i

Labour

Trade Zones ‘surrender sovereignty’ |

corporations.”

Siemens plant in Juarez maquiladora (I); workers’ barrio (r): no funds for sewer
running water in residential areas ‘‘but there is money for infrastructure for the

Labour Notes

VDLC to invite
Odessa unionists

The Vancouver and District Labour
Council will be inviting a delegation to
Vancouver next year from the Odessa
Central Council of Trade Unians to
mark labour’s part in the Vancouver-
Odessa sister relationship.

Delegates to the labour council
voted Tuesday to extend the invitation
to the Soviet trade union body. The
delegation will also be here to mark the
100th anniversary of the founding of
the VDLC, established in 1889 as the
Vancouver Trades and Labour Coun-
cil.

The invitation follows a visit to
Odessa in August by a delegation made
up of Vancouver city councillors and a
number of Vancouver citizens. VDLC
secretary-treasurer Frank Kennedy
and IWA-Canada Local 1-217 first
vice-president Don Jantzen repres-
ented the city’s labour movement.

White Spot ‘out
to break union’

An Industrial Relations Council
order instructing negotiators for White
Spot to go back to the bargaining table
had little effect on the food chain’s bar-
gaining position and talks broke down
quickly as the company, owned by mil-
lionaire Peter Toigo, refused to discuss
wage issues.

““We gave them an amended offer on
Friday but they just told us that the
issues were ‘too global,” said Roger
Crowther, regional vice-president for
the Canadian Association of Industrial,
Mechanical and Allied Workers, which
represents the 1,160 unionized White
Spot employees.

Crowther said the company was
clearly “out to break the union,”
adding that Toigo would “like to runa
chain of 30 non-union restaurants (11
White Spot outlets are non-union).”

White Spot has refused even to dis-
cuss its wage offer which provides for
increases of only 20 cents over three
years for employees getting gratuities
and 45 cents for non-gratuity workers.
The company has also demanded that
all new employees start at the provin-
cial minimum wage and remain at that
level for three years.

Despite the length of the strike — it
began Aug. 26 — Crowther said that
the “members have surprised us” with
their determination to stay out until

they reach a decent agreement. ~

The union has urged supporters to
assist on the picket line, to make dona-
tions to the defence fund and to boycott
the chain for the duration of the strike.

Last week, Local 500 of the Interna-
tional Longshoremen’s and Ware-
housemen’s Union voted to assess each
of its 1,450 members $2 to assist the
White Spot strikers.

Although CAIMAW is not an affil-
iate, the VDLC also voted this week to
make a donation to the strike.

Dockers stage
pension walkout

Members of the International Long-
shoremen’s and Warehousemen’s
Union staged study sessions coast-wide
Sept. 16 to protest the failure of the
B.C. Maritime Employers Association
to improve pensions.

The 3,500 longshoremen in B.C.

ports stayed off the job for the day shift

despite a ruling by an arbitrator that the
walkout would be illegal, making the
union liable for a damage suit.

Dockers are in the final year of a
legislated settlement imposed by a fed-
eral back-to-work order, with pensions
the only outstanding issue.

The ILWU has been trying to get
pensions up to a level similar to that
among union members in the port of
Seattle which currently pays more than
twice the monthly pension of union
retirees in this province.

Sask. unionists
fight concessions

REGINA — Safeway Ltd. has
thrown its drive for concessions from
Saskatchewan’s Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union members
into high gear.

Late last month, 100 Safeway
workers at two stores in Prince Albert
were out on the picket line, joining oth-
ers in Yorkton and North Battleford
who have been locked out by the food
retailer since May. The company is
demanding a wage freeze for current
employees, and lower starting rates for
those hired after a new contract is
reached.

Their contract expired last February,
and the company has targeted them as
easier to defeat. To soften up its
employees in other cities, Safeway
announced the closure of stores in
Weyburn and Estevan just before nego-
tiations started. ~

12 e Pacific Tribune, September 21, 1988

, Continued from page 1

More than 300,000 Mexican workers
are employed in the maquiladoras and
the zones are growing at the rate of 23 per
cent a year, the NDP MP told unionists.

He said the goods produced in the
zones are in four main areas: electronics,
textiles, electrical goods and auto parts.
Most of the companies are U.S.-based
transnationals, including Zenith, Chrys-
ler, General Motors and RCA, although
Japanese companies such as Toshiba
and the West German conglomerate
Siemens also have plants. Two Canadian
companies operate in the zones although
government officials responsible for the
maquiladoras did not state wha they
were.

Manly emphasized that the maquila-
doras “are like our industrial parks with
broad streets and modern, high-techno-
logy plants.

“But that contrasts starkly with the
hovels where the workers have to live.

“There is no money for sewers or run-
ning water — but there is money for
infrastructure for the companies operat-
ing in the zones,” he said.

But the wages and working conditions
are the most appalling, he said.

He cited the case of the maquiladora
in Juarez, a town of 1.4 million right
across the Rio Grande from El Paso,
Texas. It has already enticed U.S. indus-
try to cross the river, resulting in a drop
in wage costs from $4 an hour — the
minimum wage in Texas — to $4a day
in Juarez.

At a plant they saw manufacturing
telephone switches, the company had
also introduced new methods of speed-
up, resulting in a cut in production time
on one component from 92 hours in the
plant in Minneapolis to two hours in
Mexico.

But many of the women who make up
the bulk of the work force “soon have
eye and other problems,” he said. And
after only four years in the plant, they are
unable to continue and must look for
other work.

There is little trade union organization
in the zones and it is “weak and ineffec-
tual,” he said. He noted that a represen-
tative of the maquiladora told the
delegation that they have a battery of

lawyers available to any company which - |

is confronted with a labour dispute.
More than anything, the sweeping
government concessions given trans-

national corporations operating in the |
zones is an example of a country giving |

up its sovereignty under a misguided
economic policy:
“The maquiladoras were promoted by

the Mexican government as a means of |
industrializing the country,” Manly

noted.

“But Mexicans are not getting the

benefits,” he emphasized. “The maquil-
adoras demonstrate the failure to deal
with the real problems of the economy.”

Despite more $4 billion worth of pro-
duction from the zones, the spinoff

benefits to local industry have amounted ~

to only two per cent. “Even Taiwan
manages 30 per cent spinoff benefits,” he
said.

And in setting up the zones, Mexico
has waived much of its legislation
governing sovereignty, including the
provision that there must be 51 per cent
Mexican ownership of foreign compan-
ies operating in the country.

Manly emphasized that the transna-

tional corporations “are stealing from

the government the power to regulate

and control the economy.
“And that is what the Canada-US.
trade agreement is all about,” he said.

“Instead of dealing with the problems of —

the Canadian economy and acting in the
interests of Canadians to overcome

them, the Conservative government has-

surrendered to transnational corporate
interests.”

Not only will cheaply-produced Mexi-
can goods make their way duty-free into
Canadian markets under the trade deal,
he said, but Canadian companies will
pull up and move production to Mexico.

“Companies are going to say ‘good-
bye B.C., hello Mexico,’ ” he warned.

Manly noted that in the long run, the
answer to the problem lies in greater
international solidarity between the
workers of both countries.

But in the short run,” he emphasized,
“the answer is simple: we have to defeat
the Mulroney-Reagan trade deal. And in
the election, we have to defeat the Mul-
roney government.”

——

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