Injunctions, fines used against Skyway The courts continued to play a More and more direct role in B.C. labor disputes as an additional 15 Strikers at Vancouver’s -Skyway Luggage Company awaited the Outcome of a second series of Contempt of court proceedings Initiated by the U.S. company in the 10-week-old strike. Earlier, Local 1 of the Upholsters International Union and eight Members of the union, including business agent Penny Goronuk, were fined a total of $2,700 after being held to be in contempt of an injunction issued April 30 .which Specifically prohibited strikers from interfering with “‘ingress and €gress of people and vehicles to and from the premises of the Plaintiff (Skyway Luggage).” As well as determining: what action should be taken against the Istrikers now before the courts — Including jail sentences of up to three years — the current hearings are expected to issue a second order which will direct the union to ‘allow Skyway to move a truck loaded with about 1,200 pieces of hot luggage which has been stalled at the luggage plant since May 11. The moving of the truck has €come a central issue in the dispute, which began on April 6 When the 100 workers, mostly Women and immigrant workers, Went on strike to back their demand for a $3.50 increase in Wages over two years. Wages in the plant currently range from $2.85 per hour to $3.30. Goronuk explained that to many of the strikers the loaded truck has great ‘‘symbolic value.” She said that the company has tried to move the truck a number of times since May 11, and on one occasion drove the truck into the picket line knocking one picketer to the ground. Goronuk also denied any tam- pering with the truck, after plant manager R. E. Kingston had charged that all of the tires on the truck had been deflated and sugar had been dumped into the truck’s fuel tank. The Tribune found the truck to be in apparent good order, - with all tires fully inflated the same day that Kingston made his charges. However, Goronuk stressed that the union was not making any attempt to stop the truck from leaving the Skyway” premises. “We're picketing that’s all. There are four orfive of us on the line and we’re picketing in a peaceful manner back and forth across the entrance to the property. And we will continue to picket until we are ordered to stop by the courts.”’ Since the strike began, the shocking conditions under which the employees have been working have become public information. Though the minimum wage in B.C. is $3 per hour, most of the Skyway workers make only $2.80 per hour. As one striker said, “‘After two weeks work, I go home with $160. With a family of six kids, that’s not much money.”’ Action urged to halt Peltier extradition A renewed campaign demanding that justice minister Ron Basford not sign the order allowing ex- tradition to the United States of Leonard Peltier was launched last Week immediately following the decision Friday by Mr. Justice W. A. Schultz that there was sufficient evidence to send him to trial. Justice Schultz ruled that a ‘prima facie” case had been €stablished on four counts — two of Murder, one of attempted murder and one of burglary — against Peltier, although one count of attempted murder in Oregon was thrown out for lack of evidence. Following the decision, sup- Porters of Peltier began a new Campaign to win asylum for the Oglala Sioux while his lawyers began mapping a case for appeal to the Federal Court of Canada. The appeal procedure may hold Up the case for several months but the final decision on the extradition rests with justice minister Basford and it is toward him that the Campaign has been directed. While Basford offered no com- Ment as to his final decision, Members of the Peltier defence Committee marched through downtown Vancouver streets to a VLC backs peace appeal Delegates to the Vancouver and District Labor Council voted last Week to endorse the Stockholm Peace Appeal — the sixth such Council in this province to move endorsement. Labor councils in Victoria, Campbell River, Kamloops, Nanaimo and New Westminster had already voiced their support for the world-wide appeal. > rally in the courthouse square reiterating their. demand for political asylum for Peltier. Advocates of Peltier’s bid for asylum — including several trade unions, the Vancouver and District Labor Council, the Communist Party, the New Democratic Party and the Congress of Canadian Women — have argued that the FBI charges against Peltier have been deliberately framed and have stressed that he could not obtain a fair trial in South Dakota where he is wanted. Delegates to the Vancouver and District Labor Council voted at their last meeting to instruct council secretary Paddy Neale to follow up earlier council action on the case and press Basford not to sign the final extradition order. A benefit sponsored by the Freedom for Leonard Peltier Coalition has been organized for this Saturday, June 25 in the Fishermen’s Hall, 138 E. Cordova, Vancouver. Admission is $3. strikers In addition to the starvation wages, conditions at the Skyway factory are right out of the 19th century. Safety guards have been taken off the machines to speed production and the plant itself is 50 years old and in a state of disrepair. Goronuk said that the union has been fighting an unen- ding battle with the company just to bring the standards up to a minimum level. Incredibly, workers in the plant are escorted to and from the washrooms and timed, and em- ployees have been docked up to two hours pay for talking, or for time lost: by standing in line to use one, rarely cleaned washroom. One striker said that things are so bad in the Skyway plant that many workers have to bring their own toilet. paper from home because the company will provide only three rolls per day for the more than 80 women workers. The B.C. Federation of Labor, in issuing a ‘‘hot’’ declaration for all Skyway products - correctly described the working conditions at Skyway as a “sweatshop which most people think disappeared from B.C. 30 years ago.” Adding to the indignation and the determination felt by the striking workers is the fact that Skyway is an American-owned company which made $10.7 million in profits last year from only two plants — the one in Vancouver and the main plant in Seattle where 300 workers work for as little as $1.95 per hour. The company attitude to the dispute was summed up by plant manager Kingston during negotiations when he said: ‘‘This is a minimum wage industry and it’s going to stay that way. If they (the strikers) want more money, they can go elsewhere. I can always find others.” However, as many of the strikers realize, there is nowhere else for them to go in this period of unemployment, particularly for female, immigrant workers. As one woman noted, ‘‘Rich people with an education wouldn’t come to work here. It’s we poor people who must because there’s nothing else. But, I won’t work any more for $2.80 an hour.” As the strike drags on, support for the workers has been coming from many quarters, particularly from the community in the im- mediate vicinity of the Skyway plant,. where a strike support committee has been formed to help the workers in any way possible. In an attempt to bolster their strength and dwindling resources as the strike drags on, the 500 members of the local union voted unanimously this week to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters after receiving ap- proval from the international See SKYWAY, pg. 12 In a group portrait taken before the courts ordered them to allow free Luggage Company plant, striking members of the access to the Skyway ‘ Upholsterers International Union Local 1 block the driveway to the plant penning in behind them a huge truck loaded with 1,200 pieces of hot luggage. —Norman Nawrocki photo The terse message carried by Mulan Lai underscores the brutality of South African police whose first victims in last week’s shootings were hardly older than she. —Sean Griffin photo Rally protests police murders in S. Africa Some 150 people in Vancouver Saturday joined protesters all over the world in denouncing the police massacre of South African students in Soweto, outside Johan- nesburg last week. At least 35 were killed and more than 200 injured as police fired openly into the demonstration at Soweto, a peaceful parade of 10,000 elementary school students who were protesting the mandatory use _ of Afrikaans as a medium of in- struction in schools. A senior police officer, questioned about. the brutal shootings, replied cynically: ‘““We fired into them; it’s no use firing over their heads.” The following day in Johannes- burg, thousands of black students, joined by 1,000 white students from the University of Witwatersrand marched to city hall to protest the shootings only to be attacked as they approached city hall by motorcycle gangs of whites who assaulted them with chains, clubs and broken bottles. Police did nothing to.stop the attack and-intervened only when demonstrators sought to defend themselves. They then opened fire on the demonstrators with automatic weapons. By the time rioting had subsided Saturday, the death toll had ex- ceeded 120 with more than 1,000 wounded. Hundreds have also been arrested. “The Vorster regime in South Africa is fascist — make no mistake about it,” alderman Harry Rankin told the rally in Vancouver Saturday. “It is a country which rests on slavery.” In a sharp statement aimed at public opinion in this country, Rankin: noted that ‘‘it is time’’ to start considering actions to isolate the South African regime. “We've got to start talking about boycotts of South African goods, about pieket lines on-stores that carry South African products,”’ he declared. ‘‘And we’ve got to start doing something about it.” Rankin also suggested that he would be considering advancing a motion before Vancouver city council denouncing the brutal murders by the Vorster apartheid government. . Earlier, Clive Lytle, speaking on behalf of the B.C. Federation of Labor had stressed the need to “stop our government’s complicity in what is going on in South Africa. “We have to bring the govern- ment to a _ position of moral decency instead of its historic part in that system of slavery,” he stated, noting that the Federation would continue its efforts in sup- port of black South Africans. Anglican minister Reverend Phillip Thatcher, noted that it was significant that, despite the many areas of oppression of South Africans, it was the language issue over which the protest erupted. “Language is a symbol of the refusal of black people to accept that whites will define who they are and who they will be,”’ he said. The forced instruction of Afrikaans — the language of the ruling Boer faction in South Africa — is seen as a symbol of oppression and a means of perpetuating that oppression. Students want to be taught in English which will give them a link with the outside world. 7 Vancouver Burrard NDP MLA Rosemary Brown told the rally outside the Queen Elizabeth Theatre that it was ‘‘tragic’”’ that it took an act of brutality to make people aware again of the struggle going on in South Africa. “Yet despite their talk of human rights there is no one more silent on apartheid than the federal and provincial governments in this country which are now doing more business in South Africa than ever before,”’ she said. She joined other speakers in urging a boycott of South African goods, citing the Social Credit government’s decision to rein- troduce South African wines as a specific area for action. The Southern Africa Action Coalition, sponsors of Saturday’s rally, urged people to send telegrams. of protest to prime minister Trudeau-and the South African embassy and to write to MLAs protesting the ordering of South African liquors for B.C. liquor stores. The group also called on the federal government to end the Commonwealth Trade Preference still enjoyed by South Africa and to recall the trade commissioner and all diplomats from South Africa. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 25, 1976—Page 3