LABOR

Resistance growing
to IBT-ITU merger

By MIKE PHILLIPS
TORONTO — The momentum within
the ranks of the International Typo-
graphical Union against an impending
takeover of their union by the Teamster
seems to be gathering some speed.

_A sign of this came late last month
when the presidents of some 30 locals in
Canada and the U.S. signed and submit-
ted a Tesolution to the ITU executive
council recommending that no merger be
submitted to referendum before the final
outcome of several challenges to the re-
cent ITU executive election results are
known.

Incumbent president Joe Bingel, the

prime mover behind the Teamster take-

_ over was defeated in last November’s

elections by former vice-president Bob

McMichen, known to be cool toward the
merger being engineered by Bingel.

_ Bingle charged McMichen with viola-
tons of the union laws in conducting his
successful campaign. Under the ITU
constitution the incumbent president
remain in office until the outcome of the
challenge to the election results is
known.

No date has been set for a re-run of the
presidential vote.

. The list of locals endorsing the resolu-
tion submitted Jan. 26 to the ITU exe-
cutive is impressive, including among the
30, some of the biggest ITU locals on
both sides of the border. Included are
Local 91 in Toronto (Canada’s largest
ITU local), Ottawa, New York City, the
Bay Area local in San Francisco, Phila-

delphia, Detroit, Chicago and many
others.

In addition to this, a number of locals
have passed resolutions urging the ITU
to merge with the newly-formed Graphic
Communications International Union,
(GCIU).

The Toronto local has taken this posi-
tion and circulated its views to every ITU
local throughout the continent. Recent-
ly, San Francisco’s Bay Area local has
taken up this demand.

Meeting Jan. 21, the local unanim-
ously agreed to “‘circularize each
member of the ITU executive council to
propose immediate and urgent merger ef-
forts with the newly-merged GCIU with
a view to reaching a viable agreement
early in 1984 prior to proceeding to
referendum for ratification of merger
terms.”

In the February issue of the Toronto
local’s news bulletin, TTU president
Doug Grey announced his intended par-
ticipation in an international committee
to promote ‘‘one large printing union’’.
Grey describes it as a ‘““committee ... of
concerned local officers from across
Canada and the U.S. with a goal of
providing the membership with an alter-
native to the Teamster merger.”’

He also indicated that at the recent
Canadian Typographical Conference the

Canadian Caucus committee ‘‘was man- -

dated to prepare a proposal that would
outline for Canadian members a Cana-
dian option should the ITU membership
vote for a Teamster merger and the
Canadians vote against it.

-Such an option would be backed by the
Canadian Labor Congress, he said. The
CLC told participants to the Jan. 22 con-

=

ITU Local 91 in Toronto takes part in Labor Day parade. A merger with the Teamsters

would remove printing trades workers from the rest of organized labor.

ference that it would back any effort by
the Canadian typographical workers to
remain within the house of labor in
Canada.

While many ITU members are quick to
differentiate between the corrupt inter-
national Teamster leadership and rank-
and-file Teamsters, particularly in
Canada where there is occasional co-
operation in some areas between
Teamsters and the mainstream labor
movement, the resistance to being swal-
lowed into the Teamster and turned out
of the Canadian house of labor runs
deep.

Canadian ITU members in particular
have long cherished the dream of one
powerful united organization for printing
trades workers and they’ve fought for

this in the international union itself. They
see the prospects of absorption into the
Teamsters as a prolonging of the divisive
and crippling jurisdictional wars that
successful mergers have moved into the
background, and they fear it could lead <
widespread raiding at a time when the
labor movement throughout Canada is
striving toward solidarity and transform-
ing itself into an organization of class
struggle.

The cancellation by the ITU executive
of the planned special merger convention
at the end of March also indicates the
resistance to a Teamster takeover is
growing and that ITU members more and
more and in ever growing numbers, are
looking for an alternative, whether it is
the GCIU or other options.

Solidarity la

Solidarity Alberta was born in Edmonton, Feb. 17,
and a movement which was spawned in British Col-
umbia in response to the cruel Bennett budget,
Stretched its reaches out to the first of the prairie
Provinces.

One day later, at the same Alberta Federation of

bor convention, Nadine Hunt, president of the
Saskatchewan Federation of Labor announced to
Cheering delegates that Saskatchewan, too, would
form a solidarity coalition for that province.

Fr. Jim Roberts, one of the leaders of the B.C.
Solidarity Coalition, told the delegates, Feb. 17 that
the problems which gave rise to the coalition in B.C.
are Canada-wide, requiring country-wide action and
country-wide organization. He said he hoped the
Spreading of Solidarity Alberta was the beginning of a
Process that would not stop until it embraced all
Canada.

__ Sitting through the AFL convention and its Solidar-
ity sessions, one got the feeling that the extra-parlia-
mentary struggle in Canada was developing flesh and
blood and that political action was taking on a dimen-
Sion which can play a major role in reshaping Cana-
da’s economic and political life.

Present for the convention’s Solidarity Day were
representatives of the National Farmers Union, the
United Church, the United Nurses of Alberta, the
Carpenters union, Millwrights, Plumbers, the Public

Tvice Alliance of Canada and others, all of whom
€xpressed their full support for Solidarity. The United
Church was the sole exception because it was re-

quired to bring the matter back to church authorities

for approval. ;
Unity: Major Feature
. The unity of the building trades unions and the AFL
Was an important feature of the convention and when
a giant march took place on Solidarity Day, more than
half of the marchers came from the building trades
Unions. z
Another feature of Solidarity Alberta, which sets it
aside from its counterpart in B.C., was the full and
Unqualified support given to the new movement by

Labor in action

< William Stewart

the provincial New Democratic Party. Alberta NDP
leader Grant Notley spoke to both the convention and
the demonstration before the legislature. He pre-
dicted that the birth of Solidarity Alberta heralded the
beginning of the end for the reign of Premier Peter
Lougheed’s Tory government.

The significance of Notley’s support was clear. The
NDP in Alberta considers such an extra-parlia-
mentary movement, uniting broad forces around a
people’s fightback program, can provide the base for
great advances for the NDP in Alberta, where the
party currently only has two members in the legisla-
ture. ;
This compares to the attitude of the NDP in B.C. to
both Operation Solidarity and the Solidarity Coalition
which they have opposed from the outset. The NDP
view in B.C. was, and remains, that it does not need
an extra-parliamentary movement to defeat the
government and that in fact, the militant stance and
programatic positions of such a movement are. an
embarrassment to the NDP.

Abstraction To Practice

As this column has previously mentioned, the de-
bate around parliamentary and extra-parliamentary
action, their inseparable connection and their sepa-
rate lives, was hotly pursued at most of the provincial
federation of labor conventions this past year.

That debate, unfortunately, sometimes degener-
ated into senseless attacks on the NDP, but even more
often some participants were bent on counterposing
extra-parliamentary action to support for the NDP, as
if the choice was an either or proposition rather than a
combining of the two.

ys base to defeat right ~

The developments in B.C., Alberta and soon we are
informed to be joined by Saskatchewan, take the de-
bate out of the realm of abstractions and place it in the
realm of practice. What can be expected elsewhere?

In Manitoba for example, the NDP is in consider-
able difficulty because of its inability to deal at the
provincial level with the very real economic problems
of the people and because of the language squabble. A
movement along the lines of Solidarity could act as a
major mobilizer of the people for new economic
policies and programs. Given the support of the NDP,
the Communist Party and other democratic move-
ments, such a coalition could lay the basis for defeat-
ing the attack from the right and further extend the
parliamentary advance of the labor and democratic
forces.

What Will CLC Do?

In Ontario, where the NDP has failed rather dis-
mally to extend its electoral base and where the
people are tied into a seemingly endless repetition of
Tory governments, a broad coalition of the labor and
democratic forces could help turn this around.

This is also as true in Quebec as it is in the Mari-
times. No single political party or force has hegemony
over the feeling and demand of the Canadian people
for new policies, and new governments devoted to
jobs for all, peace and social security. Canadians from
all walks of life have demonstrated their support for
such aims.

What remains to be done everywhere is to unite
these forces into a mighty movement dedicated to
struggle to win their cherished aims and objectives.

_ Such struggles need to be taken to the streets, the
plants and offices, before the legislatures and parlia-
ment, at city hall — everywhere problems exist. As
well, they must be taken into the electoral arena
where the people can stim up the results of their
battles in the election of new governments committed
to new policies for peace, jobs, and security.

What will the Canadian Labor Congress in May of
this year have to say and do about this crucial
question?

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 29, 1984 e 7