up to disaasemble plant
equipment and quickly set up a picket line preventing the
trucks from leaving. Picketlines forced company to agree to
not to remove any manufacturing euipment for 45 days while
another buyer was sought. Since action not sanctioned by the
union, workers have kept up action without strike pay.
LATE FEB. : Chemical workers at the Master Buiders plant in
Cleveland, Ohio strike over inadaquate pension benefits and
are still on strike six weeks later.
FEB. 28: Rubber workers at Pirelli-Armstrong return to work
after National Labor Relations Board changed status of strike
from a walkout to an unfair labor practices strike,
potentially opening company up to $ 1 million dollar a week
fines. However, 80 out of 850 strikers are immediately
discharged due to company allegations of "misconduct" during
the strike.
MAR.1: Tens of thousands of people, mostly workers but joined
by students and welfare recipients march in New York City to
protest Republican Governor Petakis' proposal to slash
Medicaid, which would lead to thousands of layoffs among
health care workers. The march and rally is estimated to be
the largest in the city since the '70s.
MAR.6: 500 union members at Millers Brewary in Albany,
Georgia begin a strike over company's outsourcing policies.
MAR. 6: Hundreds of protestors banging empty food trays storm
a posh hall in Washington forcing the
cancellation of a banquest where Newt Gingrich was
scheduled to speak. The demonstrators, who
included many high school students, were organized by the
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN
) and were protesting Federal cuts in subsidized school
lunches.
MAR. 7: Several hundred school bus drivers strike in Seattle
over management attempts to slash pension benefits. The
School Board intervenes to back up the private company
contracted to provide service to city students by claiming
strikers don't care about children but several groups of
parents bring food to picket lines in support of drivers
demands.
MAR. 7: Hundreds of police officers, joined by some
city custodial employees, storm Washington, D.C. City Council
meeting blowing whistles and disrupting all proceedings. This
protest is over austerity cuts being imposed through Congree,
who control city purse strings that call for broad wage
givebacks and a withdrawal of overtime pay for city
employees. When a City Council member dialed the 911
emergency police phone number, no one responded.
MAR.8: Chanting "No Contract, No Peace", on International
Women's Day, 1500 members of "Janitors For Justice", joined
by supporters from hotel workers and other workplaces, block
traffic at a major Los Angeles intersection. Police arrested
40 mostly women custodial workers.
MAR. 11: Hundreds of striking rubber workers and supporters
rally outside Des Moines, the Iowa state capital.
MAR. 12: Chinatown restaurant workers held a demonstration of
250 outside Chinatowns' largest restaurant, Jing Fong to
protest illegal working conditions. The Chinese Staff and
Workers Association - a workers center unaffiliated with the
unions - is holding regular pickets outside this restaurant
at the height of lunch and dinner traffic to draw attention
to "slave labor type-conditions" prevailing in Chinatown
restaurants.
MAR. 14: Organized by the Indiana State AFL-CIO, 25,000 trade
union members demonstrate in Indiannapolis to protest
attempts to repeal the law requiring building contractors to
pay union scale wages. On the same day hundreds of union
members in Los Angeles march outside the offices of the L.A.
County Board of Supervisors protesting proposed job, wage and
benefit cuts affecting public sector workers.
MAR. 15: Over 400 union Atlanta area members noisily occupied
and shut down Newt Gingrichs' district offfice in Marietta,
Georgia to protest the entire range of anti-labor measures in
the Contract With America. Police arrested two demonstrators.
Gingrich denounced demonstrators as "union thugs terrorizing
constituents."
MAR. 15: Workers at Caldwell Manufacturing Co. (makers of
window sash balances) in Rochester, New York strike over
company attempts to slash senority rights in proposed
contract.
MAR. 23: Students at the huge City University of New York
(CUNY) system stage a one day strike protesting cuts in
college budgets and tuition increases. Ten thousand students
rally at City Hall and hold a march which is attacked by
cops after bottles are allegedly thrown at police lines. In
protest of police orders to disperse, 500 students sit down
in the street, leading to 50 arrests.
MAR.29: A walkout of students, professors and other workers
at the University of Puerto Rico effectively shuts down 9 out
of the 11 schools in the system. Protestors were demanding
more of a say in a university reform proposal before the
Puerto Rican legislature that would impose limits on
collective bargaining and erode campus autonomy in favor of
an overcentralized adminstrative regime.
MAR. 29: Transit workers on Philadelphias' Southeastern
Pennsylvania Transit System (SEPTA) shut down 90% of the
systems operations in a strike over wage increases.
Immediately SEPTA goes to court for an injunction limiting
the numbers of pickets and cuts off all health benefits to
strikers. According to the local paper, scattered acts of
" vandalism and confrontation" took place in the first few
days of the strike, including strikers blocking the entrance
to SEPTA headquarters chanting "We Don't Work, You Don't
Work" to prevent non-union SEPTA employees from reporting to
work.
On Apr. 3, strikers blocked a fleet of suburban busses
for nearly 4 hours and set-up a car convoy to tie up
rush hour traffic along the city's main expressway. The
following day, 9 transit workers were arrested after again
blocking expressway traffic.
On Apr. 6, strikers rallied in front of City Hall and
then marched into offices of City Council members.
Two weeks later, strikers return to work having won
their demands for a 3% per year increase for the following 3
years but union agrees to work with management on "containing
" fringe benefit costs. Strike was timed to take place during
the Easter shopping season and cost the Philadelphia economy
an estimated $2.5 million in lost revenue.
MAR. 29: 1500 janitors occupied the center of the ritzy
Beverly Hills, California shopping district blowing whistles
and chanting "No contract, no peace." Dozens were arrested
blocking traffic.
MAR. 29: Hundreds of librarians and secretaries staged a
half- day sick-out across the San Francisco City Colleges 8
campuses protesting the adminstrations refusal to meet
benefit and wage demands.
MAR. 31: 5,700 autoworkers strike the Chrysler transmission
plant in Kokomo, Illinois protesting Chryslers' contracting
out of work. Union suddenly called off strike after 9 hours
before impact of strike could be felt. On the same day,
7,000 General Motors workers at the Pontiac, Michigan GM
facility to protest laid off workers from the plant being
shafted on senoirity when transferred to other GM sites which
lasts 6 days before an inconclusive settlement.
APR. 2: 800 workers at Lithonia Lighting in Conyers, Georgia
walkout over company's attempts to cut back insurance co-
payments and impose wage increase limits.
APR. 2: In Monroe, Michigan, 260 U.A.W. workers at Delta USA
(manufacturers of car seats) go on strike over company
conditions for new contract. Workers have not had a raise in
over 3 years.
APR. 4: As part of a continuing campaign against sweeping
budget cuts, 5,000 protestors march through Manhattan in a
joint action called by the Hospital workers union and
students of the City University of New York
APR. 6: 32,000 California grocery workers strike several
large grocery chains in protest of nearly 30 takeaways being
proposed under a new contract. One chain, Lucky and Save Mart
locked out its 14,000 workers.
On Apr. 15, strike ended with Food Workers union
agreeing to wage freeze and union trust fund cutbacks.
APR. 13: 150 school bus drivers in New York City stage a
surprize 90 minute walk-out protesting the citys' attempts to
contract out bus services for " competitive" bidding.
APR. 13: Hundreds of Rutgers University students in New
Brunswick, NJ block Route 18, a major highway as a part of a
continuing campaign demanding the removal of the university
president for making racist remarks. Police attack
demonstration, clubbing several students on the
excuse that protestors had refused to provide access to an
ambulance, a charge denied by sit-in leaders who claimed
police had not notified them of any ambulance being in the
vicinity.
APR.25: For the second time in 6 weeks, Atlanta area union
members rallied on top of a parking garage 50 feet away from
a Republican fundraiser being addressed by Newt Gingrich.
Protestors demanded an increase in the minimum wage and
loudly voiced opposition to the dozens of anti-union
provisions in the Contract With America.
Gingrich, visibly shaken, sneered "It's good that
their unions bought them some beer so they can hang out for a
couple hours."