Strike Updates: O28: Thursday Student MARCH and RALLY to Support City Colleges Strikers! | Spirits High On College Teachers' Picket Line | Pushing Forward In The City Colleges

City Colleges Workers to Strike Tuesday Morning: Local 1600 union members walked out of negotiations tonight, saying they had reached an impasse with management on key issues that include workload. Management is demanding that teachers jack up their courseload, which teachers argue will deny them the capacity to adequately serve individual students. Other fracture lines in negotiations have included management's demand that health care pay be jacked by as much as 400%, and pay rates for other support staff, including tutors, mentors and coordinators, some of whom earn as little as $7 an hour, less than many Walmart workers. The union has asked the board to value education over profit -- and the board has refused -- so teachers will be on the picket lines Tuesday morning.

The union and their community supporters are urging students to HONOR the picket lines and support the teachers, arguing that to cross those picket lines is to support management's ongoing privitazation of public education and play into management's strategy of 'divide and rule' -- at the expense of quality education and basic fairness. City College students have called for solidarity with the strikers and are organizing support for the union. Read more | Local 1600 website

Teamsters Local 743 Reformers Win Election, Bosses Respond By 'Cancelling' Vote: On Monday night, confronted by election results that would have ousted them from power, Teamsters local 743 bosses effectively fired their election monitor and 'cancelled' Saturday's election. The 743 'leadership,' which has long been tarred with charges of corruption and mob ties, has said the election would have to be redone, a common ploy by corrupt union officials confronted with the prospect of ceding power to the rank and file. At the time of the election 'cancellation', dissidents were narrowly defeating the incumbents, despite evidence that the current leadership may have tampered with hundreds of ballots, and before the ballots of recently laid off Capital Silver workers, who have strongly supported the reformers, were counted. The reform slate expects to have to fight out their right to take their duly elected positions in both the courts and within the union, and plan to hold a press conference Tuesday morning with community supporters to announce next steps. New Leadership Slate website