Back-to-Work Law Aimed  at Canadian Striking Locomotive Engineers

The Canadian conservative government is planning to introduce back-to-work legislation on Dec. 7 to force an end to the strike of Canadian National’s locomotive engineers, unless the company and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference reach an agreement before then. The legislation, if passed, would end the strike and send all matters to binding arbitration.

About 1,700 locomotive engineers have been on strike since Dec. 5. Talks remained at an impasse after management rejected an offer by the Teamsters to send the union’s latest wage proposal to arbitration after other disputed issues had been resolved. The railroad insisted that all disputed issues should be sent  to binding arbitration.

A CN spokesman said that a rail strike  just before Christmas, as the country comes out of an economic downturn, could cause  serious damage to the Canadian economy. The last contract expired on Dec. 31, 2008.

Russian Labor Groups Seek Strength Through Mergers

In a bid to regain some power for Russia’s labor movement, Boris Kravchenko is leading his group of 1.3 million members into a merger with another major independent group of about the same size, the Russian Labor Confederation, which is the country’s third largest workers group. He said a unification conference is expected to take place early next year.

The recent economic hardships faced by workers has spurred the decision to unite the two groups, especially as layoffs thinned union ranks in industries like coal mining and steel making, that cut production to meet falling demand,. “Unions have fallen on hard times. People are losing jobs. We are losing influence in serious sectors of the economy. We  have realized that we need to pull together  our  finances and intellectual resources,” Kravchenko said.

Even combined, the two confederations would be dwarfed by the Federation of Independents Unions of Russia (FITUR) with 26 million members. Kravchenko described FITUR as “amorphous” and less independent of the authorities, saying that it relied on property for 70 percent of its revenue. It is not clear how the Russian government will view the merger and  the emergence of a stronger labor movement.

Wal-Mart Will Pay $40 Million to Massachusetts Employees

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the world’s largest retailer, has agreed to pay $40 million to as many as 87,500 current and former employees in Massachusetts, U.S., the largest wage-and-hour class action in the state’s history.  The class action lawsuit, filed in 2001, accused the retailer of denying workers rest and meal breaks, refusing to pay overtime and manipulating time cards to lower employment pay.

 The agreement states that any person who worked for Wal-Mart between August 1995 and the settlement date will receive a payment of between $400 and $2,500, depending on the number of years worked, with the average worker receiving a check for $734.

Under the terms of the settlement, neither side is allowed to comment. But in an affidavit filed with the settlement, the lead counsel  for the employees, Philip Gordon of Boston’s Gordon Law Group, said the accord “dwarfs settlements of similar class actions against Wal-Mart across the country.”

Turkey’s Sugar Workers Fight Privatization with Newspaper Ads

Seker-Is, the union representing workers in the sugar production business, placed full-page ads in the Dec. 2 edition of a number of national newspapers to present their case for their rejection of the privatization of the state’s sugar refineries. The ads were titled” “An Open Letter to our prime minister.”

The ads claimed that privatization would trigger the closing of at least 18 sugar refineries, pushing at least 350,000 beet farmers out of business, causing at least 9,000 workers to lose their jobs and making Turkey fully dependent on foreigners for its sugar needs.

The ads called on the government to bring about a series of reforms to increase efficiency by expanding the capacity utilization of facilities and “transferring total ownership of sugar refineries to beet producers as in the U.S. and Europe.”

Japan’s Bar Hostesses to Form Labor Union

Facing unpaid wages and sexual harassment, a group of women who work at ”kyabakura” bars plan to form a labor union to demand better treatment. Kayakura is a combination of the words “cabaret” and “club.” Hostesses sit next to customers and entertain them with conversation and liquor.

The hostesses are planning to hold a meeting in Tokyo  this month to prepare for the  formation of a trade union that covers part-time, non-regular and foreign workers, they said.

A hostess, who is leading the campaign to form the labor union, said: “Bar managers and colleagues told me that various bad conditions should ‘ust be taken for granted.’ I hope the labor union will b able to provide support so that hostesses will not have to suffer,” she said.