A strike that start On Sunday, January 17, about twelve o’clock today came to an end when 1,400 Hunts Point market workers, members of Teamsters Local 202, overwhelmingly ratified a three-year contract. The majority of New York City’s products go through Hunts Point, making it a critical choke point, increasing the pressure on workers for a quick settlement.
After aggressive police and icy temperatures persisted, the union declared victory. Like the City reports“Local 202 president Dan Kane calls the contract ‘the biggest deal we’ve ever signed.’ This morning, about 97 percent of the striking workers voted in favor of ratifying the contract.
The contract includes an immediate increase of 70 cents per hour, followed by an increase of 50 cents in 2022. For workers currently earning $ 18.57 per hour, as well as managers, 2023 will see a 65 cents increase per hour gain. Warehouse workers currently earning $ 20.70 will receive a $ 1300 bonus in 2023 instead of the 65 cents. Workers also successfully repelled management’s pressure to allow workers to make additional contributions to family benefits for the family.
The whole week has been the mantra: we want an increase of $ 1 per hour. The final contract amounts to an increase of $ 1.85 per hour during the three years of the contract, which does not meet the demand for an immediate increase of $ 1 per hour, but goes beyond the 32 cents per hour and increased employee contributions to health care. costs offered by management last weekend, a counter-workers called ‘disrespectful’, which led to their strike.
So ends a long week on the Bronx strike line that is included arrests late Monday night, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, representative arrive on several nights to support the workers and serve pizza (she was not the only politician to join the picket line: more than a dozen local elections and political candidates performed), and lots of music and dancing, all under the watchful eyes of Scabby the rat.
But when one action ends in the workplace, another continues. Sabout 400 steel workers at NLMK Pennsylvania are closed outside of work after a strike in August 2020. The Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) is currently to direct a membership vote on whether to act in the workplace on Monday in response to the city’s insistence on the need for teachers to return to personal tutoring. Teachers in Bellevue, Washington, are rebel against similar demands, while teachers just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania get ready to strike on February 1 if no agreement is reached with their district by the end of the month. About 200 Teamsters are striking by the Marathon Petroleum Refinery in St. Paul Park, and workers in Borgers USA, which supplies parts for General Motors plants, are striking for several days in Norwalk, Ohio. Ski patrollers is “Do not strike, but just exercise” at Vail Resorts.
Some of these workplace actions involve fewer workers than the Teamsters Local 202 strike, which with 1,400 workers marks the first major work disruption of 2021, but every time people act collectively for work and win, working class confidence grows and not just below. those who undertook the action. The Hunts Point strike has indeed seen hundreds of people reinforcing the picket line in support – other union workers, Bronx and New Yorkers who simply heard of the strike and wanted to support it. Regardless of the size of a strike, it has a ripple effect every time.
A similar dynamic is taking place in other areas of work in the workplace across the country. Add in the context of a devastating, isolating pandemic, and these demonstrations of the courage to fight together for a better life become all the more important.