ILWU Local 30 members took the opportunity this holiday season to thank the supporters and unions which enabled the union to win a hard-fought victory for a fair union contract with Rio Tinto, the owners of the Borax Company.

In 1925, borate deposits were discovered near the town of Boron, California. Pure borate deposits are extremely rare and the Boron mine produces nearly half of the world’s supply of borate. Borate is an essential ingredient used to make household and commercial products such as soap, detergents, paint, glass, ceramics, and fertilizers.

In 1967, Rio Tinto, a BritishAustralian multinational company, acquired the Borax Company. The 20-Mule Team logo on Boraxo soap products is well-known in the United States.

Local 30 has over 500 members who work for the Borax Company in Boron, California. Most of the Borax workers live a few miles away in the town of Boron, California, which is located on the western edge of the Mojave Desert and about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. The town has a population of about 2,000 and most of the families have worked for the mine for generations. They depend on the mine or mine employees for their livelihood.

During negotiations for a new contract, Rio Tinto demanded deep cuts and major changes in the way work was done at the mine. The company wanted to do away with seniority, cut pensions, and outsource jobs at any time. The changes would destroy the union, and workers refused to agree to the company’s demands.

On January 31, 2010, Rio Tinto management told the unionized workers to go home and brought in replacement workers to operate the mine. The workers could return to work if they accepted management’s changes to the union contract. This is called a “lockout” and is the opposite of a “strike.” In a strike, workers stop work to put pressure on management. In a lockout, management closes the plant or operates without the regular employees to put pressure on workers to accept management’s terms.

Local 30 members held strong for three and one-half months or a total of 107 days. The entire ILWU and the labor movement rallied in support of the Borax workers. The community of Boron also united behind the workers, despite efforts by Rio Tinto to blame the lockout on the workers and their union.

ILWU members in Los Angeles drove the 100 miles to join demonstrations at the mine. Teamsters delivered $50,000 worth of groceries donated by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. The ILWU set up free health clinics with volunteer doctors. Unions around the world pledged their support and demonstrators showed up at meetings of Rio Tinto executives in Boston, London, and Australia. Union political pressure stopped a federal handout of tribal lands in Arizona to Rio Tinto for copper mining.

After 107 days, Rio Tinto decided to come to terms with the ILWU members of Local 30. The company dropped their demands to eliminate seniority or union security and agreed to a six year contract with 2.5 percent annual raises. Union members agreed to cuts in their pension plan and new hires will get a 401(k) plan instead of coverage in the pension plan.

National Day of Action targets Rite Aid stores

Five hundred Rite Aid workers at the company’s distribution center in Lancaster, California, voted to unionize under the ILWU four years ago and have been struggling for the last two years to negotiate a first union contract with the company. Management has resisted the union and wants to increase the workers’ share of health care costs.

Rite Aid Corporation operates about 4,800 drugstores in the United States and about 26 percent of their workers are unionized. The company has been losing money and is seeking deep cuts from its unionized employees. In New York, Rite Aid laid off 400 Teamsters union members when it closed their Rome, New York, distribution center and moved to a non-union facility near Syracuse, New York. or closing and moving stores.

To show their support of the Rite Aid workers, the ILWU joined a nationwide network of union and community support groups for a “National Day of Action” on Wednesday, December 15, 2010, at dozens of Rite Aid stores across the country.

Actions organized by the ILWU took place in San Pedro and Wilmington in Southern California; in Oakland in Northern California; in Portland, Oregon; in Seattle, Washington; and in Bellingham, Washington.

The United Food and Commercial Workers held actions at Rite Aid stores in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Jobs with Justice, the United Students Against Sweatshops, and the Teamsters also held actions at Rite Aid stores.

Largest drugstore chains Rite Aid is the third largest pharmacy chain in the United States with 4,800 stores and 97,500 employees. In fiscal year ending Feb. 27, 2010, which includes 10 months of 2009, the company lost $479.9 million on revenues of $25.7 billion. It lost $2.6 billion in 2009 from revenues of $26.3 billion, which include 10 months of 2008.

While Rite Aid has been losing money, the largest and second largest drugstore chains, Walgreen and CVS, have been making profits of $2-$3 billion a year or an average of around 3.5 percent over the past five years.

Walgreen is the largest pharmacy chain in the US with over 8,000 facilities including 7,562 retail stores, 244,000 employees of whom 67,000 worked less than 30 hours a week. The company had revenues of $67.4 billion 2010 and has been seeing net earnings of about $2 billion for the last four years.

CVS Caremark Corporation is the second largest drugstore chain with 7,000 stores and over 211,000 employees, which includes 84,000 part-timers working less than 30 hours a week. In 2008, CVS acquired the California based Longs Drugs chain which operated 460 stores on the West Coast and 40 stores in Hawaii. CVS revenues in 2009 were $98.7 billion with a profit of $3.7 billion.

East Coast dockers call for boycott of Del Monte Fresh

Philadelphia members of Local 1291 of the International Longshoremen’s Association are asking American consumers to boycott Del Monte Fresh Fruit products, such as pineapple and bananas.

For the past 22 years, Del Monte used longshore members of Local 1291 to unload tons of foreign grown banana and pineapple for sale in US supermarkets. When Del Monte told the union it needed to reduce costs, union members agreed to cut $5 million in pay and benefits. Despite the reductions, Del Monte moved its operations to a nonunion pier run by Holt Logistics, which would cost the ILA 200-300 jobs.

The local has reached out around the globe to the International Dockworkers Council, the West Coast Longshore Workers (ILWU), and the International Transport Workers Federation. Members are demanding that Del Monte unload its ships using ILA labor that earns decent wages and benefits. ILWU President Robert McEllrath pledged the full support of the ILWU and the Longshore Division.

On Labor Day, September 6, 2010, several hundred union members and supporters dumped pineapple into the Delaware River. Philadelphia Bay in a re-play of the Boston Tea Party of 1773 when colonial Americans dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest the tax on tea passed by the British Parliament. The colonists objected to the fact that they were being taxed by a government in which they had no elected representatives.

ILA Local president Boise Butler said the local will keep pushing, because the blow dealt by Del Monte’s to union members would strike at all dockworkers, not just those in Philadelphia.

The present management of Del Monte Fresh has shown its disregard for local communities when it took Hawaiian pineapple technology to stock its plantations in Costa Rico, Brazil, and Africa, then closed its Hawaii operations and cut the jobs of over 550 ILWU members two years ahead of schedule in January 2007. Instead of harvesting the growing pineapple crop worth as much as $23 million, the company destroyed the fruit by plowing the plants into the ground.