Gas Workers Strike in Chicago

By DAVID BERNT

CHICAGO-About 1050 workers at the utility company People’s Gas voted to go on strike on May 18. The workers, members of the Gas Workers Local 18007 of the Service Employees Union, rejected a recent contract offer from management by a margin of 612-306.

The contract called for changes in work rules that would allow People’s Gas to downsize maintenance and repair crews by half, and the dismantling of clerical, warehouse, and meter repair departments, among other cutbacks. The downsizing could cost hundreds of jobs and would create a safety hazard for workers and consumers.

People’s Gas has brought in over 200 scab workers, while union members have set up pickets at People’s Gas headquarters in downtown Chicago and other company locations.

Since 1998 People’s Gas has reduced workers’ numbers by 200. Furthermore, People’s Gas has seen an increase in profit of 15 percent over the past year while workers’ real wages have decreased by 8 percent over the same period of time.

The Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), an organization composed of students from several campuses who support labor struggles, plan to send student delegations to the picket lines in solidarity with the Gas Workers.

Related Articles

The International Food Crisis and Proposals To Overcome It

September 6, 2022

By ERIC TOUSSAINT and OMAR AZIKI
[Editor’s note: We reprint this article by the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM). In 1989, the Bastille Appeal was launched, inviting popular movements throughout the world to unite in demanding the immediate and unconditional cancellation of the debt of the so-called developing countries. This crushing debt, along with neo-liberal macro-economic reforms imposed on the global South, has led to an explosion of worldwide inequality, mass poverty, flagrant injustice and the destruction of the environment.

Summer Strike Wave Hits Britain

August 29, 2022

By ANN MONTAGUE
In Britain, the working class is experiencing a wave of strikes and “Industrial Action” from some of the largest established unions in the country, activity that disrupts the economy. These striking unions have made political demands in recent years to renationalize mail, rail and the electric grid.

Capitalism’s World Economic, Political and Social Crises and the Road to Fight Back

June 21, 2022

By JEFF MACKLER
Led by the dominant capitalist-imperialist nations, especially the U.S. and China, the system involves the capture and transfer of surplus value from workers in poorer countries to leading corporations in the advanced countries. Today, global value chain corporations that represent only 15 percent of all trading firms worldwide, capture some 80 percent of total trade.