LABOR

Poisoning t
workplace

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — ‘‘No more
workers are going to be used by
companies as guinea pigs around
toxic substances in the work
Place. These days are over.”

_That’s the mood around Cana-
dian Auto Workers Local 112, the
composite local whose member-
Ship includes 380 workers at
Woodbridge Foam Corp. The lo-
cal’s acting president John Ken-
nedy, told the Tribune last week
that the company had been given
until Friday, Feb. 27 to begin
implementing a labor ministry
order to begin medical monitoring
of the work force, ‘“‘or the union
will put up its own trailer across
the street from the plant and do
the testing ourselves.”’

While workers at Woodbridge
Foam are exposed to a wide array
of dangerous chemicals and sol-
vents, the union is focusing on the
effects of exposure to isocya-
nates, the foam component in the
arm rests and instrument panels
the company produces for the
auto industry.

Health and safety experts warn
workers to avoid all exposure to
contact with isocyanate vapors
and liquids. Isocyanates have
been under government regula-
tion in Ontario since 1983.

Chris Marks, of the CAW’s
health and safety department said
the substance attacks the eyes,
mucous membranes (such as the
linings of the nose, throat and
lungs), skin and the respiratory
tract.

These and more, have been the
Symptoms displayed by Wood-
bridge workers. ‘‘We’ve had as
many as 60 out of 380 workers off
sick at any given time. That’s how

.bad the situation is’’, CAW repre-

sentative John Bettes, the local’s
former president said.

Last week Kennedy reported
there are currently 63 workers off
sick. Symptoms run the gamut
from throat irritations and bleed-
Ing, to chest pains, nausea, sleep
disorders, dermatitis, eye lid in-
fections etc.

The plant has a history of high-
er than average rates of absentee-

_ ism, and since the symptoms

often resemble common ailments
like the cold or flu, management
didn’t pay much attention to the
Problem until a joint health and
ey committee was recently set

p.

_ it doesn’t take much to get sen-
Sitized to isocyanates. Under the

Jee

Vi
a
¥ Wg

government regulations, if the
exposure level in the air reaches 5
parts per billion, the employer is
required to supply the worker
with full-face respirators with
their own independent air supply.

Under that limit, vapor and par-
ticle respirators, with charcoal
filters have to be supplied on
demand.

It’s possible to be sensitized to
the substance through skin con-
tact as well as breathing in vapors.
Further exposure once a worker
has been sensitized can lead to
asthatic attacks, serious enough
to hospitalize the victim and place
them in a life-threatening situa-
tion.

Continued exposure will re-
duce lung function and recent
animal tests in the U.S. have
linked isocyanates to cancer.

Under the regulations, the em-
ployer is required to control the
exposure, and to monitor both the
air and the workers health on a
regular basis.

Last September the company
was ordered to clean up the plant
and to begin the medical monitor-
ing. It agreed, but has, so far, re-
fused to conduct the monitoring.

Management wants the monit-
oring performed by a team of doc-
tors from MacMaster University
in Hamilton, the union wants the
testing performed by the Hamil-
ton-based Ontario Workers
Health Centre, which has handled
a similar situation with iso-
cyanates at de Havilland Aircraft,
also represented by Local 112.

Kennedy says the union wants
access to all of the workers medi-
cal records in order to document
workers compensation claims

res
it
»
e CNG ,
Cy
N 4
‘

where necessary. Because of the
long term effects of exposure, it
also wants to check on workers
who have left the plant and may
be suffering diseases related to
exposure and sensitization.

““You could have health prob-
lems related to exposure that
won’t show up ’til 15 or 20 years
down the road’’, he said. ‘‘As far
as we’re concerned, there aren’t
going to be any more workers
used by companies without prop-
er safeguards. These days are
over.”

Woodbridge Foam, recently
described as one of the “‘three or
four’’ Canadian-owned front line
parts suppliers for the auto indus-
try in this country, generates al-
most half a billion dollars in rev-
enue each year by following a
corporate strategy, devised by
company president Robert Beam-
ish, of product specialization and
extreme cost efficiency.

To the predominantly new
Canadian workforce, which came
into the auto workers union about
a year and a half ago, this means
fighting to bring wages in line with
the rest of the organized parts in-
dustry. The Woodbridge workers
are currently being paid about
$1.50 an hour under the going
rate.

In the end, it’s clear that Local
112 intends to see to it that in addi-
tion to closing the wage gap with
the rest of the parts industry, the
health and safety of the workers
won’t be the victim of ‘‘extreme
cost efficiency.”

THE WAY I
FIGURE «iT

Your HEATH
Ss COMPANY

PROPERTY
the:
¢ a

Hows Tear?

th

4

LAUSE WHEN You
Leave HERE, Vou
Leave wiTHouT TT

=
UAS -1-81- 4c

as

Labor in action

GEORGE HEWISON

- profits for the corporations and less wages for men. Herein lies

International Women’s Day

Partnership
and victory

One of the truly epic battles shaping the course of the class
struggle in Canada today is the fight of women for full equality.
Whether in the struggle for wage parity, proper childcare, or the
right to choice, women have added a vitalizing character to the
progressive movement of our country.

To their immediate set of demands, women have added the
fight for Canadian sovereignty, the fight to save the social ser-
vices infrastructure of our society, and not least, the fight to save
our planet.

In the last federal election, it was the National Action Commit-
tee on the Status of Women which sponsored the only country-
wide television debate, confronting the participants with the
burning questions of the day. .

As we join in celebrating International Women’s Day, we are
reminded that the struggle for women’s emancipation is not just
an issue for women, but a matter for the entire working class and
democratic movement. It has been thus from the early days of the
capitalist system as the speeches of Jenny Marx in the 1880's, and
Clara Zetkin at the turn of the century, confirm.

But there has been a qualitative turn in the struggle of women.

Exploitation of Women

Since the First World War when women traditionally made up
around twenty-one per cent of the working class of Canada, their
participation has steadily climbed to over forty-two per cent,
today. This growth has occurred in a period when the working
class has grown from two to slightly more than ten and a half
million. Thus the rate of increase of women to the working class
has been far greater than that of men.

Such growth is in line with a basic economic law of our system
—the tendency for the working class to grow as the system grows
but at arate faster than that of the population as a whole. In recent
times that growth has taken place by bringing more women into
the workforce. Capitalism needs women workers despite the
right wing demagogy about sending women back into the home.

But much of the increase of women in the workforce takes
place in the heretofore unorganized work places. Women are
thus subjected to vast wage disparities. In the transition from
woman-in-the-home to woman-on-the-job, none of the social
facilities necessary to prevent the growing impoverishment of
women have kept pace. Nor have the social attitudes which still
allow women to carry a double burden, at work, and at home.

War Against Equality

The Naional Citizens Coalition, backed as it is by the biggest of
big business, has launched all out war against the concept of
‘equal pay for work of equal value’’. What fundamental dif-
ference is there between that attack and their attack on the trade
union movement using Merv Lavigne as their tool; or the efforts
of REAL Women attempting to stem the growing women’s
movement?

Much is at stake for these right wing mouthpieces and their
corporate backers. Billions of dollars in wages are being stolen
from the labor of women. Sub-standard wages to women means
downward pressure on wage levels to men, resulting in still more

the objective necessity for men to support women in their quest
for equality. :

Dollars, (now in the billions), needed for proper childcare in
order for women to enter the workplace are now in corporate
coffers. The ideological argument against childcare has little todo
with undermining the family and family values and everything to
do with profit.

But the NCC and REAL Women are but a tribute to the
dynamics and growing purposefulness of Canada’s women’s
movement.

Partnership and Victory

As the working class has had an impact on the direction of the
women’s movement, so too has the women’s movement helped
-stimulate the working class of our country. The growing interac-
tion and linkage between one of the truly great democratic
movements of our century and a class, charged with the historic
responsibility for the social emancipation of all, is a cause for
— optimism and celebration on this International Women’s

y.

May this partnership deepen and flourish, leading to many
more successes, and may it be crowned by ultimate victory for
both partners.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 4, 1987 ¢ 5