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LABOR ™ BRIEF

Four-month fight for decent wages, pensions

Gaspé miners’ strike continues

- By CLAIRE DEMERS

MURDOCHVILLE — It’s
been four months on the picket
line for the 1,200 miners at the
Gaspé Cooper Mines and
Noranda Mines in their fight for
justice.

Their current base rate of $6.20
an hour is some $1.45 an hour less
than workers in Noranda’s other
Quebec operations, the mine in
northwestern Quebec and _ the
Montreal iron refinery. On top of
this, the cost of living is higher in
the Gaspé.

The entire labor movement re-
calls the epic strike conducted by
the Murdochville miners in 1957,
when the workers were con-
fronted with attacks by Duplessis’

*., police. This time the strikers have

turned away from the federal parliament building Feb. 14 as they tried to
lobby their members of parliament. The postal workers wanted to pre-
sent their MPs with Valentine cards reading, “We'll be here after elec-

tion day. Will you?”. :

INCO TALKS
COLLAPSE

SUDBURY — The 16-member
Inco strikers’ negotiating commit-
tee came home Feb. 10 after medi-
ation talks in Toronto folded the

previous day. Supervisors were »

barred from crossing picket lines
when the strikers got the news that
Inco was continuing to refuse
negotiating a satisfactory agree-

ment with the 11,700 Steelworkers.

here. Steelworkers’ Ontario direc-
tor Stew Cooke said the union
would issue a country-wide appeal
for funds in the 158-day strike.

SASK. LABOR
BLASTS RCMP

REGINA — A brief to the
MacDonald Royal Commission
on the ‘(RCMP released Jan. 26,
charged the labor movement was
being surveyed by the federal

lice force and demanded there
should be explicit legal protection
‘‘against this anti-democratic spy-
ing.” The brief also called for an
end to the double standard which
exempts the police from punish-
ment for breaking the law. Indi-
viduals breaking the law are
punished, the SFL charged, while
jaws are changed to accom-
modate violations by the police.

$14,000 GIVEN
TO INCO STRIKERS

OTTAWA — A cheque for
$14,543.56 was sent to the striking
Local 6500 Steelworkers in Sud-
bury from the 41,000-member
Canadian Brotherhood of Railway

Transport and General Workers © ject

(CBRT). Half of the donation came
from CBRT locals and individuals,
with the Brotherhood matching
the amount dollar for dollar from
the union’s own funds. : -

SUMMER SCHOOL
BOYCOTT

THREATENED

TORONTO — ‘Your summer
school will be closed down,”” Bob
Buckthorpe, Ontario Secondary
School Teachers Federation pres-
ident warned the Toronto Board
of Education Feb. 13. The
OSSTF head told the board the
union has ordered its 33,000 On-
tario membership not to apply for
night schoo! and summer school
jobs in Metro Toronto because

full- or part-time teachers didn’t
have hiring preference. He was
responding to the scuttling of a
tentative pact between the board
and the teachers by right-wing
Tories on the board which would
have given Toronto teachers job
security and hiring preference.

JAIL
UNION-BUSTERS.

O’KEEFE DEMANDS
PETERBOROUGH — Pat
O’Keefe, assistant Ontario direc-
tor for the Canadian Union of Pub-
lic Employees, Feb. *12, called for
jailing employers convicted of in-
terfering with a worker’s right to
join a union. His was the keynote
address at a three-day union or-
ganizers’ conference sponsored by
the Ontario Federation of Labor.
A former member of the Ontario
Labor Relations Board, O’Keefe
also called for the disbarring of
lawyers ‘‘who have made a caree
of union-busting.”’

BUS BUILDERS

LOCKEDOUT |

WOODSTOCK — Manage-
ment changes in contract items
approved in a Dec. ratification
vote prompted the sit down strike
by the 58 members of Local 636
United Auto Workers last week
which resulted in Thomas Built
Buses of Canada locking out the
entire work force, Feb. 8.

THREE YEAR PACT

REFUSED AT ATLAS

WELLAND — Atlas Steel Co.
workers, members of the indepen-
dent Canadian Steelworkers
Union voted 62% last week to re-
a recommended three-year
pact that would have produced
33.5% wage increase. The current
agreement expired Feb. 16.

AECL WORKERS

VOTE TO STRIKE

OTTAWA —Enpployees at the
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
(AECL), commercial products
division, voted 93% for strike ac-
tion, Feb. 7 to back demands for
their first collective agreement
under the Canada Labor Code.
The 120 workers, members of the
Public Service Alliance of Canada
gave the union a strike mandate
because their employer refused to
resolve the contract dispute on
the basis of a concilliation report
resolving 14 outstanding issues in
the talks.

led ty ae ae ‘ * no intention of bowing to the
Postal workers fed by CUPW president Jean-Claude Parrot were

multi-national corporation.

_ The workers maintain that the
dignity of the entire region is at
Stake in their struggle for justice
from Noranda. With a population
of 5,000 in Murdochville, the
strike of the 1,200 miners affects
the entire region.

The fringe benefits granted to
the workers are really on the
“fringe” of what is needed for a
decent life. For example, Laurent
Synnette, who’s been working at
Murdochville for 26 years, con-
fided to the French-language
Montreal daily La Press, he’ll be
entitled to a pension of around $40
a month ... providing, as he says,
he makes it to retirement age.
Workers with 20-25 years of ex-
perience for the most part have
had at least one accident at work.

When a miner hits 45 years of
age, he’s already old. The iron-

ore multi-nationals haven't got a
good reputation when it comes to
the health and security of their
employees. On the average, one
miner is killed every 10 weeks at
Inco’s Sudbury operations where
12,000 striking Steelworkers have
been conducting a five-month bat-
tle with the giant corporation.

Noranda refuses to pay more
than a token amount for the
necessary clothing required by
the miners to perform their work.
The miners say this is an expen-
sive burden they must bear, par-
ticularly when it costs about $100
a year just to buy work boots.
With a net weekly pay of $160,
after 48 hours of work, it’s tough
for a miner to provide his family
with a decent living.

The miners’ wives aren’t re-
maining idle. Some 400 have
taken part in mass pickets and
demonstrations, supporting sup-
porting their husbands’right from
the beginning of the strike.

THOUSANDS MARCH
FOR SLAIN WORKER

EL CENTRO, California —
Thousands of members of the Un-
ited Farm Workers mourned the
murder Feb. 10, of Rufino Con-
treras, a 28 year old union worker
shot to death by scabs. A total of 10
lettuce fars were struck four weeks

_ ago by 4,100 farm workers fighting

for decent wages and working con-
ditions. Some 7,000 farm workers
at 30 farms stayed off the job Feb.
13 to pay their respects to the slain

Contreras, the father of a 5 year .

old son.

The newspapers have been
stressing that the low price of
iron, will work against the strik-
ers. Last December, the company
reported that the industry was dis-
turbed with a number of other
conflicts in Latin America in addi-
tion to the instability in Zaire ...
In Rouyn-Noranda they’re hint-
ing about layoffs.

The big corporations are look-
ing to make the workers pay for
the severe crisis gripping the
industry. The crisis affecting the
iron industry, like similar crisis in
other important section of the
metals industry, reflects the gen-
eral crisis of the world capitalist
system as a whole.

And who knows, Noranda may

yet brandish the threat of moving
its production facilities elsewhere
if the Murdochville miners refuse
to tighten their belts for the com-
pany.
- Maybe they’ll move to Chile,
where the fascist dictator
Pinochet guarantees that miners
work for Noranda and other
companies all get the same low
wages. We know that Inco ex-
ported capital to Guatemala and
Indonesia while it laid off workers
in Sudbury. The multi-nationals
are always on the lookout for
cheap labor in other countries.

It all proves that the striking
miners in Murdochville and Sud-
bury need labor’s active solidari-
ty.

Bruce
Magnuson’s

column will

Profits not wages behind food — 4
Price hikes, food union charges

TORONTO — Profiteering by
the food monopolies and not
Wages are the root of skyrocket-'
ting food prices, a representative
of the food workers unions says.
Bill Reno, an international rep-
resentative for the Canadian
Food and Allied Workers union,
in a brief prepared for presenta-
tion to the People’s Food Com-
mission Toronto hearings slated
for later this month, slammed
big-business ‘‘propaganda’”’ citing
Wages as the culprit. ee
Food workers are not respon-

sible in any way for the skyroc-

ketting price of food”, Reno
charges in the union's brief. ‘‘One
doesn’t have to dig very deeply in
Official documents to find this out.
Food workers are averaging in-
creases of 6% in wages ... while
corporate profits grew by 25% in
the food sector last year.”

The CFAW brief reflects recent
government figures showing that
food profits in 1978 jumped 21%
zooming past wage increases.
Reno cited this as more proof of

the union’s claim that prices and
not wage increases have been the
engine pulling inflation upward.

Reno called Prime Minister
Trudeau’s defence of the profit
gouging of the food monopolies,
in a recent speech in parliament, a
‘‘cynical apology”’ for the rise in
corporate profits.

Trudeau had said the govern-
ment was happy that profits were
booming. and gave his govern-
ment the credit for much of the

_ increase.

_ The People’s Food Commis-
sion will be holding five days of
hearings in Toronto Feb. 21-25.
For people in the Toronto area,

-the hearings will be held at the

Palmerston Avenue Library start-
ing at 2:00 p.m. :

Toronto Mayor John Sewell
will open the hearins on Feb. 21.

More than 40 groups and indi-
viduals will submit briefs to the
food commission hearings in To-
ronto, representing community,
labor, church, school and public
interest organizations. It will also

-OXFAM-Canada,

hear from senior citizens, welfare
recipients, consumers and en-
vironmentalists. The City of To-
ronto. Board of Health,
and the
YWCA are among the organiza-
tions submitting briefs.

The People’s Food Commis-

_sion is an independent cross-

country inquiry in Canada’s food
system, the organization says. It
is sponsored by more than 100 or-
ganizations and institutions, and
it conducts hearings organized by
local volunteer- working groups

-concerned about profiteering,

nutrition, shrinking farmland, and
use of chemical additives in the
food industry.

Hearings have already been
conducted in Calgary, Van-
couver, Ottawa, London and Re-
gina. The commission has held
proceedings in rural centres like
Cold Lake, Alta., also Willow
Bunch, Sask., and Courtenay,
B.C. A final report will be pre-
pared by the commission when it
completes its hearings in April.

WAGES Fottow....

ae

VAS b+ 74.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 23, 1979—Page 5