HAMILTON LABOR
RAPS CONGRESS

HAMILTON — The labor
council here passed an emergency
resolution Nov. 3, for the forth-
coming Ontario Federation of
Labor Convention calling for the
federal government’s resignation

_ for its behavior in the postal strike,

and for total labor support for the
postal workers.

Delegates argued that if the CLC
had acted to defend CUPW the re-
sults of the strike would have been
different. Harold Keeton of the
Rubberworkers, who introduced
the resolution, said the CLC’s
stand-offish position encouraged
the ponent to act against

PRESS STRIKE
END IN NYC

~NEW YORK — After three
months on strike, against both the
Times and the Daily News, which
won them the job protection
clauses they were looking for in
the new contract, the city’s print-
ing trade unions returned to work
Nov. 8.

The strike was triggered by a
walkout by the Printing Press-
men’s union over job security and
other questions in negotiating a
new contract. .

WORKERS’PROTEST

WINS JUSTICE

TORONTO — Four construc-
tion workers, fired by Canadian
Gypsum Ltd., for demanding de-

cent toilets, eating facilities and

clean ing water on the mine
sight they were building, were or-
dered reinstated by the Ontario
Labor Board, Nov. 2.

The board decision ordered the
workers to get back pay and to be
offered new jobs in the completed
mine. It also described toilet condi-
tions as “‘sitting in a water hole half
full of human excrement?’, and ‘“‘a
5-gallon pail with a garbage bag

inside overflowing with human.

waste.’’

CLC WANTS
FREE INFO LAW

OTTAWA — CLC president
Dennis McDermott called on
prime minister Trudeau, Nov. 2,
to introduce a strong freedom of
information law that guarantees
access to government documents
by private citizens.

“For too long the CLC has
been denied access to technical

_ data and other information neces-

sary for our evaluation of the true
socio-economic situation in
Canada today, as it affects work-
ers... . The list of topics on which
information may be denied on
grounds of ‘national security’ is
excessive and ridiculous’’, the
CLC letter to Trudeau said.

AUTO PACT WILL
COST $10 BILLION

A study compiled for the U.S.
government supposedly to allay
Canadian fears that the Canada-
U.S. Auto Pact is not a one-way
funnel for Canadian money and
jobs to the U.S., instead shows
we are going to be $10-billion
short in the auto trade over the
next 10 years.

VANCOUVER LABOR
BACKS STRIKE

VANCOUVER — The labor |
council here voted full support —

Nov. 7, for the Newspaper Guild,
the Printing Pressmen and four
other unions on strike or locked out
for more than a week, by Pacific

Press owners of the Vancouver «4

Sun, and the Province.
Charges that Pacific Press is out

to break the unions were confirm- ©

ed when it was learned that Bill
Hamilton president of the B.C.
Employers’ Council had
threatened the Publishers of the
Columbian, whose presses also run
the thrice weekly strikers’ news-
papers the Express, with an ad-
vertisement boycott. Pacific Press
is owned by FP publications the
owners of the Globe and Mail and
the Montreal Star which has been
shut down since June.

Labor support flows ,

in for Inco strikers

SUDBURY — In an important
display of labor solidarity, Local
598 Mine-Mill and Smelter Work-
ers union at Falconbridge Nickel
Mines voted at an emergency
meeting Nov. 5 to donate $10,000
a month to the striking Inco
workers.

Local 598 Mine-Mill, rep-

resenting 2,100 Falconbridge

workers also voted to allow
members of Local 6500 United
Steelworkers to conduct. plant
gate collections twice a month.
Support has been pouring in
from other parts of Ontario. In St.
Catharines, the labor council
voted Nov. 1 to conduct a toy and
food campaign for the Inco strik-

i

Local 6500 president, Dave Pat-
terson, left, accepts the first
$10,000 monthly donation from
Mine-Mill president Jack Gignac.

ers, and called on the council’s
biggest affiliate, Local 199 United

_Auto Workers, to conduct plant

gate collections between now and
Christmas.

Labor council president Gordie
Lambert, in a letter to Dave Pat-

. terson, president of Local 6500,

pledging the- council’s support
said, “‘the whole labor movement
must rally.around your strike as
we are all victims of . multi-
national corporations who must
be defeated and nationalized, so
in fact, your courageous members
are in the forefront of this
struggle.” i

Stu Cook, Steelworkers’ dis-
trict 6 director has sent out a call
to all Steel locals in Ontario re-
questing financial support for
Local 6500, and: suggesting that
each union member donate $5 a
month.

The 800,000-member Ontario
Federation of Labor, (OFL), has
also issued an appeal for moral
and financial support from its af-
filiates on behalf of the striking
miners and smelter workers. The
OFL will provide Local 6500 with
a forum at the annual federation
convention in Toronto, Nov.
13-16. ;

The 21,000-member United
Electrical (UE) workers has sent
the strikers a $1,000 donation. UE
Local 514 in Toronto, represent-
ing the workers at E.S.B., an Inco
subsidiary, in a solidarity mes-
sage to Local 6500, said the

Steelworkers decision to take on
Inco, “‘has earned you the admi+
ration of all trade union members
everywhere . .. your refusal to be
influenced. by the superficial
arguments of the doom spreaders
in our midst reveals an insight into
the real crisis confronting the
working class in Canada that
some labor spokesmen have not
and will not recognize.”’

In northern Ontario support
keeps coming in. Faculty mem-
bers at Laurentian University in
Sudbury have pleged $800 a
month after voting for a voluntary
deduction from their pay cheques
for the Local 6500 strike fund.

Steelworkers’ Local 2251 at
Algoma Steel Corp., in Sault Ste
Marie has donated $10,000 to the
strike fund and will contribute
$5,000 a month until the strike
ends. Falconbridge office work-
ers, members of Local 6855
Steelworkers are continuing to
donate $1,000 a month to the
strike fund.

>

‘Drop charges against

By MIKE PHILLIPS
TORONTO — Metro labor
council, Nov. 2, re-iterated its
solid support of the Canadian
Union of Postal Workers in their
fight for justice from the federal
government, but delegates

leveled angry criticism at Cana--

dian Labor Congress Dennis
McDermott’s betrayal of CUPW
when the crunch came.

The council’s executive board
statement calling for the govern-
ment to drop all charges against
the union, its members and of-
ficers, to start serious negotia-
tions with the CUPW for a new
contract, and to resolve the
union’s 56,000 outstanding grie-
vances, was passed unanimously
at the regular bi-monthly meeting.

CUPW Toronto president Ar-
nold Gould, was applauded
warmly, when he told delegates,
‘“‘we as postal workers may be
down, but we’re not out.”’

“The fact is,’ Gould said,
‘that I as a postal-worker and an
officer of the union knew I was
breaking the law. But, what I be-
lieve I was fighting for was for
everybody’s right to free collec-
tive bargaining, the right to

negotiate without legislation

being forced on you — the right to
strike.”

Harassment and intimidation of
postal workers by postal super-
visors he said was at an all time
high. Stewards, and members
who had participated on the pic-
ket line were receiving letters
from management notifying them
they are being investigated- and
that action will be taken. On the
spot suspensions and dismissals
are the order of the day for dis-
obedience of direct management
orders.

‘“One supervisor had the nerve
and the power to force our people
to get on their hands and knees on
the floor to pick up elastics and
paper’, he said. “‘Anyone who
tried to refuse were told: ‘If you
don’t do it you’re going home —
you’re suspended.”

Gould said the union intends to
fight every way it can to get a just
contract. ‘‘We realize we have
the greatest job in the world’’, he
said, ‘‘we have to fight the
Government of Canada with all
their control of the media and
everything else.

CLC president Dennis
McDermott came under fire from
angry delegates for the Congress’

HEALTHY ff
PROFITS

refusal to back CUPW during the
strike, and more specifically for
his comparison in the press, of the
strike to ‘‘a.charge of the light
brigade’? doomed before it
started, to defeat.

Art Jenkyn, director of organi-
zation for the United Electrical
Workers, (UE), was applauded
when he charged McDermott
with siding with the most reac-
tionary, anti-union circles in the
campaign against the postal
workers.

‘‘What struggle of the workers
is not a charge of the light
brigade,’’ Jenkyn asked? ‘‘What
struggle of the workers is not
fought with the greatest hand-
icaps? If there had not been
charges of the light brigade, in
years gone by, we wouldn’t be
standing here today in this labor
movement” |

“Is Brother McDermott going
to come out next, and say he’s not
going to support Inco workers be-
cause they’re in a charge of the
brigade?”’

Jenkyn said the responsiblity of
labor leadership is to come out in
full support of the working class
without equivocation. The coun-
cil, he said, should send the
executive board statement to the
CLC leadership, ‘‘and tell them to
get off their ass and represent the
workers of this country, or get the
hell out of office.’

Toronto Typographical Union
president Jim Buller-endorsed the
executive statement and said a
similar resolution from his local to
the labor council had requested
the council relay its action pro-
posals to the OFL and the CLC
for action.

Buller said he was ‘‘horrified’’

CUPW’

by McDermott’s statement,
quoted in a Globe and Mail edito-
rial. As leader of the Canadian
labor movement, McDermott
must have been aware of the or-
chestrated attack on the union by
the federal government, Buller
said, but chose to criticize the
CUPW leadership rather than hit
the government. ‘‘I think this is
absolutely deplorable,’’ he said,
“‘we have to take a stand on the
fundamental principle of the trade
union movement, that an injury to
One Is an injury to all. When one
of our affiliates is being attacked
we have to come to its defence —
it’s as simple as that.”’

In an impassioned defence of
the CLC’s refusal to defend
CUPW, council president Fox, a
member of the CLC executive
council which unanimously as-
sessed the strike in the way
McDermott later expressed to the
media, indirectly attacked the
CUPW leadership and claimed
the CLC had to develop a coordi-
nated fightback plan to counter
the general assault on public ser-
vice workers rights.

In effect, despite his record of
solid support with the labor coun-
cil for the CUPW strike, Fox
added his voice to McDermott
who essentially said the CLC
shouldn’t support a battle it
thought couldn’t- be won.

CUPW president Jean Claude
Parrot’s question in Ottawa Oct.
27, remained unanswered in
Fox’s defence of the CLC brass.

“It’s obvious the CLC didn’t
want to lose its credibility. The
question is: credibility to whom,
the membership or the. govern-
ment?” —