In Hadley, Massachusetts, which borders Northampton, the workers at the Trader Joe's supermarket are negotiating their first union contract. “We just wrapped up two days of negotiations in Hadley. It was our most productive bargaining session yet,” the workers wrote on Instagram on February 2. A union spokesperson did not immediately reply to an email seeking additional comments. The Valley Post will publish her quote in a future article.
The Pioneer Valley was home to a strike by more than 1,000 Stop and Shop supermarket workers in 2019. The workers won. The Stop and Shop workers have a web site at www.ufcw1459.com. The Trader Joe's workers have a web site at www.TraderJoesUnited.org.
In Brattleboro, after months on strike, workers won in 2015. They work for Consolidated Communications, then known as Fairpoint, still the monopoly provider of landline phone service in Brattleboro. The workers connect cell phone towers to wires and cables, which carry the data, a worker told the Valley Post on the picket line in January 2015 in Brattleboro. More on how cell phones need landline wires and cables to work is at:
http://networks.land/reference/physical
The workers have a web site at www.ibew.org.
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In Holyoke, an organizer said on January 31 he was expecting a bigger crowd for a banner drop on February 5 than attended the January 29 banner drop. The banner is about the police killings of Tyre Nichols in Memphis and Tortuguita. An Indigenous person from Venezuela, Tortuguita was killed by police in Atlanta, Georgia, USA while protesting plans by the Atlanta city government to log a forest last month.
Fergus Marshall is the Holyoke organizer. The first rally “went really well,” he told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview. “It was very windy. Six people were there on short notice. The best solution for climate change is to leave trees standing.”
The event is set for February 5 at 3:30 p.m. at:
https://maps.apple.com/place?ll=42.241512,-72.629299&q=Dropped%20Pin&_ex...
For more information go to
www.democracynow.org/2023/2/2/tyre_nichols_funeral_memphis
and
and/or contact Marshall at sugref@yahoo.com.
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