LABOR

Concessions shot down
at building trades meet

By MIKE PHILLIPS

NIAGARA FALLS — On-
tario’s organized construction
workers, Nov. 2 angrily rejected
the blueprint for concessions
being pushed by the contractors
and the U.S.-appointed leaders of
the international building trades
unions in Canada.

“We don’t need the anointed
and appointed Maple Leaf Club,
that’s out of touch with reality,
telling us what to do about ensur-
ing our future’’, George Ward of
the Sheetmetal Workers union
told delegates to the Ontario
Building and Construction Trades
Council convention, Nov. 2-3.

Ward, the business manager for
the Sheetmetal Workers provin-
cial council, spoke for a lot of del-
egates as he condemned ‘‘Ensur-
ing our Future”’ a booklet jointly
produced and endorsed by the
Canadian Construction Associa-
tion and six of the top ‘‘anointed
and appointed”’ Canadian leaders
of the U.S.-based international
building trades unions.

“Ensuring our Future’? which

he described as ‘‘the biggest piece
of garbage I’ve ever read’’, pro-
poses wholesale cuts in wages,
benefits and working conditions
in the organized building trades
supposedly to protect members’
jobs from the growing number of
non-union contractors.

But for the more than 230 dele-
gates to the annual building
trades convention, the answer
they wanted was-a militant fight
against concessions and a vigo-
rous drive to organize the unor-
ganized.

No one summed up what the

delegates were thinking better
than Ward, as he went after the
Canadian officers for not fighting
concessions and for negotiating
national in-plant maintenance
agreements loaded with conces-
sions.

““We should demand that they
retract their names from ‘Ensur-
ing our Future’ because they’re
selling out our future. The only
thing they give a damn about is
the per capita tax that keeps them
in their fat ass jobs’’; he said to a
stormy ovation.

By an overwhelming vote, the
provincial convention backed a
resolution endorsing the Ontario
executive board’s unanimous op-
position and condemnation of the
concessions plan, and demanded
that the six leaders who signed the
booklet retract their endorsation.

The vote and the criticism of
the leadership were significant
because provincial councils such
as Ontario’s and the one in B.C.,
are rare platforms within the
building trades structure from
which rank and file workers can
express their views and help to
shape policy.

The convention reflected the
growing strength of the fightback
mood at the grass roots and this
was demonstrated again with the
election of Ontario plumbers’
leader Trevor Byrne to replace
president Barry Fraser who
didn’t seek another term.

Fraser, who with five other
executive members in his electri-
cians’ local in Hamilton, is locked
in a fight over concessions with
Ken Rose, Canadian vice-presi-
dent of the International Brother-

hood of Electrical Workers, and a
signatory to ‘‘Ensuring our Fu-
ture’’. Fraser has been a persis-
tent and consistent opponent of
concessions and an advocate of
Canadian autonomy for the build-
ing trades. He’s also campaigned
for their total re-integration into
the Canadian Labor Congress.

As such, he and the council
under his leadership have been a
thorn in the establishment’s side
and it was no secret at the conven-
tion that powerful forces had been
plotting and twisting arms to re-
move him from office. They
hoped to behead the opposition to
their leadership by removing the
popular president.

However, the establishment
was foiled again. Byrne, who
heads the Ontario Pipe Trades
Council, has also been an out-
spoken fighter for Canadian auto-
nomy and an opponent of conces-
sions who’s regarded as an effec-
tive spokesman for the rank and
file.

In his address to the conven-
tion, Fraser focussed on the need
for unity in the trades at the bar-
gaining table against concessions
and the need to fight non-union
contractors by organizing the un-
organized.

Free trade with the U.S. and
the federal Tory government’s
passion for de-regulation, he
warned, would ravage social pro-
grams and regulatory standards
such as health and safety laws,
while paving the way for the total
sell out of the country to the U.S.

Fraser also re-iterated the
Canadian construction workers’

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demand for a national charter for
the building trades and went on to
propose the re-unification of the
trades with the Canadian Labor
Congress and the possible estab-
lishment of a CLC building trades
department.

He concluded with an appeal to
construction workers to join in

the struggle for disarmament and —
peace. “Our agreements, juris- —
dictional problems and so on will —
mean nothing if our world is de- —
stroyed by nuclear war ... Let’s |
all hope that the Summit between —

the U.S. and USSR in Geneva —

will result in constructive de- —
tente.””

Chrysler workers owed their share

By ED McDONALD

On August 3 1979, Chrysler Corpora-
tion president Lee Iaccoca addressed the

committee at Chrysler and sought sup-
port for a two-year moratorium on in-
creased wages and benefits.

In the six years that followed, the
workers experienced reduced living
standards and tens of thousands of lay-
offs.

Chrysler, one of the top 10 U.S.
corporations, during this period be-
nefited from billions of dollars of tax-
payers’ money, both in the U.S. and in
Canada, disguised as tax credits, but in
essence interest free loans.

In the same period, the international-
ization of capital and of production in-
creased considerably, particularly in
countries like Britain, France, Sweden,
Japan and the U.S. Chrysler, for exam-
ple, recently increased its holdings in the

company Mitsubishi.

Much has been written in the capitalist
press about the ‘‘miracle’’ created by
laccoca, a potential Democratic Party
candidate in the next U.S. presidential
election, wherein Chrysler surpassed
Ford and General Motors in profits and
production.

Super-Profitable Corporation

Victor Perlo, a world-renowned
Communist economist, writing in the
Sept. 21 issue of World Magazine, used
data from Chrysler annual and quarterly

United Auto Workers master negotiating.

reports and other financial reference
material, to single out the real creator of
the corporation’s massive profits and in-
creased productivity.

Perlo pointed out that, ‘‘Chrysler has
become by far the most profitable of the
super-profitable Big Three auto com-
panies. It is one of the most profitable
among all large U.S. industrial corpora-
tions.”’

In 1984, Chrysler workers created
$2.38-billion in net profits after taxes,
which amounted to 107 per cent of the
average stock-holders’ equity of
$2.224-billion for the year. By any
economist’s standards such a rate of re-
turn on investment is virtually unheard
of.

In the first half of this year, its profits
were up 31.5 percent over the first half of
1984. On the basis of such experience, it
is estimated that its 1985 net, after taxes,
will be around $1.8-billion to $2-billion.
an incredible bonanza for the faceless
stockholders, with the likelihood that
Iaccoca, who received in excess of $4-
million last year, may hit the even $5-mil-
lion mark this year.

One has to ask the question: What ac-
counts for Chrysler’s soaring profits? As
stated by Perlo, “‘the main factor is the
spectacular rise in workers’ pro-
ductivity, supplemented by the wage and
benefit concessions extracted by the
company, and by lower wages paid to
workers in Mexico and Canada.”’

Backgrounder

In 1980 productivity per worker was
10.2 vehicles. In 1982 it was 12.7, in 1983
it was 15.4 while in 1984 it was 18.1, an
increase of 77 per cent per worker, far
more than both G.M. and Ford.

Chrysler-2, Workers-1

When these figures are carried through
to their final conclusion, the figure of 18.1
vehicles per worker means that each

production worker accounts for about 24.

vehicles per year, or 2 per month. So,
each worker accounts for something like
$20,000 per month, or $240,000 per year.
Allowing for Chrysler’s statement that
61.2 cents of every dollar of sales goes to
suppliers, it means that each production
worker still contributes $93,000 of value
added to Chrysler’s annual product.

In 1984, U.S. auto workers were only
paid one-third of the total value they
created. The average annual wage in the
sector employing most Chrysler work-
ers, for example, was $32,284. So for
every $3 of value Chrysler workers
added to the product, they got $1 and the
corporation kept $2.

Chrysler Corporation, like others,
never publishes its gross profits. But as
Perlo noted, ‘‘they can be partially esti-
mated from figures it does provide. Here
is a minimum calculation for 1984 in mil-
lions of dollars: Operating earnings,
$2,430; Taxes, $432; Interest, $132; Re-

search and development, $452; Selling
and administrative expenses, $988: De-
preciation, $272; Revenues of Chrysler
Financial Corporation, $793. The total is
$5,499 millions.”’

Chipping Away

Out of their creative and productive
labor, Chrysler workers created $5.5-bil-
lion in gross profits.

Perlo concluded that from these colos-
sal profits, ‘‘could come a 30-hour week
with no overtime and increased weekly
pay; hiring an additional 50,000 workers
to provide the additional hours worked
by the present workforce; and sub-
stantial improvements in all fringe be-
nefits, which Chrysler has been chipping
away.”

Is Chrysler unique in its profit experi-
ence for 1984? One would have to answer
yes as it relates to the ‘‘Big Three’’, but
by no stretch of the imagination is it un-
ique relative to the corporations in the
metallurgical, chemical, mining and
other industries.

As Canadian trade unionists head into
provincial labor federation conventions,
leading to next April’s Canadian Labor
Congress convention, it behooves us to
struggle economically and politically for
the shorter work week, improved wages,
and fringe benefits, and greater control
over the introduction and benefits of
technological change — all as a contri-
bution to putting Canada’s two million
unemployed back to work.

L.

6 © PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 13, 1985 _