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‘Right to scab’ push threatens Manitoba

: By B. NORMAN

The anti-union ‘‘Right to
Work’’ (RTW) movement has re-
cently surfaced in Manitoba. Fol-
lowing closely the patterns set in
B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and
the Northwest Territories over
the past couple of years, right-
wing business interests in Man-
itoba have launched a so-called
“‘Right to Work”’ campaign which
they hope will end in the complete
emasculation of the trade union
movement and its most important
‘principle —collective bargaining.

Under the guise of ‘‘protect-
ing’ each worker’s individual
freedom, RTW advocates want to
eliminate the closed shop, union
shop and compulsory dues
check-off. Such notorious oppo-

_ nents of organized labor as the

Winnipeg Builders Exchange’s
(WBE), George Aiken have sud-
denly become great defenders of
the working people!

The WBE and the Manitoba
Construction Association (MCA)
are spearheading the Manitoba
campaign. They have so far sol-
icited support from the Union of
Manitoba Municipalities, the
rural school and hospital boards,
the Chambers of Commerce, the
‘Road Builders Association, and
the Piling Contractors Associa-
tion of Manitoba. And, they have
met with some successes.

Chamber Blessed RTW
In its annual brief to the provin-
cial government the Manitoba
Chamber of Commerce gave its
blessing to RTW legislation as a
<‘democratic alternative” to what
they claimed was the havoc
caused during the past yearto the
public by strikes. The Union of
Manitoba Municipalities went. on
record supporting RTW, but
withdrew this support when it be-
came obvious such an open anti-
jabor attack was extremely un-

popular among constituents.

A vigorous campaign in the let-
ters columns of the daily news-
apers has been waged by the
Builders Exchange and the Con-
struction Association, to com-
plement their drive to solicit or-
ganizational support.
The election of the Tory
overnment in October 1977
made the climate for RTW move
favorable, although Premier Stirl-
ing Lyon has told the Manitoba
Federation of Labor that he is not
currently thinking about RTW
legislation.
For its part, the MFL has been
conducting an energetic educa-
tional campaign among its af-

‘filiates and the public to scuttle

the RTW movement. Some

25,000 issues of a pamphlet called
“Right to Work Laws — A
Passport to Poverty’’ and a book
by Tom Fox called ‘‘Do You Re-
ally Want the Right to Work?”’,
have been distributed by the. fed-
eration.

Also, the fed has published a
first-run issue of 20,000 copies of
the Beacon, the MFL’s news-
paper, for distribution to affiliates
exposing the fraud of RTW. The
federation has set up a committee
to co-ordinate the anti-RTW
campaign and among its activities
it has already produced two dif-
ferent slide presentations which
have been screened by local
unions and other interested
groups. The plan is to encourage
the growth of a common front
movement to defeat the
union-busting campaign.

To date, such organizations as
the Manitoba Teachers Society,
the Police Association, and the
Faculty Association at the
University of Manitoba have
come out against RTW legisla-
tion.

MFL representatives and Pres-
ident Dick Martin have appeared
on television and attended local
union meetings to press the feder-
ation’s message about the serious
threat to organize labor posed by
this reactionary movement. That
message is definitely filtering
down to the grass roots, MFL
spokesmen say.

The campaign has caused
RTW advocates to back off to a
certain extent, but definitely not
to quit. Instead of the
‘‘all-American”’ brand of legisla-
tion, the Canadian advocates are
trying to get the job done through
amendments to the Manitoba
Labor Relations. Act.

Unioh Busting Laws
They want to amend picketting

_laws, eliminate the right to strike

in the public service and get rid of
the union hiring halls in the con-
struction industry, altogether.

It is primarily in the construc-
tion industry, rather than in the
large multi-national resource sec-
tors, that RTW advocates are
found in Manitoba. The construc-
tion industry is where 100% union
shop organization is to be found
along with union hiring halls.
There are no run-away shops in
the construction industry.

RTW advocates are seeking
legislation which will destroy the
union shop and break the craft
organizations. This isn’t to imply
that the big resource and manu-
facturing corporations would not
like to do away with the trade
unions in their industries. The
construction industry is the most
vulnerable.

Unions in this industry are
more diffused, where at one site

there may be seven or eight dif-
ferent unions. This makes them

easier to attack than the large and
concentrated work force that an
employer such as Inco would be
facing in trying to introduce
RTW.

In Manitoba the. construction
industry may win cencessions

from the government in the form -

of legislation to destroy. the con-
struction unions. In last summer’s
building trades strike, the
employers’ association sought to
get rid of the union hiring halls.
Now they're after specific laws
which would have the same ef-
fect.
RTW Propaganda

In their propaganda they are
opposing the union’s right to de-
cide who can or can’t work at a
site. They are saying the indi-
vidual should have the ‘‘freedom
to choose’’ his place of work.
But, the real freedom RTW advo-

cates are after is the employer’s
freedom to decide who is going to
work at a site, and no doubt,
non-union labor would be the pre-
ferred choice if the bosses are
given their way.

In any type of RTW legislation
that might be passed, or any li-
mited version of RTW that the
construction industry might win,
the result will be the legislation of
items that in the past have been
negotiated at the bargaining table.

In the 20 U.S. states with RTW
laws on the books, union organi-
zation is down to 19% of the work

force, compared to the 30%
organization rate in non-RTW
states. The four worst states for
wages, working conditions and
social programs in the U.S. are
RWT states.

Significantly, in 1978 an at-
tempt. to bring RTW to the state
of Missouri was crushed by the
labor movement and its allies, in
spite of a $4.5-billion advertising
campaign launched by big-
business,. RTW_ supporters.
When RTW was explained
clearly and exposed, the people
didn’t-want anything to do with it.

Gov't-monopoly collusion

at Boise-Cascade strike

According to press reports a
second union at Boise Cascade
Canada Ltd. has signed an ag-
reement with the company that
require members to cross picket
lines and return to work. The
union involves 42 members of
Local 559 of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Work-
ers at Kenora, Ontario. The
two-year contract gives these
electricians an increase of 57
cents an hour in the first year, re-
troactive to May Ist, 1978, and 43
cents an hour or 5%, which is gre-
ater, in the second year. These
terms are similar to those ac-
cepted by the United Paper-
workers International Union at
Fort Frances, Ontario, in mid-
January. none

This still leaves three unions on
strike. They are the Lumber and
Sawmill Workers Union, whose
strike started last July over com-
pany efforts to force workers to
buy a system of piecework in-
stead of hourly pay. The wood-
cutters were later joined by the
Canadian Paperworkers Union
and the International Association
of Machinists and Aerospace
Workers, who joined the strike

last October and still remain on
Strike.

If this company can thus suc-
cessfully settle with one union ata
time and divide their employees
that way, the diabolical scheme to
make owner-operators take over
the company’s logging equipment
and put loggers on piece work
may have a better chance of suc-
cedding. Since the timber is now
getting poorer and more scat-
tered, this would make it difficult
for piece workers to make a de-
cent day’s pay, and subcontrac-
tors owning the equipment would
act as slave-drivers of by-gone
years to speed up the work and
pocket more of the workers’ earn-
ings. The comparly hopes to get

\T MEAN
HAVE THE RIGHT
TO WORK ws

~ Pay yous

the wood cheaper, cut labor‘costs
and increase profits.
Collusion To Clobber

The strike at Boise Cascade has
been a most illuminating example
of Government-monopoly collu-
sion to clobber the workers into
submission. Since the strike
started, the provincial govern-
ment has dispatched hundreds of
policemen to assist the company
in breaking this stsike. It has been
estimated that regular salaries of
policemen sent to Kenora and
Fort Frances on strike-breaking
duty, has now reached the sum of
$1,500,000. On top of this, the
municipalities are responsible for
extraneous costs, such as over-
time pay, transportation and
housing. Ontario. Attorney-
General McMurtry has now
stated that Queen’s Park will
waive charges to the Town of
Kenora for the cost of extra
police, estimated to be more than
$1-million.

But Ontario’s Attorney-
General Roy McMurtry has gone
further to approve of the action by
ajustice of the peace in ordering a
striker banished from Kenora and
Rainy River districts until his trial
on a charge of making a threaten-
ing phone call. The trial has been
set for June 20. Mr. McMurtry
stated that the justice of the peace
acted properly and that it was
‘not an unreasonable order to
make, given the circumstances,
which would suggest there is a
real danger if a person is going to
get into some difficulty.’’ The
Attorney-General was speaking
at a press conference in Sudbury,
as reported in the Toronto Globe
and Mail, February 21, 1979.

However, on February 23, the
Canadian Press reported from
Kenora, Ontario, that a judge has
reversed an earlier court decision
that ordered striking logger James
King to leave the Kenora and
Raily River districts until his trial
in June. The decision by Judge
G.F. Kinsman, allows Mr. King
to stay at his home in Camp
Robinson, about 100 kilometers
northeast of Kenora. Mr. King,
who had disobeyed a court order
to leave the district, was arrested
at his home in Camp Robinson
and later released on $1,000 bail.
He now faces trial of intimidation
and making a threatening phone

call. Rake
_ It would seem that justice

would be better served if this U.S.
mammoth corporation (Boise
Cascade Canada Ltd.) were sent
packing back to its southern U.S.

base for failure to negotiate fairly
with its employees. Likewise, its
timber lands licence should be
cancelled, the provincial govern-
ment should exercise its powers
to expropriate the assets and es-
tablish a publicly-owned corpora-
tion to manage the Boise Cascade
operations in this province.

Unfortunately, both provincial
and federal authorities appear to
be operating like a tax-collection
agency for these timber com-
panies. On February Ist the Fed-
eral Government announced it
would provide $235-million to
help the pulp and paper industry
to modernize its operations and to
increase its wood supplies. Ear-
lier, the Ontario Government an-
nounced an assistance program
totalling $132-million. It must be
noted that these outright gifts of
public funds to monopoly enter-
prises does not involve the grant-
ing of any provision for state or
public equity in return..It involves
‘simply transferring public funds
to privately-owned corporate en-
tities.

And this is being done in the
face of after-tax profits of 102.3%
over and above what the paper and
forestry companies made in 1977.
Indeed, paper and forestry com-
panies made the sharpest gain in
after-tax profit among manufac-
turing industries in Canada last
year.

Corporate profits as a whole
climbed 43% in the 4th quarter of
1978. For the corporations the fall
in the value of the Canadian dollar
is a tremendous boost to profits.
As Noranda Mines Ltd. of To-
ronto has admitted, each 1-cent
decline adds $5-million to the com-
pany’s after-tax profits. Fo? the
workers the situation is the exact
opposite as the purchasing value
of the dollar drops while prices
increase.

The profits in Canadian Bank-
ing have become so phenomenal
that the chairman of the
Economic Council of Canada has
ordered the destruction of 10,000
copies of the Council’s February
Bulletin because it featured a
study of these astronomical pro-
fits on its front page.

In the face ofall this, and much,
much more, can the trade union
movement fail to unite and chal-
lenge monopoly and governments
on the economic front by all-out
solidarity and action to win sub-
stantial concessions? Any failure
to do so can only be condemned
as the crassest of all betrayals in
the annals of labor in this cquntry.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 9, 1979—Page 9