Striking members of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago voted unanimously August 13 to reject the latest contract offer from Mauser Packaging Solutions, keeping up their strike which has lasted now for over two months. They are demanding higher wages, safer working conditions, guaranteed break times, and guarantees against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on the workplace without judicial warrants.
The workers’ demands also include the return of paid sick days, bargained away in a previous contract, days off to mourn deceased relatives, and less expensive healthcare plans.
Mauser is an industrial packaging monopoly—workers at the Mauser facility in Chicago recondition steel containers used to transport chemicals.
The company has only presented again their original contract proposal, rejecting the workers demands, including saying they refuse to “break the law” in response to the demand that ICE only be allowed onto company property with a warrant, and has responded to the strike with an anti-union smear campaign according to workers interviewed by various outlets.
According to Nicolas Coronado, the chief negotiator for Teamsters Local 705, the company has offered a paltry 9.5% raise over the three year contract which translates to a raise of $0.70 an hour. This is not a raise when factoring in rising cost of living. The average wage of the Mauser workers is $20 an hour with workers demanding $5 raises by the end of the contract. There are 140 workers at Chicago’s Mauser facility, with about 90% of the workers being Latino and 10% being Black according to the union local’s chief negotiator.
The workers say temperatures can reach up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas of the plant and are demanding temperature controls in the facility to provide relief from the furnaces which run around the clock, according to a report published by In These Times.
Striking worker Dante Woodson attests in the same report to the extreme temperatures: “They don’t do anything to alter temperatures. So if it’s hot outside, it’ll be super-hot in here, because obviously there’s ovens and heaters”. Another worker told In These Times that despite working with dangerous industrial chemicals, the company does not provide adequate ventilation or uniforms to keep chemicals from contaminating workers’ personal clothing.
Mauser locations in Los Angeles and Minnesota “decided not to show up to work” in late June in solidarity with the striking workers in Chicago, according to Colin McCullough, a spokesman for the Teamsters. This is notable considering solidarity strikes, striking in solidarity with a strike at a workplace under a separate bargaining agreement, is illegal in the United States.
Besides the picket at the Mauser facility which has successfully shut down the plant’s operations, the Teamsters have organized a protest marching on Mauser headquarters in Oak Brook, IL on August 5 which was 500 strong, rallying Mauser workers, other unionized workers, and a smattering of Democratic mafia politicians and AFL-CIO chiefs.
Image: Mauser workers at the picket line in late June, Teamsters social media
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