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Labour

By MARC YOUNG

National Union of Provincial Govern- |

ment Employees president John Fryer and
a high profile NUPGE delegation returned
last month from 40,000 kilometres and 200
meeting-hours in the Soviet Union, Hun-
gary, Poland, and the German Democratic
Republic, with some interesting and pro-
vocative things to say.

In‘a lengthy conversation with the Trib-
une, Fryer brushes a social democratic can-
vas of the unfolding events, advancing ideas
and impressions that should at the same
time: hearten the broad left; sit awkwardly
with the braintrust of the Fraser. Institute,
and raise some questions and objections
among Marxists.

The delegation, which included Fryer,
Ontario vice-president Jim Clancy, New-
foundland vice-president Fraser March and
national representative Derek Fudge, was
Overseas between Jan. 12 and 28 at the
invitation of Eastern European counter-
parts affiliated to the World Federation of
Trade Unions. As market-oriented reforms
hit these economies, unions are interested in
acquiring basic skills about how to defend
the workplace interests of their constituents.

“In the GDR for example,” Fryer begins,
“they want us to send them shop stewards’
training manuals. And they took us to
worksites to meet with local union officers
who are used to the trade union siding with
the boss, because it’s all part of the collective
decision. I mean they had us talk face to face
with rank and file workers about how you
file a grievance, about how you take the
view that the worker is always right, and the
boss is always wrong.

“This is our system, and they’d look at
you with raised eyebrows .. . (but) if you’re
going to have grassroots democracy, that’s
part of grassroots democracy.

“Theyre thirsty for knowledge, and
thirsty for information,” he says.

In general, he suggests, unions are right
now putting more emphasis on becoming
effective shop floor advocates than on lob-
bying for programs such as unemployment
insurance.

Not only that, they’re convinced that if
they’re going to do their “new” job well,
they'll have to become a little less adept at
some old ones.

“They’re having difficulty understanding
how they get out of the tourist business,
because you know they arrange workers’
holidays, they arrange workers’ cultural
programs, they arrange which apartment a
worker gets because they manage the hous-
ing list and all that stuff. But they said to us
“But we don’t ever get the time to do the jobs
that a union normally does.’

“So they want to learn how that’s done
and they want to shed somé of these other
responsibilities.”

NUPGE hopes that an extended series of
contacts between Canadian and East Euro-
pean unions can be arranged in the near
future to facilitate that exchange of skills.
Tentative plans were made, for example, for
a tour of Soviet trade unionists to visit Can-
ada in June of 1991 to, among other things,
attend a seminar on the art of collective
bargaining.

All this will be, in Fryer’s view, a genuine
exchange, and not just a ‘grant’ of western
wisdom.

Of course, the delegation wasn’t just
interested in teaching grievance procedure.
The visit was a chance to take a wide-eyed
view of Eastern European politics. The
impression gained was that changes there
will prove a boon for the Left, but could be
a debacle for communist parties.

“T think that what is happening in East-
ern Europe and the Soviet Union poten-
tially is the greatest opportunity that the

=

Fryer offers views on Changes
as NUPGE visits Eastern Europe

Left has had in this century. Because it is a
true opportunity to show that a united
Europe can be a social democratic Europe.
And that it is a better system than the North
American model of capitalism with all the
Taw edges that that entails and the great
extremes of wealth and poverty.

“But the other one, of trying to make
everybody equal and some more equal than
others, well you know, George Orwell was
right. That doesn’t work either,’ Fryer
aSSEIIS=. =

He is insistent, however, that the Com-
munist parties in eastern Europe (here he
excludes the USSR), are, as Communist
parties, finished. Poles, Hungarians and
Germans see, he says, their future in a big,
united Europe. In Poland, he argues, the
future of the Left is the rump that broke
away at the conclusion of the final congress
of the Polish United Workers Party, where
Social Democracy of the Republic of
Poland, PUWP?’s successor, was estab-
lished. The second party is just a “salvage
attempt,” in Fryer’s view and only “‘genuine
social democracy” has a chance.

For Germany, re-unification is imminent
and the best of all worlds will see the Ger-
man Social Democratic Party running the
whole show, in his view.

While it may be futile to dispute the claim
that CPs in the neo-Stalinist mold have had
it, it remains far from clear that all that
remains for progressives is a_ heartfelt
embrace of organizations modelled on the
French Socialist Party and the New Zea-
land Labour Party, rarely identified these
days as friends of labour.

That does seem to be the line of the
NUPGE leader, though here he is more
ambiguous.

Asked for his impressions of the Left’s
chances in Hungary, he replies “not bad,
not bad,” and then acknowledges a future

for the Socialist Party, the legal successor of
the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party.

“Yes, yes, there it’s (the Communist
Party) been gone fora lot longer. They were
a lot smarter, the old Hungarians, they saw
the writing on the wall and said ‘let us dis-
solve now,’ bingo, and let us be part of the
new process, and they are genuinely part of
the new process, and while there is abso-
lutely no hope of them being elected the
government, they do believe that a social
democratic grouping (of which they are
part) of independent parties will form the
largest single chunk after the elections.”

Still, there remain some more important
ideological matters. What is a social demo-
cratic Europe, anyway? Fryer talks about a
place where progressive parties govern,
mixed economies flourish, and social pro-
grams are developed and generous. But the
prickly question of the state remains, unad-
dressed.

On another point, the future of Poland’s
Solidarnosc, Fryer is among those in the
West beginning to cast a critical eye on the
movement launched by Lech Walesa.

“In my view Solidarnosc is in danger of
developing into a right-wing Christian
Democratic Party. Solidarnosc has factions
within it. There are factions that want it to
be what Walesa said it was, a trade union,
and they want it to do trade union work.

“And yet there are other people in Soli-
darnosc who say we are the political
winners and we have the right to govern the
country so we should transform Solidar-
nosc into a political party. So then where is
it positioned on the ideological spectrum,
and to me it looks centre-right.”

In the Soviet Union, Fryer asserts, the
message is gloomy. Leaving aside the fact
that social democratic parties aren’t
numerous in the USSR — and that is a
negative thing for the NUPGE leader —
Fryer is genuinely concerned that ethnic
strife has effectively blocked reform in the
Soviet Union.

To the question of whether he sees a
Soviet society being rejuvenated or collaps-
ing, Fryer responds “a bit of both,” but in
expanding on his answer, he leans more to
the latter. CPSU members he spoke to were

above all obsessed, understandably, with

tensions and violence between the nationali-
ties. And he has serious misgivings about
the pace, manner and style of the reform
there.

As well, like other commentators, he
bemoans the infrastructural problems of
Soviet society that undermine moderniza-
tion efforts.

But he returns to the purpose of the trip,
emphasizing the need for further contact
among unions on both continents.

“T think that we should open up all the
possible exchanges that we can. We offered
in each country specific proposals for an
exchange program.” Are Canadian trade
unionists going to get anything out of this?

“Yes, absolutely, it’s unbelievable. We
got some very interesting ideas about
maternity leave for example. In all of these
countries it’s a minimum one year and a
maximum of three years, depending on the
country, that a woman is allowed to take
maternity leave — and receive 70 per cent
of her salary.

“I think with a version of that, we could
perhaps Canadianize it, and allow either
parent to take the three years ... and I think
that would be an important and modern
social safety benefit and something the
trade union movement, for example, could
champion. And so there’s lots to learn from
them.

“So I don’t want to imply for a moment
that there isn’t much to learn. We should
reach out the hand of friendship to them.”

| Labour Notes

Drug chain closes
strikebound store

The United Food and Commercial
Workers charged last week that a Phar-
masave franchisee’s decision to close the
chain’s Newton store where employees
have been on strike since November,
1988 was aimed at union-busting.

“This employer has refused to recog-
nize the rights of these employees from
day one,” said UFCW Local 1518 presi-
dent Jack Allard. He added that the clo-
sure was intended to “send a message” to
other employees in the drug chain seek-
ing to organize.

The franchise owner announced the
closure last week, citing combined losses

, of $250,000 at the store, located in Sur-

rey’s Newton Town Centre Mall. After
provoking the walkout 14 months ago,
he has operated the store with scabs but
his business was substantially reduced as
the result of the strike and a consumer
boycott.

His lawyer admitted that the opera-
tion had been one of the most profitable
in the chain before the strike, indicating
that if he had settled the dispute, he could
have returned the store to profitability.

Employees at the store, some of whom
had been with the operation for 17 years,
charged that Keller had unilaterally
imposed wage and benefit cuts and had
harassed workers when he took over the
franchise three years ago. His action
prompted the workers to-unionize, and
11 women finally walked out on strike in
November, 1988.

Keller repeatedly sought wage roll-
backs in negotiations, although his rates

were already some 20 per cent below
UFCW-negotiated wages at the Shoppers
Drug Mart chain.

The UFCW maintained picket lines at
the store throughout the strike and last
year called on the B.C. Fed to declare a
consumer boycott of the Pharmasave
chain.

HEU raps employer
rejection of parity

The 37 long-term care facility employ-
ers represented by the Continuing Care
Employee Relations Association
(CCERA) last week rejected a contract
settlement proposed by mediator Dalton
Larson, prompting an angry response
from the Hospital Employees Union.

“We can only conclude that these
employers feel that long term care
employees should be treated as second-
class health care workers,” HEU
secretary-business manager Carmela
Allevato said in a statement. “In 1985 we
went on strike to achieve comparability
between long term care and acute care
workers. It’s an issue that union
members fought for and won and from
which we will not retreat.”

Larson’s recommendations would
have seen the 2,000 members working in
long term care achieve wage and benefit
parity with 20,000 HEU members work-
ing in acute care hospitals and other facil-
ities.

Noting that the union had already rat-
ified the deal even though it fell short of
union demands, Allevato called on
CCERA to rescind its rejection vote “to
avert a crisis in long term care.”

If CCERA does not ratify the recom-
mendations, the two sides are to return
to the bargaining table. No date has yet
been set for further negotiations.

Pacific Tribune, February 12, 1990 e 7