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Labour

Warning that a defeat in the White Spot
strike would set the whole trade union
movement back, delegates to the Van-
couver and District Labour Tuesday called
on the B.C. Federation of Labour to tell all
its affiliates to boycott any White Spot res-
taurant, union or non-union, until the com-
pany’s dispute with
1,100 members of
CAIMAW is_ re-
solved.

“Regardless of
whether CAIMAW
is a member of the
house of labour,
those workers on
the picket line are
the ones who stand
to lose,’ labour
council secretary
Frank Kennedy told the meeting.

“We have to do everything we can,” he
said, urging council delegates to take part in
the leafleting and picket support campaign
organized by the council’s strike support
committee on behalf of the White Spot
strikers.

The union representing the striking
workers, the. Canadian Association of
Industrial, Mechanical and Allied Workers
is outside the B.C. Fed — it is affiliated to
the Confederation of Canadian Unions —
but the VDEC strike support committee
has been lending its assistance.

The VDLC motion was is response to the
anti-union drive being carried out by White
Spot management, in conjunction with the
Industrial Relations Council.

Last week, White Spot closed the second
of its 19 strikebound restaurants, boarding
up the buildings and publicly announcing
re-development plans.

CAIMAW,, which is not participating in
the B.C. Fed boycott of the IRC, applied to

‘Back White Spot
strikers — VDLC

the council for an order to halt further clo-
sures, but the application was denied in a
ruling Oct. 14. The IRC stipulated only that
the company give the union 48 hours notice
of closures.

IRC vice-chair Richard Longpre also
ruled the White Spot was free to communi-
cate with union members away from the
bargaining table, rejecting a union applica-
tion for an order to prevent the company
from sending material on bargaining issues
directly to union members.

The rulings followed an earlier decision
by the council banning union leafleting of
the 11 unorganized White Spot outlets. The
IRC ruled in September that the leafleting
constituted illegal picketing.

At Tuesday’s labour council meeting,
CBRT delegate Al Engler, a member of the
council’s strike support committee, told
delegates the IRC rulings were “examples of
just how incredibly anti-labour the IRC and
the Socred government have become.

“They have said that it is fine for an
employer to intimidate employees and to
board up their restaurants. But they have
said it is unlawful for ordinary citizens to
express their opinions about patronizing
restaurants,” he said.

Engler charged that the dispute was “a
deliberate attempt by (White Spot owner)
Peter Toigo, a friend of Bill Vander Zalm,
to smash this union.”

But White Spot restaurants is the only
unionized chain “and if we lose this one, we
can say goodbye to trade unionism in the
service sector,” he warned.

“Even if CAIMA W isn’t in the house of
labour, we have to give all the support we
can,” he emphasized. “We need lots of peo-
ple to come out — numbers are the only
thing that will reverse this anti-union cam-
paign by Peter Toigo.”

Gainers’ tactics seen
in meatpacker lockout

Intercontinental Packers is attempting to
do in Vancouver what Gainers owner Peter
Pocklington sought to do in Edmonton —
break the pattern of industry settlement, the
United Food and Commercial Workers
warned last week.

The 400 members of UFCW Local 472
were locked out at Intercontinental’s south
Vancouver plant Sept. 18 and have been
trying ever since to get the company back to
the bargaining table to discuss the industry-
wide settlement — but without success.

“Tt didn’t start out as that serious a dis-
pute but’s getting worse all the time,” said
UFCW business representative Jim Wells.

Wells said the company put the settle-
ment given workers at the Intercontinental
plant in Saskatchewan on the table in early
September, but made it conditional on the
union accepting several concessions, includ-
ing an increase in the number of part-time
workers, the elimination of an overtime
recruitment clause and 21 other non-
economic items. The overtime recruitment
clause allows shop stewards to recruit
workers for any overtime that is required,
giving the union some control over extra
hours and who works them.

“We declined the offer — and I emphas-
ize the word decline because we wanted the
company to continue bargaining,” he said.

“But they locked us out and told us that
the offer was off the table and would never

12 e Pacific Tribune, October 24, 1988

be available again,” Wells emphasized.

Since that time, the union has made sev-
eral attempts to get the company to discuss
the industry offer but “‘it’s like charging into
a brick wall,” said Wells. Intercontinental
also turned down an independent mediator,
stating that if it was interested in going toa
mediator, that person would have to come
from the Industrial Relations Council,
which the UFCW cannot accept because of
the B.C. Fed boycott.

The company’s plan to break the pattern
settlement has become more apparent as
other companies have settled--on the
industry-wide agreement, including Burns
and Canada Packers. It is the first dispute in
the 37 years the UFCW has been certified at
the plant. :

“They’re trying fo do the same thing as
Pocklington tried at Gainers — they want
to bash us and break the pattern,” he
charged.

He added that Intercontinental ‘“‘is
attempting to use the plant in Saskatchewan
to service the market in Vancouver, rather
than negotiate a settlement here.”

Last week, at the union’s request, the
B.C. Federation of Labour called for a con-
sumer boycott of Intercontinental products.
It covers Olympic Meats, Breakfast Delight,
Mayfair and Canadian Maple Bacon, all
identified by the inspection label numbers
69 and 69b.

Labour Notes

More sell-offs
at Canada Post

Postal services and union workers’
jobs took another drop this week as
Canada Post moved to transfer the servi-
ces provided by its Vancouver airport
postal station to a privately-owned, non-
union cargo company, Skip’s Air Cargo
Services Ltd.

Anda second franchise post office has
been opened ’in a 7-Eleven convenience
store, the president of the Vancouver
local of the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers, Marion Pollack, said this
week.

A Canada Post franchise outlet has
opened in the U.S.-owned store chain’s
outlet on Number 3 Road in Richmond,
adding another privatized operation to
that already open in North Vancouver.

Pollack told unionists at the Van-
couver and District Labour Council
Tuesday that the many households in the
same municipality have been denied
door-to-door delivery service under
Canada Post’s plan to replace delivery
service with its so-called “supermail-
boxes.”

She warned that it was “a preview of
what we can expect under free trade.
Canada Post is denying people decent
postal service while it turns over the prof-
itable business to 7-Eleven, owned in
Southlands, Texas.”

Building trades
ratify contract

In ratification votes wound up earlier
this month, members of the province’s 16
Building Trades unions voted 80.7 per
cent overall to endorse new. collective
agreements hammered out with Con-
struction Labour Relations Association
(CLRA) Aug. 29.

The new agreements, covering indus-
trial construction work, provide wage
increases totalling $4.05 an hour over the
three years of the contract which runs to
April 30, 1991.

Most of the ratification votes were in
the 90 per cent range, although two of the
trades voted to reject the contract. The
new pact was negotiated by the Bargain-
ing Council of the B.C. Building Trades
Unions, the joint council covering all the
trades.

Under pressure from individual unions,
particularly those in the mechanical
trades, the bargaining council was not
involved in negotiations covering the
commercial and institutional sector,
however. Instead, each union bargained
its own individual contract, with varying
wage rates and conditions.

Non-union contractors have made
major inroads into the commercial-
institutional sector in recent years with
the result that only some 20 per cent of
the projects are put up by unionized
companies.

The erosion of union construction has
sparked demands from a number of
unions, notably the Carpenters, for 4
new, united organizing drive in the
industry.

Citation strike
= ae = ’
is ‘legalized

In a reversal of its discredited ruling
last July, the Industrial Relations Coun-
cil decided this week that members of
Local 1928 of the Carpenters do not have
a collective agreement with Citation
Industries Ltd — and therefore their
three-month-old strike is not illegal as
the IRC had initially ruled.

The IRC made the ruling Tuesday,
following three days of hearings which
wound up Friday. This time, the Carpen-
ters local presented evidence to the coun-
cil, after obtaining an exemption from
the B.C. Federation of Labour boycott
from B.C. Fed officers.

The local has also been given an
exemption from the boycott to conduct
an IRC-supervised strike vote and an
application has already been submitted
to allow that vote to proceed. Local 1928
president Pat Haggarty said last week
that the union had applied for the vote
Oct. 7 but the IRC put off a decision
pending a final ruling on whether a col-
lective agreement was in force.

Now that the IRC has decided there is
no agreement, Haggarty said, the vote
can proceed according to the IRC’s —
schedule.

Virtually from the beginning, the dis-
pute at Citation has become a point of
focus for the B.C. Fed’s boycott of the
IRC. The initial IRC ruling that there
was a collective agreement in force at
Citation at the time union went on
strike — the ruling which later resulted
in the cease-picketing order and the
Supreme Court and Appeal Court
rulings — was made partly because the
union was boycotting the IRC and did
not appear at the hearings to present
evidence.

B.C. Fed secretary-treasurer Cliff
Andstein said the federation’s executive
council’s decision to grant the local the
“tactical exemption” to conduct a vote
was dictated by Citation’s anti-labour
campaign.

“This is an employer which is going to
any length to have ordinary working.
people turned into criminals,” he said.

Citation was back in B.C. Supreme
Court Tuesday, beginning its damage
suit against the local for $1.5 million, the
amount it claims to have lost since the
strike began July 14.

But that case may also be thrown into
question by the decision of the IRC, since
the initial determination that the strike
was illegal and the IRC order instructing
Carpenters to cease picketing have both
been invalidated. Only the legality of the
strike vote is in question, an issue on
which company lawyers are now trying

to focus.
2

eS .

FIRIBOUNE

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. VSK 1Z5. Phone 251-1186

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