In a unanimous vote June 30, 8,500 members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 voted to go on strike against the big roadway construction companies in the Chicago area.
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Talking about the vote on ABC news, union member Leon Payton said, “This is for the union brothers and sisters.”
Starting July 1, virtually all road work in the Chicago area came to a halt. The engineers are joining another 7,500 road workers from the Laborers’ District Council of Chicago and Vicinity who voted to strike earlier in the week. Other construction unions may join the strike.
The unions are fighting to meet the health care needs of their workers and are refusing to let the bosses gut their health care benefits. According to both unions, the bosses have demanded a reduction in wages and benefits that will dangerously jeopardize the stability of benefit funds.
For road workers, health care is a matter of life and death. Over 100 road construction workers die every year on the job. The injury rate for construction workers is the highest of any industry.
Backed into a corner by drastically reduced work hours during the economic downturn and the aggressive demands of the Mid-America Regional Bargaining Association, which represents road construction corporations, both unions have taken action and walked off the job.
Heavy equipment operators in the region have seen their annual hours cut from 1,600 to 1,000 over the last two years.
According to Local 150, the union is providing food assistance for 1,000 workers a week, is covering COBRA health care payments for 1,200 workers and has used millions of dollars from its funds to cover rising health care costs.
The media has taken the side of big business, disgustingly portraying the workers as overpaid and greedy. Talking head after talking head has mischaracterized the union’s demands as a wage increase.
MARBA spokesperson Lissa Christman was quoted on various news outlets faulting the workers for striking during tough economic times and saying that the employers don’t have the money to meet the workers’ demands.
In fact, Local 150 has publicly stated they would agree to a wage freeze in return for greater health care contributions from the companies that would help workers keep their health coverage and merely keep pace with the rising costs of health care.
In other words, the union is fighting, out of necessity, to keep workers afloat during the economic crisis, where they have seen, through no fault of their own, their income slashed by nearly 30 percent.
Striking during an economic crisis can be difficult. The road workers’ unions must be applauded and supported for their determination to hold the line.
Build a fight back movement for jobs, health care, housing and education
Why should road worker’s health care be endangered by an economic crisis created by Wall Street? The simple answer: it should not.
Instead of bailing out the banks and spending billions on unpopular wars, billions of dollars could and should be immediately channeled into rebuilding and expanding roads and bridges, putting road workers back to work.
Universal heath care could and should become the law of the land. Billions of dollars should be used to build new hospitals and clinics. An army of medical workers, technicians and researchers should be trained and given jobs.
But capitalists don’t plan for what is in the interest of people or even for the best interests of the economy as a whole. Under their irrational system, the entire economic horizon is dictated by profits for a handful of owners.
From coast to coast and all around the world, the capitalists are cynically using the current economic downturn as an excuse to lower workers’ share of the wealth while Wall Street’s share is expanding.
Holding the line against the current offensive on wages, benefits, education and badly needed social services is possible, so is an expansion of the wealth for workers. There is no reason to believe that Wall Street’s share of the wealth is sacred and untouchable.
To beat back the attacks, we need to organize and fight together. The workers and the oppressed—documented and undocumented, Black, Latino, Asian, Arab and white, women and men, LGBT and straight, disabled and able bodied—need to struggle as a class. Under capitalism, there is no other path to expanding the share of society’s wealth for workers.
When the road workers strike, we must stand with them in their fight to save their health care. Any struggle over wages and benefits won against an employer is a victory for all workers and badly needed at this difficult time for workers.
As machinery idles on the roadways of Chicago, the strike is a real lesson in the history-changing and untapped power that workers have to take action to shape and transform their lives and society.
The strike also displays the vulnerability of the capitalist class. It is not possible for them to maintain the roads from their board rooms, lavish vacation homes and mansions.
What the capitalists fear most of all is that we will begin to awake, reorganize and fight together against their domination of society.
