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_ CUPW

United Electrical Workers secretary treasurer, and Communist Party

— MIKE PHILLIPS

TRIBUNE PHOTO

Quebec teachers, Boise Cascade striker at Toronto May Day

_ Unity an unbeatable force

TORONTO — ‘‘There isn’t
anyone who can beat the worker
of Canada if we put our mind to
it’’, Boise Cascade Doug Sanders
told a packed May Day meeting
which collected more than $450
for the 23-month strike, April 30.

Saunders was joined by
Quebec Teachers Federation
spokesman Gilles Menard and the
song groups Los Compajfieros as
the focal points of this year’s May
Day celebration organized by the
United May Day Committee of
various labor, peace, cultural,
political, and international sol-
idarity organizations.

United Electrical workers
union (UE) secretary treasurer
Val Bjarnason chaired the meet-

’ ing of more than 350 which heard
May Day greetings from about a
dozen organizations and_ indi-
viduals including Toronto alder-
man and well-known New Demo-
crat Dan Heap, and a written
message from Toronto Mayor
John Sewell. Messages were also
brought from the representative
of the Government of Nicaragua,
in Canada, Pastor Valle-Garay,
from the Co-ordinating Commit-
tee of the Revolutionary Masses
of El Salvador, Alfredo Monge,

executive committee member Val Bjarnason holds up May Day posterat and from the Chilean Labor

on strike against Boise Cascade.

‘ Toronto meeting. Proceeds from the poster sales will go to the workers Union, (CUT), Uruguay’s Labor

Central (CNT), the African Na-

Postal workers won't surrender

WINNIPEG — Delegates to
the 13th Canadian Labor Con-

ss convention affirmed their
commitment to march into the
1980s under the banner of collec-
tive action by pledging to mobilize
planned support campaigns for
striking Boise Cascade workers
and the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers.

Boise strikers return to their
22-month battle for the right to
have a union next week, carrying
with them more than $15,000
raised by delegates and affiliates.

CUPW, ina resolution adopted
May 7, which strengthened the
growing unity of the convention,
was promised full support from
the CLC in the final stages of con-
tract talks being faced by the
union as the convention ad-

- journed.

The CLC resolution, which
was adopted unanimously, call-
ed on the federal government to
grant a full pardon to CUPW pres-
ident Jean-Claude Parrot and for
the stopping of all court proceed-
ings against the union’s other
eight officers. The CLC also cal-
led on Ottawa to order the Fed-
eral Treasury Board and the Post
Office to negotiate a solution to
the problems faced by postal
workers,

But it was in the area of collec-
tive action that the convention
displayed what CLC leaders say
will be the Congress’ style for the
tough battles facing workers in
the 1980s. The convention
pledged to CUPW the active sup-
port of the trade union movement
in the current negotiations, and
that following the convention the
Congress leadership would meet
representatives ‘‘to de-
velop a plan of action necessary
to organize support’’.

In urging support for.the resol-
utio, Bob White, Canadian Direc-
tor of the United Auto Workers,

called on the labor movement to
unite for the battles ahead, one of
which CUPW faces. ‘‘As a vice-
president of the CLC,’ White
said, ‘‘I say as sincerely as I can
that it’s time to put those divisions
behind us.”

He was referring to the criti-
cism under which the CLC and
president McDermott fell for
abandoning CUPW in 1978 after
the government ordered an end to
the postal workers’ strike.
McDermott at that time de-
nounced the strikers and the CLC
refused to support CUPW. White
stressed the need for unity.

CUPW president, Jean-Claude
Parrot thanked those in the labor
movement who had thrown their
support behind CUPW in its hour
of need through moral, financial
and other kinds of support. He
reported that the union was being
forced once again into a strike
position by the government and
the Treasury Board.

He recalled that Deputy Post-
master Generel Corkery had
testified that the Post Office had
refused to negotiate seriously
with CUPW because they didn’t
believe the union could pull off a
strike and, even if it could, the
government would legislate them
back to work anyway.

‘*That was a damned statement
to make,’’ Parrot said, and added,
“‘well, today I have a message for
Corkery: ‘If you try the same
thing this year, you're going to
face some surprises.’ Postal
workers don’t have time to wait
for a decent contract’’.

Referring to past differences
with CLC leadership on the strike
issue, Parrot noted, ‘‘We aren’t
going to talk about the past any-
more. But one thing is clear:
postal workers don’t intend to
surrender to ... the Federal
Treasury Board.

“If the Treasury Board brings

down a law to stop postal workers
from using their legal right to
strike in order to break that strike,
then they had better know it
now,’ Parrot said, ‘‘there’s not
one postal worker in Canada will
go back to work on this basis.

tional Congress and the South Af-
rican Congress of Trade Unions,
the East Indian Workers Associa-
tion, and the Toronto Association
of Peace.

The meeting adopted two re-
solutions. The first called on the
federal government to recognize
Quebec as a nation with the right
to self-determination, and de-
manded Ottawa negotiate a new
made-in-Canada constitution
recognizing, and based on, the
equality of Canada’s two nations,
Quebec and English-speaking
Canada.

The other urged Ottawa to rec-
ognize May Day as a statutory
holiday and to express Canada’s
support for workers’ struggles
throughout the world. It urged the
government to press the USA to
ratify SALT II. Encompassed in
the resolution was the demand
that the government and _indi-
viduals send telegrams to. the
Pinochet fascist junta in Chile,
warning the dictator not to carry
through the violent and repressive
measures his government has an-
nounced and planned to try to
stop May Day demonstrations
and strikes in that country.

Boise Cascade striker Doug
Saunders praised the ‘‘tremend-
ous’’ support the strikers have re-
ceived for their 23-month battle
from workers across Canada, and
he stressed that now is the time to
intensify mass public pressure on
the company to abandon its plans
to smash local 2693 Lumber and
Sawmill Workers Union.

**They brought down a couple
of hundred OPP to ‘protect’ us’’,
Saunders said. ‘‘Some 400
charges were laid against our
members and almost every one of
them has been either dropped or

overturned when they came to
court. We've had people shot
with shotguns and almost killed.””

CEQ spokesman Gilles Menard
said this 85,000-member union
was prqud to join for the first time
in Toronto’s May Day cele-
bration and expressed his solidar-
ity as a Quebec public service
worker with the Canadian Union
Postal Workers, (CUPW) and its
leader Jean-Claude Parrot.

‘The struggle of workers from
B.C. to Newfoundland, from the
Prairies to the Yukon and the
North West Territories is all one
fight — a struggle against the
power of money”’, he said.

As members of the Quebec
Peace Council the CEQ, Menard
said, stresses the important role
workers have to play in the fight

-for peace, disarmament and

international security.

On the Quebec referendum
question, he said, the CEQ stands
in favor of self-determination for
the Quebec people.

John Bizzell, Metro Toronto
Chairman of the Communist Par-
ty, warned of the extreme danger
of war in the world today and said
that without the battle to maintain
and extend peace in the world, all
other demands which usually
characterize May Day would be
redundant. Canadians should
demand the cancellation of the
F-18A fighter plane contract with
McDonnell Douglas, Bizzell said,
and demand the shifting of the
$4.5-billion Canadian war budget
toward social and peaceful uses.
He said the Canadian people must
continue to press the federal gov-
ernment to puruse a foreign pol-
icy promoting peaceful and co-
operative relations between
Canada and the countries of the
socialist world.

Time to nationalize

Chrysler Canada is the place to call a halt to corporate black-
mail, and the sinking of public money into the financing and
rationalization of the U.S. auto industry, the Communist Party of
Canada said in a statement, May 2. The statement issued by the
party’s Central Executive, calls for the nationalization of
Chrysler and all its Canadian assets. It is published in full.

The negotiations now in
progress between the
Government of Canada and
Chrysler Corporation. offer

- several hundred million dollars
for Chrysler and nothing for
the people of Canada; in-
cluding Chrysler workers.

The auto industry in the
U.S. and Canada is in a crisis
of its own making. In quest of
the much larger profits made
on big cars, the U.S. auto cor-
porations ignored small car
production for years and now
is a decade behind catching up
with Japanese and European
competition.

Governments are being
asked to use people’s funds to
finance the retooling of the
automobile industry, taking all
the risks with no guarantee of
jobs for auto workers, while
the decisions and -whatever

_ profits are made, will be made
by the industry.

Canada is in the worst of all
positions in this crisis since the
big corporations care nothing
for the outcome of the de-
cisions on the economy of

Canada and, least of all, on the
workers in the auto industry.

It has now become clear for
all to see. There is absolutely
no future for Canada in an in-
‘tegrated auto industry. The
time has come for Canada to
make a break, and the place to
begin is Chrysler.

The Canadian Government
should nationalize Chrysler
Corporation and all its Cana-
dian assets and use them as a
beginning for a Canadian auto
industry.

The alternative is to con-
tinue to dip into the pocket of
the Canadian people to help
finance the rationalization of
the U.S. auto industry, and
hopelessly paint Canada into a
lop-sided, integrated auto fu-
ture, along with the economic
disaster that means for Canada
and for auto workers.

For those Chrysler workers ©
who would be affected by the
public take-over of Chrysler
the government must make
provision for their job training
*at trade union rates of pay, and
the cost of any relocation

Chrysler

which might be necessitated,
covering the period between
such a public take-over of
Chrysler and the tooling time
necessary to bring a Canadian
car on stream.

This is undoubtedly a dif-
ficult decision for the govern-
ment to make but the alterna-
tive is simply not acceptable.
Canada must stand up to the
blackmail of the auto multi-
nationals, as it must stand up to
the blackmail of all multi-
nationals which are increas-
ingly demanding open access
to the public purse to finance
their further plunder of the
working people.

The trade union movement
in Canada must likewise draw
the conclusion that the future
of its membership cannot be
served by actions which
threaten the very economic fu-
ture of our country. The short
term benefits to some of the
Chrysler workers out of public
purse priming of Chrysler are
obviously outweighed by the
long term disadvantages of
continuing to pursue a policy
of Canadian integration in the
U.S. auto industry.

The Communist Party calls
on the. government to
nationalize Chrysler Canada
now and begin the production
of a Canadian car.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 16, 1980—Page 5