Strikes: something we haven't seen for a while...

Spirit Airlines pilot strike strands thousands

Pilots could have walked out as early as midnight Friday, but kept talking under the guidance of the National Mediation Board in Washington until about 5 a.m. EDT. The pilot's union Fort Lauderdale local said a loaded flight out of Orlando, Fla., had to deplane because the strike started just before takeoff.

"In the end, both sides could not reach an agreement," said Sean Creed, a Spirit captain and the head of the airline's branch of the Air Line Pilots Association, in a statement on the union's website.

He said pilots "will not return to the cockpit until a fair and equitable contract is negotiated."

The privately-held airline based in Miramar, Fla. has about 440 active pilots.

The company said it offered to raise pilot pay by 30 percent over five years. It would have included work rule changes but would have retained a four-day break between every pilot trip, something the company said no other ALPA contract has. The offer also included a $3,000 signing bonus and a larger retirement plan match.

Air carrier strikes are rare. The last one at a major carrier was in 2005, when Northwest Airlines mechanics walked off the job rather than accept deep pay cuts. The strike failed after Northwest replaced them.

More than 12,000 nurses walked off the job Thursday for a one-day strike at 14 Minnesota hospitals, a show of force being watched by many across the country as a test of how fiercely a new national nurses' union can flex its muscle.

Nurses say they are being asked to care for too many patients at a time, and strict ratios are necessary to protect patient safety. The hospitals, all in the Minneapolis area, counter patients are safe and that the walkout is a headline-grabbing stunt to build membership and clout for the fledgling union.

About the same number of nurses had wanted a simultaneous strike in California over the same issues, but were blocked temporarily earlier this week by a San Francisco judge.

Labor experts say unlike other unions that might shy away from striking during a recession, nurses have certain job security because they are in demand and can't be outsourced.

"Auto plants can be moved overseas, but it's a lot harder to move health care treatment overseas," said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

It has to be discouraging to international workers when the Obama administration’s official response to labor unrest in China is indistinguishable from that of the George W. Bush administration….which was indistinguishable from that of the Reagan administration. But the message from the Obama White House to China’s workers is clear: Don’t make waves.

On May 17, nearly 2,000 workers walked off their jobs at Honda Automotive Components Manufacturing (a transmission plant) at Foshan, a city in the southern province of Guangdong, the automotive hub of the country. The issue that precipitated the walkout was as old and venerated as the boss-worker relationship itself: better wages.

With the minimum wage in Guangdong province set at 920 yuan a month, workers in the ultra-modern, highly automated Foshan plant were averaging approximately 1200 yuan per month ($175). While it was more than the minimum, given their skilled positions, the rigor and demands of the job—not to mention the profitability of the company—the workers felt they deserved more.

Automobile manufacturing in China is expanding rapidly, with auto sales rising by a whopping 40-percent in 2009 alone. Honda Motors, along with Volkswagen and General Motors, have carved out a sizeable niche in the country. Of course, these enterprises are all state-sponsored ventures. With the Chinese government’s blessing, Honda announced plans to produce 820,000 vehicles per year by 2012, up from the current 650,000.

After Honda agreed to address the wage issue at Foshan—and at the urging of the workers’ nominal union, the ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions)—everyone returned to work, believing the brief walkout had achieved its purpose. Because strikes are more or less “outlawed” in China, having been made illegal in 1982 when the Communist government decided to pursue capitalism, staging a “wildcat” was a bold and risky move.

Two reasons why the Chinese government didn’t resort to massive force to suppress the strike: (1) Fear of further damaging its already dicey public image as the world’s master overseer of sweatshop labor, and (2) fear of contagion—worry that industrial unrest could spread to other parts of the country. Thus, even with strikes being technically illegal, the government chose to tread lightly.

But when the company’s wage offer fell well short of expectations, and management insisted on firing the instigators of the strike, the workers walked off their jobs again, on May 22, and this time their solidarity had a profound effect. The lack of the transmissions subsequently forced Honda to shut down four of its assembly plants.

Honda Lock workers have also been provoked by oppressive workplace conditions. They are forced to stand for eight hours, with pregnant women allowed to sit only in their last trimester. Workers are not allowed to speak to one another, have to obtain passes before going to toilet, and are strictly monitored by management even when getting a drink of water. The strike was triggered on Wednesday morning when a company security guard denied a female worker entry to the plant because her ID card was supposedly improperly attached to her shirt, and then forced her to the ground after she protested.

Honda Lock employees have elected a council of shop stewards to negotiate with management. The workers’ organisation was formed in opposition to the state-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), and some have called for a new independent union. “The [ACFTU] trade union is not representing our views,” one unnamed striker told the New York Times, “we want our own union that will represent us.”

These developments represent a direct challenge to the Chinese Communist Party’s ban on any independent organisation of the working class, which has been in place since Mao’s peasant armies came to power in 1949.