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7 November, 2011
A 23-month rubber strike by United Steelworkers (USW) Local 526 is getting renewed attention in Canada with the union broadening the dispute from picket lines to customers and creditors of the company. That company is Infinity Rubber, a producer of tubes and hoses for the US and Canadian auto and mining industries that tried to force extreme wage and benefit concessions after buying the enterprise from bankruptcy protection.
Forty-eight union members went on strike on 1 December 2009 at a factory near Toronto, refusing to accept a 25% cut in wages and a 50% cut in benefits. A year earlier, workers did take a 10% wage decrease – from over C$20-an-hour to C$18 – to assist a predecessor company wracked by a financial crisis that deeply affected US industrial production.
The USW is now taking the fight to the doorsteps of customers, suppliers, and most significantly, a financial institution. On 27 October, some 900 union and community protestors, buoyed by the Occupy Toronto movement and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), loudly demonstrated in front of offices of the Bank of Montreal that is financing an equity agent that backs managers which bought the factory.
Last month the USW began handbilling branches of the Bank of Montreal across the province of Ontario and earlier had sent letters to suppliers and customers telling them of the risks they face in doing business with Infinity. The union also is pressuring Bank of Montreal by asking trade unions to withdraw funds and divest pension assets held in the bank. (The USW campaign can be viewed here.) The company has continued to operate with the use of scab replacement workers hired through an employment agency. Strikers, mostly long-term Hispanic workers with loyal service to the previous owner, Biltrite Industries, are victimised by the fact that Ontario’s government does not ban the use of replacement workers during strikes.
At the 27 October manifestation, striking worker Fernando Silva said, “We are still on strike because the government is allowing the company to hire agency workers, taking our jobs. We are entering our third winter in this fight. But with your support, we’ll get though it.”