4 : } Pensioners Pierre and Joe offer you a “ACCIDENT | SPARKS WALKOUT BRANTFORD — 1,750 out- raged Massey Ferguson workers struck, April 18, protesting an ac- cident on the combines assembly line that cost fellow worker Michael Smith his hand. The workers are refusing to go back to work until their complaints about ‘management ignoring safety regu- lations for the sake of speed up are satisfied. Speed up, the workers charge has been intensified with recent lay-offs as the company is to fish itself out of tight economic problems by making the - workers suffer through unem- | ployment and a faster work pace. ALFA TAKES STRIKE VOTE VANCOUVER — Wardair Canada Ltd.’s 500 flight attes- dants began voting April 19 on | strike action after contract talks with the company broke down. Merl Day, Canadian Air Line t Attendants Association | (CALFA) representative said the ) results will be known April 23 and was confident ‘‘there will be a hefty vote in favor of strike.”’ SHOEMAKERS PROTEST FIRINGS KITCHENER — Protesting the dismissal of 18 fellow workers, 150 members of the United Shoe Workers- of America at Greb Industries, struck for one day, April 18. Also at issue in the walk- out was the wage incentive system in the plant. | SECOND SHOT FOR UNION AT BELL OTTAWA — The Canada Labor Relations Board has ag- reed to consider a second certi-. | fication application by the Com- | munications Workers of Canada | to represent Bell Canada’s 7,600 operators. CWC represents Bell’s 13,500 technicians and has been | trying, in the face of tough resis- ' tance from management, to give | the operators the right to be rep- resented by areal union instead of fhe company association set up | dy Bell. ; JOBLESS FIGHT UIC .. SYDNEY — The Halifax Coali- tion for Full Employment signed up several hundred Cape Breton- ers im the fight against the Unemployment Insurance Com- mission’s efforts to force the job- less to pay for its own computer over-payment error. Cape Breton’s 1,000 un- employed are among Nova Scotia’s 5,000 jobless who’ve had their UIC cheques reduced to make up for the government error. The Halifax Coalition, aided by the Nova Scotia Federation of Labor, is signing up as many unemployed Nova Sco- tians as possible to appeal to the UIC roll back on their benefits. Plans are under way in Sydney to form an unemployed coalition. STRIKE SHADOWS WOOD TALKS VANCOUVER — Amid speculation by both sides that a strike is unavoidable, contract talks between the B.C. forest products industry, and the 47,000 members of the International Woodworkers of America began last week. The IWA wants a $1.50 an hour wage increaseand improved fringe benefits, in the face of rising in- flation and government assaults on the living standard. OFL HOSTS -WOMEN’S MEET TORONTO — The Ontario Federation of Labor held its first women’s conference, Barg: for Equality, April 20-22. It was designed to focus on how equal pay and other rights for women workers can be gained through collective bargaining. AUTO WORKERS REJECT CONTROLS DETROIT — The president of the U.S. has been told by the 1.5 million member United Auto Workers to “‘stay the hell away”’ from the forthcoming contract talks between the union and the big three auto giants in Canada and the U.S. Opening the union’s collective bargaining convention here April 17, UAW international president Doug Fraser said this to 3,000 de- legates from both countries pre- paring to hammer out contract demands for an agreement to re- place the current three year pact - which expires in September. As the convention was starting, UAW spokesman Don Stillman suggested that the unprecedented step of choosing the subsidiary of one of the big three auto makers in Canada as the target for this year’s negotiations would be one of the possible options for the union in trying to avoid Carter's’ 7% wage ceiling. TORONTO — The Law Union of Ontario condemned the con- viction of union leader Jean- Claude Partot as ‘‘a full scale at- tack on the democratic rights of hha people in Canada’’, April 17. The Law Union, an association of 200 lawyers, law students and legal workers organized a press conference involving representa- condemn the attack on the Cana- dian Union of Postal Workers president and to protest Parrot’s conviction April 10 in Ontario Supreme Court. \ Participating in the press con- ference were Larry Katz of the National Office, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Randy Millage of CUPE Ontario Division, Sean O’ Flynn president Ontario Provincial Government Employees Union (OPSEU), Jim Carbin, International Association of Machinists (CP Rail, Agin- court), John Lang secretary Con- federation of Canadian Union, Phil Biggin president, Union of In- -jured Workers, Toronto CUPW president Arnold Gould, and other union representatives. As the Tribune went to press April 19, the Labor Council of Metro Toronto was placing be- fore its members an executive board statement for membership approval which called on the Canadian Labor Congress to urge its affiliates to protest the trial and sentencing of Jean-Claude Parrot. It also will authorize the council ‘to send a telegram to the federal government protesting this attack on trade union rights, and a copy of the message when adopted by the 160,000-member labor body will be sent to prime minister Trudeau. CUPE Support Repeated CUPE research staff member Larry Katz reiterated CUPE’s tives from organized labor to support of the postal workers and its condemnation of the Trudeau government’s attack against the officers and members of the postal workers’ union. ‘‘The recent trial of Jean Claude Parrot represents a gross misuse and abuse of the judicial system by the Trudeau govern- ment’’, Katz said. ‘“‘It sets prece- dents that every worker and trade union in this country must view as being totally reprehensible.”’ CUPW, he said, has been con- sciously chosen by the Trudeau government as its primary target and scapegoat to cover its own failures by destroying a public sector union. ‘All workers have been the victims of the economic and political policies of the Trudeau government’, Katz said. He charged the government with ‘‘using the courts to augment its repressive strategy’, and in using the judicial system to label Jean Claude Parrot a criminal. Katz noted that Parrot’s so- called crime was that he violated an Act of Parliament that ‘stripped one group of employees of rights which work- ing people have fought and lob- bied for — and won — over the last 100 years, an act whose constitutionality is itself in ‘doubt.”’ ‘ No Defence Heard As an observer at Parrot’s trial Katz charged that the jury “‘heard nothing but the prosecutor’s ar-. guments, the pfosecution’s wit- nesses —- they heard no de- fence.” He said that judge Gregory Evens ruled all of the defence’s motions and arguments irrelev- ant, ‘‘therefore they could not be presented or elaborated in front of the jury.” The CUPE spokesman cited Chrysler lays off 250 WINDSOR — This so-called “boom town’’ got another kick in ~ the teeth April 19, when 250 Chrysler Plant 6 workers were told they would be indefinitely laid off. The indefinite layoffs will come after the plant-wide shutdown starting the week of April 30, and comes as a result of the com- pany’s closure of the Plant one annex. Breaking the bad news to . Members of Local 444 United Auto Workers, president Frank LaSorda remarked, ‘‘all of the politicians have been running around taking the credit for the new Ford plant being built here, but who’s taking the credit for what's happening in plant Six. LaSorda said the company has ~ been using the down time pro- duced by its 80-day back supply of Vans to discipline the workers. In one section of the plant 90 dis- ciplinary letters have been re- ceived, there have been three dis- charges, and several long term suspensions ranging from three to 12 days in length. The layoff means a reduction in “~< “Boom town’ hit again GERARD O'NEILL the production of vans per shift from 450 to 352. Communist Party federal can- didate in Windsor West, and an unemployed auto worker, Gerard O'Neill, said the news highlighted the need to renegotiate the ‘Canada-U.S. auto pact to protect Canadian jobs and called for the creation of a Canadian Auto in- dustry. ‘With unemployment in Windsor at 10.6% the Chrysler move is another kick in the teeth for the city’’, O'Neill said. ** With such massive unemployment and chronic inflation where’s the boom town we’ ve been hearing so much about?”’ ~- Law union condemns — Parrot’s conviction two examples ‘‘to illustrate the extent of the (trial’s) injustice.’ Charged under Section 115 of the Criminal Code, with a possi- . _ ble two-year jail term for violating parliament’s strike-breaking back-to-work law last October, - Parrot and the rest of the CUPW executive should have been ac- quitted, the union counsel claimed. Section 115 is a catch-all section, he argued that can only be used to enforce Acts of Parlia- ment that don’t themselves con- tain penalties. Evens denied the argument, ‘‘thus setting a prece- dent that has enormous and ter- rible implications for the civil liberties of the rest of the labor movement and all citizens in Canada,”’ Katz said. “Forthwith” Controversy CUPW counsel Leonard Shore also argued that the order in the back-to-work law for CUPW of- ficers to tell the members the strike was invalid ‘‘forthwith’’, should have been interpreted in the same way the government- appointed mediator-arbitrator was appointed ‘‘forthwith’’ by the labor minister. CUPW counsel argued that Parrot gave this notice to his members Oct. 25, one day before the government appointed its own mediator-arbitrator. Katz also pointed out that CUPW officers were trying to negotiate a mean- - ingful settlement between the coming into effect of the back- to-work law and the 25th of Oc- tober. Ruled irrelevant by the court, the jury never heard any of these arguments. In its statement to the press, the Law Union singled out six issues to protest what it called ‘‘this re- sort to extraordinary measures under the cloak of ‘legality’.”’ Law Union Protests They protested: e the use of retroactive legisla- tion to take away the legal right to strike; e the use of discriminatory penalties against CUPW officers and members; _e the violations of freedom of speech and of conscience through laws punishing CUPW leaders for failing to advise, contrary to their own convictions, that the 23,000. postal workers end their strike; * e the police-state tactics in RCMP raids on CUPW offices to ‘disrupt the normal functioning of the union’s legal operations; e the prosecution of union leaders under the criminal code, removing the matter from the scope of labor relations and pav- ing the way for a prison sentence; e and, the circumvention of due process of law by denying the CUPW president the right to a preliminary inquiry and the use of a special federal prosecutor. Calling on all Canadians to pro- test this oppressive action against Parrot, and to demand a pardon for him and the cessation of all further proceedings against the union’s leaders and members, the Law Union warned: “‘If left un- challenged, the tactics used in the Parrot-CUPW case will consti- tute a dangerous precedent for the future of democratic rights in Canada.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 27, 1979—Page 5 —————— tt sst—<‘i—SD