Department 600 - Public Service

Cleaners at the Guildhall have been holding a sit in and stopping work since the 22nd of December because of mistreatment and intimidation. Early this morning [4th of January] management called the police, who came and intimidated and threatened the cleaners. The cleaners protested that they were holding a completely peaceful sit-in. They finally left due to police threats to drag them out physically.

The cleaners started organising in the summer, striking against unpaid wages. Since then they have been fighting for union recognition, better pay and an end to bad working conditions. After a new company, Sodexo, took over the cleaning contract, their union rep was suspended and they have been subject to all kinds of intimidation and abuse. The workers say there is one supervisor in particular who is abusive to them and there are currently various complaints by different cleaners against him, but Sodexho are refusing to do anything about his behaviour. Sodexho are trying to drive out the organised cleaners by continually changing their work areas, giving them the worst jobs, increasing their workload and, now, using intimidation and harassment.

By Phinneas Gage - originally posted at recompositionblog.wordpress.com

Christine braced herself, took a deep breath and then jumped up on to a mail tub and began to shout “help! help! I am being robbed.” A sea of faces stared at her blankly. She got the attention her fellow Letter Carriers, but everyone was looking at her like she was crazy. That was fine, she was acting crazy. “Canada Post is robbing every single one of us, they are robbing people collecting pensions, they are robbing workers who aren’t even working here yet. We need to stand together, Winnipeg walked out and we need to show them that we have their back and will stand with them”.

Some began to nod knowingly; she then explained that workers earlier in the week had walked out in an unlawful strike in Winnipeg over technological change that was causing twelve hour days and massive job loss. She explained that Winnipeg was a testing ground for the new work methods and that the workers in Winnipeg were not just fighting for themselves they were fighting for everyone at Canada Post Corporation. Christine explained the struggle, the stakes, and that our fellow workers in Winnipeg were counting on a show of solidarity from across the country. She may have been a bit dramatic, but she was also being honest, sometimes you have to shout to be heard.

The meeting Christine called was part of a wave of work floor meetings across the city. The wave started at another workplace, Depot Nine. At some of these meetings stewards read statements published by “The Workers Struggle with the Modern Post” a grassroots Postal Workers blog based out of Winnipeg. Some of the meetings were open assemblies open to all employees, where workers could plan their next steps and air grievances. These meetings were part of a very flexible plan, part strategy and part flying by the seat of our pants. The workers led the struggle and often the official union structures were left behind in the dust as workers on the floor took initiative. This wasn’t centrally planned but it didn’t just happen spontaneously. It wasn’t outside and against the union nor was it a struggle within it against some abstract bureaucracy- we were trying something new on our own terms.

By David Feldmann

For several years, the IWW has had an active organizing drive in Jimmy John’s sandwich shops, most notably in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. (the Twin Cities). Earlier this year, six Jimmy John’s workers were fired, ostensibly for violating the company’s attendance policy regarding sick days. The workers were all IWW members who had been involved in attempts to publicize the food safety concerns of Jimmy John’s sandwich makers in the Twin Cities. Naturally, the union members contend that they were targeted because of their involvement with the IWW and not because of their attempts to call in sick without finding someone to cover their shift (the contentious policy in question).

On Nov. 4, Erik Forman, longtime IWW member and Jimmy John’s worker, announced that “the NLRB [National Labor Relation Board] is going to file a complaint against Jimmy John’s on every single charge we filed against them.” The Jimmy John’s campaign went public in 2010 after a long period of clandestine organizing activity. In October of that year, the first fast food workers’ union in the United States lost a union election (85 in favor, 87 against) after franchise owner Mike Mulligan spent more than $84,000 on union busting, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. IWW members argued that Mulligan, who owns ten Jimmy John’s stores in the Twin Cities, broke labor laws in trying to stifle the union’s presence and influence. This position was reinforced by the NLRB, who threw out the election results in January 2011 after declaring Mulligan had, among other things, lied to employees about the union and unlawfully retaliated against IWW members. To date, the IWW hasn’t called for another election, but has instead focused on exposing alleged health code violations at Jimmy John’s locations and getting the fired workers reinstated at the fast food chain. After the results of the NLRB investigation were announced, the Jimmy John’s union proclaimed that all “six fired organizers will go back to work, with back pay, hopefully within the next few months.”

For a labor union that has historically eschewed legal recognition, the IWW has been surprisingly successful at convincing the NLRB that they are in the right, not just in regards to Jimmy John’s but also in the more established campaign to organize baristas at Starbucks (the IWW has won even more legal victories in that struggle). Time will tell whether the IWW can withstand the onslaught of anti-union tactics employed by Mulligan and the rest of Jimmy John’s management in the Twin Cities and continue to expand the union. Now that the NLRB decision has strengthened their resolve, this prospect seems very likely indeed.