From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: 14-hour strike gains Philly contract /ww
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 19:54:24 GMT

 14-hour strike gains Philly contract
 By Joe Piette Philadelphia

Just 14 hours after 15,000 city workers walked off their jobs at
12:01 a.m. on Oct. 6, they forced the city to finally negotiate
and make some concessions to union demands for a fairer contract.
After mass picketing effectively shut down City Hall, sanitation
sites and other work sites here, AFSCME D.C. 47 and 33 leaders
announced a tentative settlement.

The new agreement would give union members the option to choose
city administered HMO health plans or stay in the union's plans,
with a $360/month per employee limit. It also freezes wages for
two years, with a two percent increase in the third year and
three percent the fourth. And it eliminates only two holidays and
no sick days.

It raises retirement age for new employees only from 55 to 60
years, and allows work rule changes only after negotiations with
AFSCME on a case-by-case basis.

Prior to the walkout, the city had refused to make any
compromises on the "last, best offer" imposed on the workers on
Sept. 23 after mayor Ed Rendell claimed negotiations were at an
impasse. Rendell tried to make the workers bear the brunt of a
five-year austerity budget plan imposed on the city by a
state-appointed oversite board made up of bankers and high-paid
lawyers.

The mayor's earlier four-year contract offer freezes wages for
two-and-a-half years; eliminates four paid holidays and eight
sick days; reduces pension rights; forces workers out of a
union-run health-care plan into a choice of three cheaper HMO
plans with less benefits; and allows the city to make work-rule
changes, redefine job classifications, assign mandatory overtime,
and to lay off workers and privatize services at will. Rendell's
plan also includes forcing prisoners to do unpaid work for the
city.

Although city officials claimed the terms of the imposed contract
would not go into effect until Oct. 28, union members have
received thick mailings of information from the city and from HMO
companies. In addition, some managers were attempting to impose
some of the new contract's terms by changing work schedules and
other procedures without union consent.

Of the mayor, AFSCME D.C. 47 President Thomas Cronin said, "He's
caused a great deal of confusion and anxiety, and certainly a
drop in worker productivity." Cronin was explaining why the
unions had to announce a deadline for a walkout.

Since Sept. 28, sanitation workers have been bringing their
trucks into repair shops for safety checks, as their old contract
rules allow, causing garbage and recyclable to pile up on curb
sides. In addition, workers are refusing overtime work needed to
catch up, again a right under their old contract.

Other city workers this week pelted the mayor and his car outside
City Hall with health insurance packets they had received from
the city administration by mail. They also picketed his home,
leaving dozens more packets in his trash can.

Social workers demonstrated in center city against the imposed
contract, which would double their already unworkable caseloads.
As reported on television but not covered by local newspapers,
their statement  said the new work rules would make it more
difficult for the poor to obtain needed services, and would
inevitably lead to more deaths this winter.

More workers disrupted center city's Wednesday night's shopping
promotion by blocking traffic at 16th and Chestnut. They handed
out leaflets exposing the lies in Rendell's proposals to
shoppers.

To help counter the anti-labor coverage by the local press,
Movement for a Peoples' Assembly distributed close to 10,000
leaflets. These explain why it is in the interests of all workers
to support AFSCME's struggle.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@mcimail.com".)

     The N.Y. Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683
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