WORKERS’ RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

RALLY FOR CONTINENTAL RAMP WORKERS

The 7,900 fleet service workers at Continental Airlines are in the struggle for their lives as they organize with the Transport Workers Union for human dignity and a voice at work.

On Tuesday, December 11, 2007, the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, Essex/West Hudson Central Labor Council and the Essex County Building and Construction Trades Council will commemorate International Human Rights Day with a rally in support of these courageous Continental fleet service employees, 2,700 of whom are employed at Newark Liberty International Airport.

This rally will begin at 7:00 p.m. at the Newark Liberty International Airport Marriott in Newark, New Jersey.

Please join us at this very important event, as we stand in solidarity with these and other workers in New Jersey. Together with civic leaders, elected officials, and our rank-and-file union members elected to public office through our Labor Candidates Program, we will rally in solidarity with Continental fleet service workers as they claim their right to bargain with Continental Airlines for better wages, benefits, working conditions and job security.

In the past 18 months, Continental has made $800 million in profits. Its CEO Laurence Kellner pocketed $6 million dollars in one day last year through exercising stock options. If Continental Airlines were to merge with another airline, Kellner would take in over $19 million in severance. Yet he imposed a 10% pay cut on fleet service workers in 2005, and without a union, fleet service workers have no job security should Kellner merge Continental.

The National Mediation Board has scheduled an election to determine representation by the Transport Workers Union, to take place from December 11, 2007, to January 9, 2008. The election will be the largest union election at an airline in decades. Continental is doing all it can to stop its workers from organizing. Let’s show Continental ramp workers that their union brothers and sisters in New Jersey are behind them!

International Human Rights Day is held every year to celebrate the 1948 signing of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights which established the rights of workers in every nation to come together into unions and gain a voice at work.

For more information about this important event, please call Tina Carr at (609) 989-8730.