...Solidarity
with Occupy
Xerox strike averted
(From Page 1
berlain said.
There are dangerous times ahead,
Chamberlain said, as was seen in Oak-
land and Atlanta, where police moved
in forcibly to displace occupiers.
“The corporatists and the corporate
media are going to push back. We’re
not going to be violent, but by God,
we’re going to stand our ground.… We
are the 99 percent and we’re not going
to take it any more, we’re not going to
go away. We built this damn country.
These are our streets. This is our city.
This is our state. This is our nation.”
Union members gather with their signs at Director Park in downtown
Portland in a show of solidarity with Occupy Portland.
First Mexican trucking firm allowed on U.S. roads flunks
TIJUANA, Mexico (PAI) — The
first Mexican trucking firm given tenta-
tive approval to have its trucks travel
throughout the United States — allowed
under NAFTA and done via a controver-
sial Obama Administration pilot pro-
gram — has flunked.
One of Grupo Behr de Baja Califor-
nia’s rigs was so creaky it failed inspec-
tion at the Tijuana border station.
The U.S. would have passed the
company’s trucks in anyway, but the
Teamsters, who have opposed letting
unsafe Mexican rigs roam U.S. roads,
blew the whistle on the semi truck’s fail-
ures. According to Federal Motor Car-
rier Safety Administration data, Grupo
Mexico trucks have a failure rate of 28.6
percent.
“We will continue our fight to keep
our borders closed to unsafe Mexican
trucks,” Teamsters President James
Hoffa said. He called letting Mexican
trucks roll over all U.S. roads “reckless.”
“The fly-by-night Tijuana operator
passed a preliminary inspection last
month,” even though the flunking semi
was a “gross polluter,” Hoffa said. “If
this is the cream of the crop of Mexican
operators, we can only imagine what
will be crossing our border in the fu-
ture.”
Hoffa said opening the border will
Workers at the Xerox printer head
manufacturing plant in Wilsonville,
Oregon, voted Oct. 25 to approve a new
two-year contract — putting to rest ear-
lier plans for a strike.
Xerox and Service Employees Inter-
national Union (SEIU) Local 49
reached a tentative agreement Oct. 20
— one week after over 80 percent of the
workers voted to authorize a strike. The
agreement then went to a vote among
the bargaining unit’s 183 members,
with the union bargaining team recom-
mending approval. The vote was 92
percent to approve, said Local 49 Inter-
nal Organizer Casey Filice.
Overall, workers made concessions
in the contract, despite Xerox’ profitabil-
ity. The union bargaining team had pre-
viously agreed to less generous retire-
ment benefits, while Xerox agreed to let
workers enroll in Local 49’s superior
health plan — at no extra cost to the
company.
The sticking point which led to the
strike vote was a demand by Xerox to
reduce workers’ short-term disability in-
surance benefit. The current benefit pays
out 80 percent of pay for six months in
the event of a serious illness or accident.
Xerox wanted to cut that to 60 percent
of pay, for five months, with a one-week
waiting period before the benefit begins.
In the end, the workers agreed to accept
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the company’s proposed benefit cut, but
not until the contract expires Aug. 1,
2013. And at that time, workers would
be allowed to offset the cuts by using
one day of accrued vacation pay per
week of disability leave. The one-week
waiting period requirement and the
shortening to five months begin Jan. 1,
2013, but workers will be able to use va-
cation days for the first week of disabil-
ity also.
During bargaining, Xerox said it’s
making the disability benefit cuts com-
pany-wide. But the union negotiators
didn’t want to be the first. When the con-
tract comes up again in 2013, it will be
clear whether Xerox imposed the cuts on
non-represented workers and managers.
SEIU Local 49 member Brian Wood,
president of the Xerox Wilsonville bar-
gaining unit, said he had mixed feelings
about the contract settlement.
“I’m glad we can put it behind us,”
Wood said. “It’s just frustrating that the
company is making money and this is
what they choose to offer. It’s hard to
stomach that they can pay the CEO $13
million and yet they’re going to freeze
our pension.”
“We’re hopeful that in the next con-
tract we can get some of it back,” Wood
said.
The same day workers approved the
new contract, Xerox reported a 28 per-
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