Workers on strike against overtime, protest police protection for scabs By PAULA FLETCHER WINNIPEG The 6- Month-old strike at the U-S.- Owned Griffin Steel plant here, will have far reaching effects for _all workers in Manitoba. _Led by CAIMAW, (the Cana- dian Association of Mechanical and Allied Workers), the strike entered a new phase Feb. 28, when the company, after placing advertisements in local news- Papers to hire new workers, in- formed the union that those workers not reporting for work that day could consider. them- Selves fired. _ Griffin, which has a sister plant in South Africa is clearly out to break the union, in its drive to introduce compulsory overtime in the new agreement. _ The company initially tried to introduce 20 hours of compulsory overtime per week then changed _ the demand to 20 hours per month. Manitoba law places no limit on the amount of overtime worked in a month. Every morning, about 50 Winnipeg Police Force consta- bles are at the plant gates asking the more than 100 strikers and sympathizers not to obstruct the ‘Bill 176 now before the On- tario Legislature is called “‘An Act to‘Amend The Labor Rela- tions Act’. Its aim is to make province-wide bargaining in the industrial, commercial and in- stitutional sectors of the Ontario construction industry compulsory -by trade. Under this bill of bureaucratic centralization, employer and em- ployee bargaining agencies are to be designated by the Lieutenant Govemor in Council to represent individual trades or crafts. ~ The Minister of Labor may convene a conference of trade unions and employers to advise in the selection of the appropriate bargaining agency. A designated employee bar- gaining agency. may be replaced by the Ontario Labor Relations Board if the Board finds the applicant for replacement to be more representative of em- Ployees in the trade or craft. The Labor Relations Board is also empowered to determine whether work performed by employees falls within the indust- tial, commercial and institutional sector of the construction indus- try. No clear definition of this sec- tor is provided. -A co-ordinating. agency of ‘employer bargaining agencies 1s to be designated and the constitu- tion, etc., thereof, regulated by the Lieutenant Governor in Coun- cil. Every employer bargaining agency shall be a member of the Co-ordinating agency designated in the regulations to co-ordinate bargaining for employer bargain- ing agencies and shall pay the fees Set out in the constitution of that Co-ordinating agency. * O* *- “The proclamation: of this Bill 176 will not only provide for : “right” of scabs to cross their picket line to steal the strikers’ jobs. Manitoba law does not prohibit strikebreaking, which fits in well with the ‘New Democratic Party government’s self-image of a political party representing “everybody’s”’ interests. Workers Sceptical The government, to this point has maintained the strike is sim- ply a matter between the com- pany and the workers, but the workers find this hard to believe when every day 40-50 strikers are dragged away to the Winnipeg Police Station by the cops. Labor Minister Russ Pauley says he’s ‘looking into this.”” The situation is complicated by the fact that CAIMAW, well know for anti-CLC and raiding policies, is the union involved. The labor movement here is heat- edly debating whether or not CLE affiliated unions should support . the Griffin workers’ struggle. However, the issue at hand clearly touches the interests of all Manitoba workers, since the de- ‘feat of the workers at Griffin could set a precedent for compul- sory overtime in other union con- compulsory province-wide bar- gaining by trade or craft in the industrial, commercial and in- stitutional sector of Ontario’s construction industry. The real aim of this bill is to undermine and destroy free col- lective bargaining and the free- dom to strike in the construction industry of the province of Ontario. : In a broader area of collective | bargaining it is a serious blow to the growing membership demand for Canadian autonomy and the democratic rights of Canadian workers to run their own affairs. The. officers of the Ontario Building Trades Council, if they go along with this strait-jacket legislative interferences in collec- tive bargaining for building trades workers, will be making a terrible and costly mistake. So will mem- bers of the New Democratic Party caucus at Queen’s Park who have it within their power to expose this unholy conspiracy against the organized workers in the building industry. The result of such failure to take a principled stand on behalf of the working people will be lower living standards, fewer jobs . and more unorganized workers, ‘which is precisely what the big developers and all reactionary anti-labor and undemocratic em- ployers want. “Tie see. The struggles for Canadian au- tonomy in the building trades and for more inner-union democracy has a long history. The so-called Roadmen and their association have always stood in opposition. That is because they are tied to their bosses in the USA who pro- vide their pay cheques and the marching orders. In 1974-75 they withheld per capita from the Canadian Labor Congress as a Alegislative strait jacket for Ontario — building trade workers tracts, as wellas reinforce the leg- - ality of strikebreaking. With the legality of compulsory overtime upheld in Manitoba law, and the lack of a legislated 40-hour work week; modern industrial mono- * polies’ weapons of overtime and speed up, in their drive for higher production and bigger profit rates are strengthened. The Manitoba Federation of Labor has gone on record con- demning the role of the police in the strike, and reiterated its de- mand on government for volun- tary overtime legislation. ‘“The issues at this stage is a clearly negotiable issue’’ an MFL state- ment said recently, ‘cand should be dealt with responsibly at the bargaining table.”’ _ MEL Position However, the Federation de- nied material assistance to CAIMAW because of its raiding policies and unwarranted prop- aganda “‘to cause dissention and disunity within the labor move- ment.” Also, by a close vote, the Winnipeg Labor Council denied all support to the Griffin strikers making the entire issue CAIMAW’’s raiding tactics. blackmailing effort. In January 1976 they tried to prevent a con- ference in Winnipeg to discuss Canadian union autonomy. Fail- ing this they decided to join the movement to sabotage the work- ers’ reforms. And now — to join the big de- PHOTO-WINNIPEG FREE PRESS/GERRY CAIRNS — This unfortunately backward ‘position by the council will likely efforts for democratic — velopers and their Tory political . friends at Queen’s Park for the supreme effort to scuttle union democracy, free collective bar- gaining and the right to strike. * * * None will deny. the need to re- form the archaic structure of the unions in the building trades. None will deny the need for grea- ter unity in negotiations between all trades on a province-wide and ultimately, perhaps, even on a country-wide scale. But such un- ity and solidarity in action calls for membership participation in the fullest and most meaningful way. It demands inner-union democracy and a fully informed membership. It demands action from the grass-roots, not palace- coups and dictatorial edicts from above and enforced by legislative strait-jacketing that deprives workers of their democratic rights. There is also a need for residen- tial construction in this country to provide decent and reasonably priced housing for people. Such a program could put unemployed building tradesmen to work, and through organization of this sec- prompt CAIMAW to sound off about ‘‘U.S. imperialist unions acting against Canadian work- ers.”” However this is not the case. What is really happening is a failure by right-wing sections within the Canadian labor move- ment to take up the struggle against the main enemy — in this case a U.S. multi-national corpo- ration using strikebreakers to crush a legal strike. : CAIMAW undoubtedly has a poor record. They gave a smatter- ing of support to the Oct. 14 Day of Protest and while the majority of organized Canadian workers were out fighting wage controls, CAIMAW’s executive board was discussing how to raid Thompson Steelworkers who had shut down the whole town in a fight with the so-called Anti-Inflation Board. CAIMAW Fails Test CAIMAW’s brand of ‘‘Cana- dian National Unionism” fails the test as a viable alternative for Canadian workers. This strike has shown CAIMAW’s inability to rally the organized labor force behind important questions for all workers. Sectarianism in the long run benefits neither the CAIMAW rank and file, nor or- ganized workers in other unions. The NDP position as a result of the strike unfortunately places it in the same camp as the company by allowing strikebreaking to con- tinue and not resisting the pres- sures of a multi-national corpora- tion. PHOTO — NOVISTI PRESS ‘ nine-storey building in Mirney. tor — now 90% unorganized —to ° provide decent union conditions for those in this sector of construction. One final question. Why are the big commercial dailies so silent on this front at this time? Perhaps they are afraid of the slowly awakening giant going on the of- _} fensive against injustice. ‘PHOTO — NOVISTI PRESS Soviet Union and have been pean languages. INTHE ARCTIC OF THE USSR The town of Mirney in the Yukat Autonomous Soviet Socialist — Republic is being built on permafrost. The construction of many- storey-buildings is now in full swing. The photo is of the first Ogdo Aksenova isthe first poetess of the Dolgan, asmall people living on Taimir Peninsula. Her poems have a deep national character of their own and are published in millions of copies in the translated into several Euro- PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 8; 1977—Page 5 | |