Visually impaired unionists fight layoffs, for safety
https://themilitant.com/2020/11/14/visually-impaired-unionists-fight-layoffs-for-safety/
BY MAGGIE TROWE
Vol. 84/No. 46
November 23, 2020
CINCINNATI — Teamsters-organized workers at the factory run by the
Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired here are
fighting back against layoffs, wage cuts and unsafe working conditions.
Two-thirds of these 65 workers, members of Teamsters Local 100, are
blind or visually impaired. They slit tape, produce exit signs and craft
and exam paper, and assemble kitchen gadgets. Management of the
nonprofit outfit imposed a COVID-related shutdown in April.
“We will recall laid-off employees as business needs warrant based first
on job function and then by seniority,” they wrote laid-off workers.
“Prior to recalling laid-off employees to regular job classifications,
additional temporary transfers may be made available based on business
needs.”
“They wanted to retain people who were sighted, but those people are
lower seniority. The employees that were blind have the most seniority,”
Dorian Stone, a union representative for Teamsters Local 100, told the
Cincinnati Enquirer.
Management brought a few workers back later in April and more in August,
ignoring seniority, Dave Perry, a production worker at the factory, told
the Militant. “They cut some workers’ pay in half,” he said. “Managers
engaged in production work, a violation of our union contract. They also
hired workers from a temporary agency who are not blind and paid them
less than the unionized workers.”
During the shutdown management rearranged machines so there is no longer
a physical barrier to keep workers out of the danger zone where cranes
move huge tape rolls to slitting machines. They also recently told the
blind workers they wouldn’t help them cross the busy street in front of
the plant, claiming this will help blind workers live more independently.
“About 25 workers signed a petition against these violations and
presented it to management,” Perry said. Workers also filed grievances
against management doing production jobs and hiring temps, and for
ending inadequate social distancing because machines were set too close
together. This resistance got results.
All but 15 of the union workers are back now. The company is taking
workers’ temperatures as they enter. They’re employing fewer from agencies.
“But we still have issues,” Perry said. “We want everyone back. Our
union steward is still on layoff and isn’t allowed on company property
to represent us. The company won’t let business agent Dorian Stone, or
local President Bill Davis, on company property either.”
Having a union is important to him. “I’ve heard workers here in the
1980s had to fight like crazy to bring in the union,” Perry said, “and a
lot of people lost their jobs.”
“Only 30% of blind people are able to find work they can do,” Perry
said. “We want to be productive, earn a living and be treated with respect.”
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Sam Harris
“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely
to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of
wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in
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and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a
refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has
good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of
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just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected
by-what, religion? No, by good science.”
― Sam Harris