By Doug Cunningham

A strike nearing its fifth month against Lohr Distributing in St. Louis is escalating. The Teamsters are encouraging a boycott of Lohr distributed Anheuser Busch products in the city of St. Louis
after Lohr hired permanent replacement drivers. Anheuser-Bush has filed unfair labor practice charges against the Teamsters alleging that the Teamsters are breaking the law by encouraging a boycott against Lohr distributed Anheuser Busch products. The Teamsters
say Lohr can easily afford a fair contract but instead wants to push wages back to 1980's levels.

By Doug Cunningham

The Teamsters are asking that all Anheuser-Busch products in St. Louis be boycotted following the hiring of what Lohr Distributing says are permanent replacements for striking Teamsters drivers.
Lohr distributes Anheuser-Busch beer within the city of St. Louis. Teamsters have been on strike against Lohr for four and a half months. Teamsters Local 600 President Dan McKay says Lohr is showing its true colors in this move to get rid of higher-paid older workers and attempt to bust the union. Lohr says it wants to continue negotiations but the Teamsters believe the company is trying to break the union.

Today in St. Louis, a new federation of unions representing more than five million workers is holding its founding convention. The Change to Win Coalition's focus is on improving the living conditions of working people and organizing the 9 in 10 American workers not yet in union. The coalition consists of major unions that are dissatisfied with that organization's inability to combat slipping membership, including five that left the AFL-CIO this summer.

Participants include the the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, UNITE HERE, the Un

By Doug Cunningham

At the national annual meeting of Jobs With Justice this coming weekend The National Worker's Rights Board will draw more than a thousand workers and community activists to hear testimony from workers about
Wal-Mart's policies. Jobs With Justice's Erica Smiley says the National Worker's Rights Board was formed in response to a National Labor Relations Board that's not protecting workers' rights.

[Erica Smiley 1] : "We're expecting it to unite a variety of workers and community members from many perspectives around what's proven to be the common cause of the 21st century."

St. Louis teachers may be on strike for Christmas. A strike authorization vote is set for December 15th. The American Federation of Teachers says even though teacher strikes are illegal under Missouri law it won’t stop the teachers from walking off their jobs if that’s what they vote to do. The AFT’s Mary Armstrong says America was founded on civil disobedience so the union won’t be deterred from using it if that’s what the members want. St. Louis teachers are making it clear, however, that their preference is to return to the bargaining table and work out an acceptable contract.
St. Louis teachers aren’t paid as well as suburban teachers and that’s one of the issues on the table.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has been locked out by management for more than six weeks but new talks are set for Wednesday. Jan (Yann) Gippo is a spokesperson for the musician’s union. He says St. Louis Orchestra musicians are paid $15,000 a year less than orchestras in similar cities.

[Jan Gippo1]: “ If we accept what he’s offering this orchestra will leave the one percentile of great symphony orchestras in the world and fall to nineteenth and become a revolving door orchestra where the young players will leave.”

St. Louis has become something of a hotbed of labor unrest lately. Seventeen hundred nurses at St. John's Medical Center have been on strike for over a month with no new talks scheduled. Issues include the nurses having a voice in patient care. Nurses went on strike December 15th and are still walking the pickets lines. St. Louis teachers, meanwhile, have set a strike date of Wednesday, January 19th. They're seeking pay parity with suburban St. Louis teachers. The teachers in the 32,000 student district rejected the St. Louis School District's final offer and even though a teachers strike in St. Louis would be illegal, the teachers union there has authorized one. The St.Louis Symphony Orchestra is also out in a labor dispute that has scrapped a scheduled concert this month featuring scrapped guest conductor Itzhak Perlman. The musicians have rejected a contract that includes a pay cut. On top of all that Ford plans to close its Hazelwood plant in St. Louis, wiping out 2700 jobs. That plant makes Explorers and Mercury Mountaineers.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's music has stopped over a pay dispute in the new proposed musicians contract but musician¹s union spokesman
Jan (Yann) Gippo says it¹s not a strike.

[Jan Gippo 1]: "We're locked out."

Orchestra musicians took a pay cut last time and are trying to get back on track with wages. Under the current management proposal orchestra members will make less at the ned of three years than they're making now.

As St. John's Med Center and the 1200 striking nurses meet Friday for talks ordered by federal mediators union spokesman Ed Finkelstein says patients are recounting problems with care inside St. John¹s.

[Ed Finkelstein 1]: "We're getting all kinds of feedback from the patients in the hospital that the conditions are terrible. Unfortunately a couple of patients who had been willing to go public have backed off because of the fear for their children who have to go back into the hospital. But we have mothers who I've talked to personally who say that if it wasn't for the fact that they were monitoring their own children's medication these temporary nurses would have made serious mistakes."

The union has filed another unfair labor practice charge alleging "blackballing" of a union nurse at another Missouri facility for honoring the St. John¹s picket line.

Hundreds of union members are expected to turn out for a St. Louis rally today supporting nurses striking St. John¹s Medical Center. St. John¹s nurses on the pickets lines in the strike against the medical center are fighting a battle over issues like patient care and staffing that many nurses nationwide are also dealing with. Julie Gunther of Nurses United in Kansas City joined the St. Louis nurses on the cold picket line.

[Julie Gunther 1] : "We know that the situation for registered nurses across our state and country is really dire as far as staffing conditions and quality nurse retention. And we just wanted to come and show our solidarity and support for them. We know that they're advocating fore their patients and that's what registered nurses are all about."

Nurses at St. John¹s medical Center in St. Louis are on strike after failing to reach agreement on a number of issues centering on patient care, wages, seniority rights and union security. Jim Dougherty is President of UFCW Local 655 representing the nurses. Some nurses have reportedly crossed the picket line to continue to work, but Dougherty said about 300 nurses braved minus 7 degree wind chills to hit the picket lines Wednesday morning. Catholic social doctrine supports unions and the right of workers to organize ­ something Dougherty says St. John¹s management should followŠ
[Dougherty]: "Management is ignoring their mercy values. I wonder where their values are when they don't care about their nurses, they seem to don't care about their patients."