Corvallow City Strike: 240 Walk Out, Library Left to Gargoyle

About 240 town workers in Corvallow went on strike Wednesday, and the autumn leaves are already winning.

The pickets went up at Town Hall and at the Great Library. The strikers tend the parks, run public works, manage the wastewater and stamp the library books. They belong to Local 2975 of the Federation of Realm, Shire and Town Servants. Talks started in January. The old contract ran out in June. On the first of September, 90 percent of them voted to walk. Nobody can say they rushed.

'We have been at that table nine months,' said Orla Pennywhistle, a book-binder at the Great Library for eleven years. 'The table has better benefits than we do.'

The union wants bigger cost-of-living raises and more pay steps, so a worker with twenty years in gets a raise for something other than surviving. The town says it is offering 'a meaningful compensation package' and 'competitive wages' while staring at a 20-million-gp hole in the budget. That means no.

Then there is the counting fight. Late last month the town announced that an earlier union offer cost 1.9 million gp more than the union had said. The two sides are now closer on how to add it up, but the town says the matter is not resolved. This is an argument about arithmetic, and the people who do the town's arithmetic are the ones standing in the rain.

The union has already given ground. It agreed to the town's plan to raise what workers pay for healing care, but only for the last six months of the contract. It offered to push the new pay steps back to the final six months too. The town said no to that. A last-minute mediation session ran Tuesday. As of Wednesday morning, no second one was on the calendar, though the town's chief steward promised to 'keep working toward a deal.' Keep working. The strikers would like to try that too.

Public works is closed to visitors. The library is open with a skeleton crew and has pre-announced closures Thursday and Friday. The town calls the damage 'minimal for now.' Minimal for now is how every flood starts. Street sweeping, park upkeep and billing help will feel it next, and the trained library staff cannot be swapped for whoever is standing nearby, as the strikers pointed out.

Same week, the Wagonmasters' Brotherhood walked out in Orcrange County over supervisors' fat raises. Different town, same story. The people who keep the roads clear and the pipes running asked to be paid like they matter.

Solidarity. And stretch your back. — Brakka