| 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 eee cere eee ee ee eee esses PO OO! 8-8 98 0 0 Se. eh ee OP 8.0 0 O'S 6.6 687% tw 0) 6. C UMEPETE © 18 0° 6D ¥ 0 ORs oO Fo 20 019.0 9 00509" 0.8 0-0. 0 0.0 O50 0 6.9 M10. 20's (00-0. 1026-0 9-0. OOP R0 6 0.2 O18 0 0 1028. © Postal Code lamenclosing 1yr. $200 2yrs.$350 3yrs.$500) Foreign1 yr. $320 Bill me later ~ Donation$........ 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