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Deal opens door to U.S. labour laws

Have you noticed how harmless the
rhetoric of free trade seems? To get to the
“level playing field,” the deal’s corporate
champions tell us will require that a broad
swath of social, economic and other con-
ditions will need to be “harmonized.”

One of the things that will undoubtedly
need to be “harmonized” in the wake of

fe trade with the U.S. is Canadian labour
aw.

i The very logic of Reagan’s plan for a
- “continental economic constitution” will
demand the reduction of our labour rela-
tions institutions to the pro-business strait-
jacket that a prominent Canadian labour
lawyer has described as an “elegant tomb-
stone for a dying institution.” AFL-CIO
president Lane Kirkland has called the

US. labour relations system a “dead let-
ter.”

The free traders in the Canadian big
business camp don’t only want access to
that American market, they also will need
to Americanize wages and social rights in
order to compete. And when they talk
about harmonizing, Americanization is
really their intention.

Laurent Thibault of the Canadian
Manufacturers Association doesn’t beat
around the bush: “It’s simply a fact that as
we ask our industries to compete toe to toe
with American industries... we in Canada
are obviously forced to create the same

conditions in Canada that exist in the U.S.,
whether its the unemployment insurance
scheme, workers’ compensation, the cost
of government, the level of taxation, what-
ever.”

Indeed the process is already under way
if we look at British Columbia and the
Socred government’s Bill 19 — which
was projected in the neo-conservative
spirit of making the investment climate
more attractive.

A quick look at American labour law
and industrial relations shows us that
union organizing is severely restricted
compared to our laws. The labour rela-
tions system is much more openly aligned
with the corporate community (although
Canada is moving quickly in that same
direction.) In addition, the American pub-
lic sector worker virtually has no strike
right and right-to-work laws are rampant
throughout the country.

The fact that union organization sits at _

a pitiful 17 percent of the non-agricultural
work force (compared to 37 percent in
Canada) and that minimum wage laws are
either non-existent (nine states) or shame-
fully low (less than $3 an hour in some 12
states), speaks volumes about the grim
economic reality beneath the “‘level play-
ing field.”

Free trade thus promises to turn the
entire U.S. into a kind of cheap labour
“sunbelt” with respect to Canada.

In the rush to compete south of the
border or to keep American and other
firms from relocating in the right-to-work
sunbelt, added pressure will come down
on other benefits, UI, workers compensa-
tion, pay equity, pensions and the min-
imum wage.

Canadians weren’t given our labour
laws on a platter. They had to be built up
through tough struggles. To the extent
they strengthen the trade union move-
ment, they also help guarantee the whole

gamut of social benefits from medicare to
human rights and pay equity.

Women, the poor and the disabled have
been able to successfully deploy the gains
won by labour to fight against low wages
and inequality.

By protecting labour’s collective bar-
gaining rights, these laws also enforce
Canadians’ ability to effect a measure of
income and wealth distribution that acts
as a means to counter growing poverty.

Organized labour blocks the way to the
dismantling of these social achievements.
That’s why our labour laws are very much
a target of the neo-conservative agenda
disguised as a trade agreement.

That’s also why every Canadian worker
needs to back his/her union, labour coun-
cil, federation and the CLC in their efforts
to encourage and strengthen the country-
wide coalition movement uniting all the
forces determined to save Canada. The
deal can be stopped if Canadians get
together to turf Brian Mulroney and his
neo-conservative majority out of Parlia-
ment.

Now is the time for the demonstrations,
days of protest, lobbies, and whatever
other pressure that can be brought to bear
from all quarters against the dealy.as the
foundation for the kind of popular
movement that will bring the Tories down
whenever they work up the courage to call
for a vote.

Mr. Svend Robinson
Room 386 - CB
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A OA6

. MP.

Rep rt h it sh es
| Dear Mr.

Further to our acknowledgement of
October 23, 1985, in relation to allegations that an RCMP
officer may have interfered in the affairs of a union in

CSIS union spying |

OTTAWA — It didn’t come as much of
‘a surprise to the labour movement March
29 when the supposedly independent Secur-
ity Intelligence Review Committee cleared
the Canadian Security and Intelligence Ser-
vice (CSIS) of allegations that the agency
spied on the trade union movement.

The means with which CSIS was cleared,
however, raises questions about the limits
on the freedom of Canadians to support
whatever legal political parties they choose,
especially if that choice happens to be the
Communist Party.

The investigation was prompted by
Radio Canada, the CBC’s French language
broadcasting arm, last September when it
quoted sources claiming CSIS had infil-
trated the Canadian Union of Public
Employees, the B.C. Federation of Labour,
the Quebec Teachers Central, and the Can-
adian Auto Workers.

The allegations came in the wake of the
exposure in the Confederation of National
Trade Unions (CSN) of CSIS informer
Marc Boivin. Boivin had also previously
worked 15 years for the RCMP. It is known
that the RCMP targeted unions for spying
during the decade prior to the creation of
CSIS in 1984.

His cover was blown as a result of an
investigation that led to his eventual convic-
tion for conspiring to plant bombs in hotels
owned by Quebec city businessman Robert
Malenfant. Malenfant owned the strike-
bound Manoir Richelieu resort, where the
husband of one of the striking hotel workers
was killed after being assaulted by police on
the picket line.

The report released March 29 by federal

| - Solicitor General James Kelleher said the

investigation by the review committee, in
which all three Parliamentary parties were
represented, showed that CSIS hadn’t
directed any of its resources at individual
union members or organizations.

“There is no indication that the service
considers these organizations to be ‘subver-

sive’ organizations, nor that information
was collected regarding them from that
point of view,” the report stated.

However, committee chairperson and
former Tory MP Ron Atkey sought to
excuse Boivin’s undercover role, which led
to illegal activity directed against CSN, by
stating that the informer’s “mandate”
wasn’t so much to spy on his fellow union
members but to spy on communists in the
union’s ranks.

William Kashtan, general secretary of the
Communist Party of Canada, denounced
what he called ‘ta whitewash” of the CSIS
by the so-called watchdog agency, and
charged that in fact Boivin was spying on
the union as well as individual members
who happened fo support the party.

“The Communist Party is a legal party,”
Kashtan said. “It undertakes its activities in
full public view. Some of its members
belong to trade unions because those organ-
izations are open to working people and
that’s where we draw our membership.”

He added that governments fear com-
munists and militant trade unionists gener-
ally, because they defend the interests of
working people and their unions.

The trade union movement, he said, was
on solid ground in expressing “extreme
doubt in the veracity” of the review commit-
tee’s findings. “The activities of the security
service weren’t only directed at the Com-
munist Party, but have also been directed at
the trade union movement, the peace
movement, the New Democratic Party and
all democratic movements.

“When it does that, the CSIS is acting on
behalf of monopoly capital and not on
behalf of democracy.”

The CP leader suggested that the Cana-
dian Labour Congress at its forthcoming
biennial convention should speak out loud
and clear to the effect that it will not tolerate
the CSIS or any other foreign body within
its ranks whose aim is to undermine the

/

from my officials.

Mr. Zander's allegations

of the Service.

British Columbia, I have now received a report on the matter

Vogts ~leqation was in the first Fance Sate

examined hy the Director of the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service and he has advised me that he is
satisfied that there has been no impropriety by any member

p ‘ved-in a meeting ~ =
SS ~Aian Security —

mast Police.

have been carefully

*

kee

Solliciteur général
‘fz du Canada

Solicitor General
of Canada

SE 2? $86

Mr. William Zander, President

British Columbia Provincial
Council of Carpenters

Room 11 - 2806 Kingsway

Vancouver, British Columbia

V5R 5T5

Dear Mr. Zander:

I wish to acknowledge your furth-- ~
1986 requesting additional ge
Canadian Security Inte")
Carpenters’ Unior.

earlier replies dated
than to reaffirm that
appropriate.

earlier
than to
appropr
course,
activiti

activities.

Perrin Beatty

I regret that I can really add nothing further to

I also wish to reiterate that the Service, of
course, has no investigative interest in legitimate union

ais ae

February 7 and May 22 of this year, other
any activities by CSIS were entirely

1986 LETTERS FROM SOLICITOR-GENERAL ... report from independent com-

mission continues Tory whitewash.

trade union movement and its ability to
defend the rights of the working people of
Canada.

Last autumn’s allegations of CSIS pene-
tration into labour’s ranks brought forth an
angry chorus of protest, especially from the
targeted unions.

Jeff Rose, president of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees, took the lead
in condemning alleged CSIS spying inside
CUPE as “outrageous and reprehensible.”

As an organization numbering more
than 340,000 members, many diverse views
are expressed within CUPE ranks, he said,
and the members have ample opportunity
to have their views aired.

“But the kind of manipulation by clan-
destine cells alleged as an excuse for CSIS
activity in our union could well come from
the CSIS agents themselves, bent on black-
ening our reputation on orders from our
spy masters,” Rose said.

Pacific Tribune, April 13, 1988 » 7