Unions Reach for Short Strikes to Stop Concessions

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.labornotes.org/2010/11/unions-reach-short-strikes-stop-concessions

Jenny Brown & Mischa Gaus | November 2, 2010


For many unionized workers, just staying in place these days takes a knock-down fight. Nurses in Oakland held a three-day strike over attempts to increase their health care costs. Photo: California Nurses Association.

For many unionized workers, just staying in place these days takes a knock-down fight. Nurses in Watsonville, California, went back to work Friday after a one-day strike over staffing turned into a three-day lockout.

In Oakland, nurses at Children’s Hospital took a three-day strike to fend off management’s bid to make them pay a rising share of health insurance costs.

Nurses in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, have mounted 40 informational pickets, collected 10,000 signatures from the community, held two big rallies, and waded through 16 months of slow-motion bargaining to ward off a health insurance scheme that would leave them at risk of medical bankruptcy.

In the hotel industry, hotel owners are recovering profitability but refusing to share the gains with their workers. At bargaining tables across North America, management is stalling negotiations and pushing backbreaking workloads that would lead to layoffs.

In response, several thousand union hotel workers have walked off the job in strikes lasting from 24 hours to two weeks. More than 3,000 workers struck hotels in San Francisco, Honolulu, and Chicago in the last month, and thousands more pulled off rolling strikes in Toronto. The workers involved are members of UNITE HERE.
FEAR AND BOND RATINGS

The hospitals in Wilkes-Barre and Watsonville share a common employer, the for-profit Community Health Services (CHS) chain.

FULL story at link.

Support Labor Notes!

Troublemakers Union 100pxFor 30 years Labor Notes has been a home base for activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement. We connect thousands of troublemakers around the country who share your vision of a labor movement worth fighting for.

But we can't do it without your support, especially in these hard times. Please donate today: http://labornotes.org/donate