Those pampered CEOs and feather merchants at Lockheed Martin could learn valuable lessons from retired IAM GVP Ross Mathews---and they won’t have to travel far to find him. They can find him on the picket line just outside the company’s facility in Marietta, GA.

“I wanted to come and support my brothers and sisters on the line,” declared the 93-year-old Mathews, who came to show solidarity with striking members of Local 709, who’ve been on strike since March 11.

It was not his first time on the line in Marietta. “I was assigned to the strike here in 1958,” he said. “We worked hard during that strike, too.”  His typically IAM militancy won new admirers. “The more he walks, the stronger he gets,” marveled Local 709 striker Carolyn Hill. “It’s so inspirational to us to have him here.”

Mathews retired as GVP of the Northeast Territory in 1972.

Equal Pay Day
Demands Paycheck Fairness
A coalition of unions, political leaders and women’s organizations joined together on April 16—Equal Pay Day—to demand legislation that removes the gender gap in pay rates and ensures that women receive equal pay for equal work, notes Cheryl Eastburn, who heads the IAM Women’s Department. April 16 marks the day when women’s wages finally catch up to men’s wages from the previous year. In 2001, the average woman worker was paid 73 cents for every dollar a man was paid.

“The wage disparity is unjust—it’s unfair—and we are determined to close the gap,” pledged Linda Chavez-Thompson, AFL-CIO executive vice president. At a Capitol Hill press conference, Chavez-Thompson and other coalition members urged Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-CT.