Ohio Police: Ten Armed Picketers Arrested

HANNIBAL, Ohio -- Ten striking factory workers armed with knives, bats and clubs were arrested after attempting to block vans entering an Ormet Corp. aluminum plant, police said.

The picketers were charged Friday with violating a court order requiring them to stay at least 2,000 feet away from the plant's entrance, Monroe County Sheriff Manifred Keylor said in a statement.

snip.........

Police said they seized various weapons from the picketers, including a sledgehammer, an ax, knives, baseball bats and wooden clubs.

Danny Longwell, a local steelworkers union representative, said picketers blocked the vans because they believed they were carrying replacement workers into the plant on Friday. A call to the union seeking additional comment Saturday was not immediately returned.

http://www.newsday.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-ormet-strike-arrests,0,4498444.story?coll=sns-ap-business-headlines

but in no state in which I've lived is carrying any of those things against the law.

...requiring them to stay at least 2,000 feet away from the plant's entrance. It goes on to state Additional charges of resisting arrest and assaulting law enforcement officers were pending.

It does not actually state any weapons charges. It says, Police said they seized various weapons from the picketers, including a sledgehammer, an ax, knives, baseball bats and wooden clubs. That does not mean that they will be charged with weapons just that someone decided to call those items that. I feel they worded it as such to sensationalize the story.

I would think if one used a sledgehammer in an attack it would be a weapon. If one used it to drive a stake it would be a tool. If one held it at a picket line and did not use it at all my vote would be tool.

edit: on further thought

Just what is the story behind the possible assault charges pending?

I hope for the Strikers' sake that they all kept level heads when the cops showed up.

Often in cases like this the charges that are pressed later are dismissed in court. It depends if someone really blew his stack or not.

I also hope they keep level heads but sometimes it is really difficult in a situation like that.

I suppose I should have elucidated further. What I was wondering was why such details were included in either the police release or the news report; seems to say, "These were bad dudes, man; we weren't just union busting."

I would bet to oppress further picketers.

Whether they actually did anything violent or not, I'm afraid to say that I don't think that it's going to be too long before we start seeing frequent violent clashes between workers and the police again. It's only just a matter of time with Neocon Republicans in control of the whole show.

I think the Corporations know this too...so it's time to start painting the workers as out-of-control thugs again.

I've always wanted a time machine--I just didn't want the entire country turning into one.

See the following URL:


http://news-register.net/news/story/1128202004_new01.asp

There are 2 plants side by side, both owned by Boyle. The northern one is 'up above' and used to be Olin-Revere. It is a reduction mill--hot and dirty work. The southern mill is 'down below' and was originally Olin-Matheson, then Conalco and finally ORMET (which is Ohio River Metals). The local for down below is 5760, I can't remember for sure the local name for up above. They were talking about becoming one union, so that both places could go on strike, but I don't know if they followed through.
I don't know if anyone is taking a bail collection --according to union email, the sheriff told union reps the 10 strikers could be held 30 days without bail on a civil charge --which is ridiculous.
Many people in this area carry pocket knives, hunting knives and have rifle racks in their trucks. Granted, not many carry bats, but what are knives and bats against tasers and guns?

Thanks for your support.

Aren't we all allowed to carry UZI's and AK-47's now....'legally'?

about machine guns. those things were outlawed in completely 1986 and are still outlawed thanks to that gun grabing pos reagan.

and so it begins....

Will be a very long winter, not to mention four years

Some have forgotten that the Republicans have never been a friend of unions or labor.

remember that labor strike in So Cal...

It will be a long hard four years... emphasis on long and hard....

Oh and if you did not know what happened in the 1880s that earned you a forty hour week... take a seat... get some popcorn... history class is now in session.

All of that was won with blood and struggle. It is stealthily being eroded, and people complain about unions without remembering that most of the civilized things they take for granted (like the 40 hour week) came about through the union movement.

Some women forget the same thing about the feminist movement. The power of media propaganda, I suppose.

the shirtwaiste fire, the countless injuries resulting from dangerous equipment and unscrupulous employers, 10 year old coal miners, etc. The Republicans are desperately trying to re-create those "good old days" of American capitalism. You would think after 100 years, Americans would be smart enough to offer resistance to this move but nooooo, we're gonna vote for these assholes anyways because that's what Jesus would do. God I hate politicians.

is that there are at least two generations who are totally unaware of all of this. The lessons were passed down to a point but there are groups of the young for whom the 40 hour work week and worker safety regulations are a given and are taken for granted. They've no clue how those things were attained because there has been a failure to make sure they understand exactly what took place before these things came into being and what it would be like if they were taken away.

The same can be said of our Bill of Rights and Constitution. There are young people who think these are merely historic documents and the way things have been in their lifetimes is the way things will stay.

We have to make sure the young have living lessons, not just assignments from their history teachers. They need to understand that these things came about through struggle and sacrifice and require these things to keep them alive.

$23,300 NEW CAP for OT.

there will be no legal provisions to prevent employers from forcing employees to work past 40 hours. There's little chance that new hires will be brought in to pick up the extra hours. If you complain about it, you'll be fired, replaced with a Mexican, or otherwise coerced into shutting the fuck up. That's what happens when power is stripped away, you end up on the receiving end of a long hard a**-fu** like this. I could go on and on and on........

again - some things never change.

Only Breaking News posts are considered when locking dupes.

But you have stand almost a half a mile away from the plant......

A couple of days ago--after scores of pickets showed up at the plant entrances--a judge granted the company an injunction that limits the number of pickets at each plant entrance to ten people. All of those other pickets must stay at least 2000-feet away, which they appeared to be doing without any problems on Thanksgiving Day when a couple of the striking union workers even brought their children to the picket line and everyone was smiling for the TV cameras.

;)

The picketers are still being held in jail. The judge won't even hear the case until tomorrow. Meantime, the families are picketing the jail.

Ormet has had a lot of labor problems over the years. These men will not go quietly into the night. I wish them luck.

Now I say the democratic thing to do would be take up a collection!

Is this the union? Maybe we can find where to send help here
http://www.smwia.org/

or if not, http://www.aflcio.org

USWA 5724 and 5760. The district info:

USWA District 8
85 C. Michael Davenport Blvd, Suite B
Frankfort, KY 40601
502-875-3332 - Telephone
502-875-2917 - FAX

thanks to oh_liberal from the thread in General Discussion

USWA 5724
105 union drive
Clarington OH 43915
1-740-458-1345

USWA 5760
Sardis, OH 43946
1-740-483-1376

Can't find an address for the local hall in Sardis.

to void its labor agreement. This is the scheme to breaking unions? The Airlines are doing it, now this. Do companies feel they have the green light with junior in control? I think so! Aren't all those big tax breaks helping these companies pay the CEO's those outrageous wages with a big bonus at the end of the year?

"About 1,300 workers at two plants in Hannibal went on strike Monday against Ormet, which has sought U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval to void its labor agreements and impose new ones. The company is trying to cut $23 million in costs by freezing pension benefits, raising worker health plan contributions and changing work rules."

Go strikers go - Don't give up the fight.

For the company's one-sided, biased view of the situation, see the following URL:

http://news-register.net/news/story/1128202004_new02.asp


Hopefully, the union will issue a statement, too!

of how these fuckers fuck us. Like hiding accounts in the Cayman Islands. And having the whole family on the payroll while claiming poverty and bitching about how high the minimum wage is while donating a ton of money to junior and his crime cabal.....and 'Kenny boy' still hanging loose.

Send em over to help count the damn votes!

Anybody remember what happened at the end of the 20's?

Is not 'bargaining in good faith' and used to be a violation labor laws. Companies can be depended upon to attempt to use the judicial system to issue injunctions that render the primary tool of labor, to withhold labor, as ineffective.

The judge that issued the injunction should be removed. For issuing the injunction he/she has placed societies security apparatus on the side of the company. It is an old trick and labors response in this case can ONLY be violence. They should respond in the only way they can after the judge stuck their nose where it didn't belong.

Burn the courthouse with the judge inside. Then face down the police. Then go back and in no uncertain terms tell the company, there will be no Scabs.

The anti-labor government has been allowed go to way too far. It started with Reagan. It is now time to start organizing 'sympathy strikes' and shut-down the profit centers, until it is recognized where the power really is.

Breaker one-nine, this here is the Rubber Duck.

heh

Well we laid a strip fer the Jersey Shore
An' prepared to cross the line
I could see the bridge 'as lined with bears
But I didn't have a doggone dime
I sez Pig-Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck
We just ain't a gonna pay no toll
So we crashed the gate doin' ninety-eight
I sez, let them truckers roll, 10-4

I just read about it for the first time, when it jumped out of google, as I tried to find references to that atrocious massacre of miners in some state on the east coast. This one was in Colorado, and it's absolutely new material to me. You may find this article interesting:

.......You say Tikas probably became an organizer because of the horrible working conditions he saw. Describe those conditions.

Well, the work was terrible. Miners were paid by the ton in those days. So all of the extra work that they had to do to prepare the rooms for digging; the timbering, the moving of rock, etc., they weren't paid for that. They were paid by the ton. The cars were taken up to a weigh station. The weigh master was hired by the company and the miners were always complaining that they were short-weighted on the cars. The work was very, very dangerous. Because the miners were paid by the ton it wasn't in their interest to spend a lot of time timbering the rooms. Mother Jones, the great union organizer, once went into a mine in West Virginia or Kentucky, and she asked the pit boss why the mines weren't properly timbered. He replied, ‘Well you know, Daygos are cheaper than props.' That was the attitude of many the pit bosses and mine superintendents in this country. You had to buy the timber, but the immigrant workers replaced themselves. They flooded here because they needed the money.

It's a misconception that immigrants came to this country in order to live here. They came at first for the money, for the dollars, for the opportunity that wasn't in their, in their native countries. Their expectations were to work in a mine or on a railroad and to send money back home. This is certainly what the Greeks were doing, paying off mortgages, getting dowries for their sisters. They all intended to return. And if you look at the immigration statistics, you'll find that the return to Europe by immigrants from central and southern Europe was tremendous. So, originally immigrants felt that they were here on a temporary basis. They loved their countries. And part of the trauma of coming to the United States was being uprooted for the things they knew. And from the culture that they knew.

What was life like in the coal fields, in the camps themselves -- the company towns?

Well, the company towns were owned lock, stock and barrel by the companies. They hired the minister if there was a minister. If there was a little reading room or a club house, they would choose what books and magazines were in the clubhouse. They hired the school master. And the school teacher. They hired the police. They ran the towns to suit themselves. The towns were often ran by a combination of the mine boss and the town marshal. And between them, they wanted to win, they wanted to run a tight ship. Camps were closed. You couldn't come into the town just as you would in any other town. The camps were closed. You essentially had to have permission to move into the town and the reason for that, the big reason for that was they wanted to keep union organizers and agitators out of those camps. Union people had been trying to organize unions in Colorado secretly for years. Southern Colorado was almost a feudal empire, and union organizers had come into the towns. They'd been caught by marshals, they'd been taken into the salons taken into the back and beaten. Some had been killed. Mine meetings were held in secret. The towns themselves were a symbol to the miners to the fact that they did not own their lives.
(snip/...)

http://www.kued.org/productions/fire/interviews/papanikolas.html

by Upton Sinclair.

after 31 yrs. Since Emmit Boyle (who has ties to Marc Rich) took it over in 1994 or so, the management/labor relationship has steadily gone sour. One of the main reasons my husband took the retirement was the extremely stressful working conditions. After Boyle took it over,we couldn't count on any holidays off, they changed the shifts every few weeks or so, and relied on forced overtime rather than hire additional employees. During the last labor dispute while my husband was there, the union stayed on the job for almost 2 years before a new agreement was reached. During that time, Boyle imposed rules such as no reading material allowed into the plant, labor was not allowed to post updates, they closed off one of the lunch rooms and bathrooms and hauled in portajohns, and the only place the men could wash up was a utility sink where the janitors dumped mop water. When a contract was agreed on, the terms were not retroactive.

According to Hoover's in 1998, Ormet was the 4th largest aluminum company in the world and was privately owned. Now, in spite of the fact that aluminun is at its highest price per pound in many years, and despite the fact that Ormet couldn't fill allof its orders because of demand, Bolye went into bankruptcy protection and the new owners want to continue the tradition of screwing the work force sideways.

There are some books available about the background of management which explain a lot of why this union is on strike now.

Metal Man

Ravenswood: Steelworkers Victory and Revival of Amercian Labor