Special to the Tribune
MONTREAL — The battle between
8rossly unpopular Parti Quebecois
80vernment and its 320,000 public sector
Workers entered a new stage last week
With the rejection by health and social
rs workers of a strike mandate for
their unions.

Facing the PQ government's brutal
_ threat of mass firings, and of seeing their
Unions smashed by special legislation,
7000 members of the Social Affairs
ederation (FAS) affiliated to the Con-
‘ederation of National Trade Unions,
(CSN), voted by 55%, Feb. 9 not to re-
sume their so-called illegal, unlimited

8eneral strike against Bills 70 and 105.
The strike was suspended Jan. 31 after
| One day on the picket lines when nego-
_| ‘ators for the government and the union
ie pout a tentative agreement. However,
‘53 Was later rejected by the 750-member
_| *AS executive council by 72% and a
E Strike mandate was sought from the
The Proposed agreement, which the
ae Tejécted as inadequate, exemp-
roll Part-time workers from the wage
backs of as much as 20% over the first

; m :
Bill 105 aes of contracts imposed by

»). Lhe government claims its offer

SO increased job security over the
a aka Imposed in the 109 separate con-
4 ts decreed by Bill 105, and sup-
; x Sedly opened the possibility of more
48es in 1985 in the unlikely event of an

Homic recovery.

-ommon Front union leaders have
maintained from the beginning of the
e Roel Strike that back-to-work legisla-

| 70n wouldn’t bring a halt to the labor

: bovement’s fight to restore collective
rights, the right to strike and

SP repressive laws like Bills 70 and
The new stage of the fight against the
t-union assault by the government of
Mier Rene Levesque, union leaders
d Strikers at the grass roots say, will
) piuire “all out support of the entire
| ~4nadian labor movement to the remain-
; = 30,000 teachers and education work-
Si Who are standing firm on their deci-
©n to stay on strike, and greater moral

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Ra MEP OM

; an

and financial aid to the thousands of
strikers and their unions facing massive
fines and the risk of jail terms for defying
the government. Union leaders are al-
ready fleshing out plans for new forms of
struggle againt the unjust laws and to
regain their trade union and bargaining
rights.

Teachers and education workers who
are still on strike held a protest in Quebec
City Feb. 9 against the government’s
‘terror’ tactics in dealing with hospital
workers and in response to the threat of

back-to-work laws the government is’

threatening them with, if they don’t call
off their strike by Feb. 14.

Over the weekend, the remaining’

90,000 strikers, represented mostly by
the Centrale de 1l’Enseignement du
Quebec, (CEQ), la Federation Nationale
des Enseignents et Enseignentes du
Quebec, (FNEEQ), a section of the CSN
representing teachers in the junior col-
leges (CEGEPs), and about 7,000 mem-
bers of the Canadian Union of Public
Employees, affiliated to the Quebec
Federation of Labor, (QFL), kept their
picket lines solid as union leaders met to

discuss how they would respond to the’
- government’s ultimatum.

The teachers have been the backbone
of the strike since their members
launched it Jan. 27. The CEQ went into
the fray with an 80% mandate from its
members to strike with or without a
Common Front.

The government’s back-to-work law
for the teachers will be at least as vicious
as the legislation it had prepared for hos-
pital workers if they would have voted to
remain on strike.

Drafts of that law, leaked to the labor
movement in order to intensify what
CSN leaders in a prepared statement cal-

led ‘‘a climate of fear and intimidation’,

would have meant immediate dismissal
for any striker defying the back-to-
work-order; the cancellation of the
automatic dues check-off and annulment
of the Rand Formula in all bargaining
units where 75% and less of the strikers
didn’t return to work; and, termination of
the established practice of the employer
maintaining workers’ wages when they

eA

| Teachers denounce gov’t ‘terror’ tactic

higher paid workers.

are off the job on union business.

Teachers stand to lose 8,500 jobs next
September because of staff cuts decreed
by Bill 105. Like the other members of
the Common Front, they see job security
as one of the key issues in the general
strike.

Bill 70 was brought down by the
government last year as a naked grab of
some $400-million from workers’ wages
to shore up the provincial deficit. While
Levesque and his cabinet were waxing
eloquent about the natural ties and
shared economic interests between
Quebec and the U.S., the PQ govern-
ment slashed social services and at-
tacked the labor movement to prove its

‘responsibility’ to the U.S. financial (

monopolies.

Bill 70 proposed a 20% across-the- .

board rollback in wages for the first three
months of 1983, the last year of the p.e-
vious contracts in the public sector. Bill
105 setting new three-year pacts, came
down after the unions refused to re-open
their contracts to accept wage cuts, at-
tacks on job security and working condi-
tions such as staff cuts and lengthening
work time without any raise in pay.
Bill 105 modified the earlier law by
exempting workers earning less than
$20,000 a year from the rollback, and
proposing a sliding scale of cuts for the
rest, leading to as much as 20% for the

The Common Front proposed a wage
freeze in the first year of the new three-
year pact, modest increases in the sec-
ond and third years and maintenance of
the status quo on working conditions and

_ job security provisions in the collective

agreements.
Attention will now focus on the

teachers and educational workers and
their showdown with the government.
Support for them and the rest of the
Common Front has been expressed from
labor across the country.

The Metro Toronto Labor Council,
Feb. 3, extended its ‘‘total and un-
equivocal support’’ to the leadership of
the Common Front and pledged ‘‘to do
everything in (its) power to provide mor-
al, financial and any other kind of support
we can mobilize.”’

Jean Claude Parrot, president of the
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
(CUPW), told a teachers’ meeting Feb.
8, ‘‘nobody has the right to discredit your
cause ... just the way you stand before
the government must tell the people
something.” oe

The teachers, who have also been
defying injunctions trying to force them
back to work, heard Parrot say that the
PQ government, which has pretended to
be progressive in the past, has lost con-
trol. ‘‘Corporations dictate to the
government what to do. The government
is just the messenger boy”’, Parrot said.

“7

weer

Your friends are showing, Dennis .. .

Last week a reader asked us why we started so many
columns with “‘old sayings’’. Our answer to him was we
don t know any new ones. ;
Which reminds us of an old saying that you can judge a
man by the company he keeps.
December minutes of the Executive Council
Meeting of the Canadian Labor Congress contains the
following item:
“Soli idarnosc. .
“In November McDermott was invited tg address ae
Polish Congress in Winnipeg. He presen
the CPC (not the Communist Party of Canada, WS) with
the Canadian Labor Congress Award for Outstanding
Tvice to Humanity, enthusiastically accepted by the
CPC on behalf of the working people of Poland.”
Anyone with a passing knowledge of Canadian politi-
Cal life and the history of the Canadian Polish Congress
know that if there is one thing the Polish Congress is

" Roted for, it is hostility to the labor and trade union

Movement in Canada as well as in Poland.
. One would search in vain for a single example of
Mtervention by the Canadian Polish Congress on behalf
Of working people in Canada, on strike, in struggle,
oistitute, under attack, unemployed victims of racism,
etc., etc.
Its political support has been for the parties of big

USiness, Its hatred of the working-class movement and
Socialism has colored its every action. It has opposed
any and all peace movements, lining itself up behind
Policies of arms build-ups and war to ‘‘liberate’’ Europe.
its present positions place it behind the policies of U.S.
imperialism on the international front.

a

It has wilfully distorted the results of the Second
World War, and vilified the decisions of the Yalta and
Potsdam agreements for equitable settlement of east
European boundaries. It strives to stir up regional and
reactionary nationalist sentiments in the Balkans to fan
the flames of armed conflict in that area. It is linked
together with a network of reactionary Polish emigre

organizations around the capitalist world, closely-

hooked up with the CIA led by deposed Polish capitalists
and landowners and privileged aristocrats.

In its ranks are to be found many ex-supporters of
Hitler fascism who were afraid to return to their own
country following the war, including many who are war
criminals being protected by the Canadian Government.

This is the organization the Canadian Labor Congress
chooses to award for outstanding service to humanity.
This action clearly shows that when you get on the

_anti-communist, anti-Soviet bandwagon as Mr. McDer-

mott has chosen to do on the Polish question, your
actions are no longer determined by the needs and inter-
ests of the working class, but by other forces altogether.

We would not suggest for a minute that everyone who
gave their support to Solidarnosc did so from anti work-
ing-class positions. In fact the strength of the support lay
precisely in the identity of working people with the prob-

lems of the Polish workers, and how they saw the solu-
tions they were striving for. Ican only assume that it was

from this position that Mr. McDermott and the CLC

devoted such energy to support for Solidarnosc. We
think that such support and energy was misdirected and
wrong for reasons which we have argued previously in
this column. However, it is quite another thing to carry
over from such a campaign, awards of virtue to an or-
ganization whose history in the Canadian political and
social movements has been quite hostile to the working-
class movement.

One of Mr. McDermott’s virtues is his quality as a
scrapper. No working-class leader is worth his salt with-
out such a quality. We would suggest however that he
sometimes combines this with another quality that, tak-
ing into account the position he holds, leads to some
problems.

When he gets the bit in his teeth he sometimes does not
know when to shake it out. Circumstances in Poland
have not turned out the way Mr. McDermott predicted
or hoped, and he is somehow still trying to punish the
Polish workers, and all those who disagreed with him for
that fact of life.

Drop it Dennis, let’s get on with the fightback in
Canada which requires every ounce of that scrapping
quality you have, and the struggle for peace and detente,
in which the Canadian trade union movement lags badly.

By the way, we make one confident prediction. The
organization you gave the humanitarian award to will not
show up at your side when you are in battle against
concessions, wage controls and for new policies and new
governments for Canada, and for a peaceful world.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 18, 1983—Page 7 =:

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