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Mass Family Solidarity March with Locked-Out ABI Workers All Out May 25 to Support the ABI Workers -- Their Fight is Our Fight!ABI workers have been locked out for more than 16 months by the Alcoa/Rio Tinto global cartel. They are organizing a family march on Saturday May 25, in the streets of Trois-Rivières, to affirm the justness of their cause and rally people to stand with them in this important struggle for the rights of working people and the well-being of their communities.
The ABI workers are calling on everyone to march together to support their struggle, as one that affects the rights and working and living standards of all and the well-being of the communities where they live. Their struggle is in defence of terms of employment at a modern acceptable standard in the Mauricie and Centre-du-Québec Region and throughout Quebec and Canada. All dignified working people find it unacceptable that a global cartel refuses to negotiate with those who do the work and their representatives. Instead, the cartel is using its massive social wealth, and production from other aluminum facilities it controls, to lock out workers for months on end and force them to accept working conditions that will drive down conditions generally throughout the region and Canada itself. In this battle for rights and a standard of living acceptable to those who do the work, the Quebec government is bringing shame on itself for not coming to the defence of its own people but rather acting like a flunkey of the global cartel. The government is openly siding with the cartel's demands to outsource work, lower the standard of living in the region and destroy the union. The government is even allowing Alcoa not to pay for its contracted electricity during the lockout, energy which Hydro-Quebec has prepared, budgeted for and set aside for the monopoly at preferential rates thus creating a direct loss to the Quebec people of hundreds of millions of dollars. All Out May 25!
The Quebec Steelworkers are organizing buses from several regions to travel to Trois-Rivières: Côte-Nord, Gaspésie-Bas-St-Laurent, Nord-du-Québec, Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, Québec, Laurentides-Lanaudière, Montérégie, Abititi-Témiscamingue, Estrie, Montreal and Outaouais. Buses will leave from different cities in these regions. USW District 6 has announced the participation of Ontario Steelworkers, who are also renting buses for the occasion. USW District 6 also represents steelworkers in the Atlantic provinces who also support the just cause of ABI workers. Workers' Forum calls on all workers and their families to participate in the march to make it the greatest possible success. Workers' Forum will be there and will report on the action, with photos and interviews. In this issue, we include an interview with Alexandre Fréchette, President of the Alma Aluminum Workers' Union. Based on the actual experience of Alma workers during and following their 2012 lockout by Rio Tinto, President Fréchette gives details to expose the fraudulent nature of the Minister of Labour's settlement proposal, which totally sides with the global cartel and negates the rights of ABI workers.
On May 25, let us all go to Trois-Rivières to show our support for the just cause of the ABI workers and their families and communities and tell Alcoa/Rio Tinto in no uncertain terms that we stand with the workers and their families and communities. We are one with their struggle and together we can make a difference in this battle with a global giant. Together we can make a contribution to the struggle of all workers for their rights in these most difficult times of the anti-social offensive and nation-wrecking by the ruling financial oligarchy. The Alcoa/Rio Tinto cartel must negotiate a collective agreement with its workers and reach an acceptable arrangement the workers can accept. The cartel must give up its attempts to silence the workers and smash their union. Workers are the essential human factor and have rights and a voice that must be heard with regards to their working and living conditions and the direction of the economy and nation. All Out for the May 25 March!
This article was published in   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
The ABI workers have been
fighting tirelessly throughout the lockout, and for many months before,
to negotiate a collective agreement acceptable to themselves and to
defend their union against the scheme of the global cartel to destroy
it.
From the beginning of this
unjust lockout and refusal of the global cartel to negotiate, an
important factor sustaining the workers at ABI and allowing them to
continue their struggle has been the organized support, including
financial support, that other workers have sent to them. They have
received financial support from over 400 local
unions in Quebec, Canada, the United States, Australia and Guatemala.
In this important way workers themselves have taken the initiative to
counter the huge global power of the oligopolies such as Alcoa and Rio
Tinto and the governments that do their bidding, such as the Quebec
government. The global cartels are possessed with the singular
aim of maximum private profit regardless of the effects on the working
people, the social and natural environment and the nation. Working
people can counter this global power with our human power and
determination to defend our rights, communities and nation.