BOR Labor in action GEORGE HEWISON An even bigger role for labor Labor and the Fight for Peace ext week's second convention of the Canadian Peace Al- e in Winnipeg will be unique in many respects. First it will » all of Canada’s diverse peace organizations, no mean feat d of itself; secondly, it will be attended by many official sentatives of the trade union movement, including the ,nadian Labor Congress. “we are informed that since CLC president Shirley Carr’s letter vent t@ Canadian trade union locals, two or three of them are ing every day! movement of the trade unions to the centre of the peace with its organizational skills and resources, will add yet per guarantee that the fledgling CPA will survive and become anot erful instrument for peace. a Papready the Congress has come through with ten thousand gollars to assist the Alliance. do Not that labor is a stranger to the fight for peace — far from it. 1 : vidual trade union activists have been in the fight for peace the very beginning of the trade union movement. rade unionists solicited signatures for the original Stockholm the Bomb petitions in the 50s, and have been increasing their jvities ever since. Qualitative Improvement { MOw we witness a qualitative increase in the trade union jcipation for peace. End the Arms Race which brings more one hundred thousand British Columbians onto the streets couver every year has been piloted from the beginning by r council executive secretary Frank Kennedy. The Ontario Federation of Labor has initiated peace com- weces in every labor council in the province. Trade union peace jttees are springing up in all parts of the country. us from the days when the word peace was a vulgar, dirty _,jetter word in Canada, today’s massive peace sentiment, and € werful organized expression of that sentiment, has ged. Thus the active participation of the mainstream trade me"~< iS most timely. sr no one in the peace movement needs to be convinced that orld suspends from a threat, and that the organized peace yement must become broader and more effective, particularly 0 jn Canada where our government has redefined the art of oveling- 2 Identifying War Danger peysavik has helped identify the source of the war danger for people in the world. But it has also unleashed a most ae ent campaign to smother the evidence. : ru is obvious that the military-industrial complex didn’t want i ini-summit to occur in the first place. Now that it has taken , the MIC is trying to take credit for whatever so-called essions the Soviet Union has offered, stating that Star Wars “peace through strength” brought the Soviets to Reykjavik, pat U.S. military superiority is the guarantee for future “255 in arms negotiations. nis delusion is only slightly more dangerous than the Reagan 7 pistration’s forlorn hope of crippling the Soviet economy. A eyious people who have watched the Soviet Union rebuild pprough a revolution, a civil war, foreign intervention by 14 tries and two world wars — to become the power it has — up ot have to struggle long to determine which of our two mies will suffer most by Star Wars, whatever temporary pe ylties the socialist economy may have in its switch over to fi nsive production. Vested Interests Exposed owing that its vested interests are showing, that its argu- . don’t hold water, the MIC is now pulling all its cards in a assault on the peace movement. pe Oldes smokescreen since Joe McCarthy, it trots out its ayn for human rights; and weeps crocodile tears for Afghan- and Poland. i of these subjects is a matter which could occupy many an ; of friendly debate, providing there’s a world left to debate +an ou rawever, if the debate becomes a pre-condition for nuclear pament, or even stepping back from the brink, the world continue to head steadily over the cliff. . CLC resolution to re-establish relations with the All Union ral Council of Trade Unions of the USSR, will hopefully be jemiented soon, for Canadian labor has an even bigger role to the development of understanding between our two coun- am understanding basic to the fight for peace. CP slams UI commission — TORONTO — Welcoming the decision of the labor members of the Forget Royal Commission on Unemployment to disown For- get’s plan for extensive cuts to UI, the Communist Party of Can- ada has called for a massive cam- paign led by organized labor to save the beleaguered jobless benefits system. In a Central Executive Com- mittee statement, Oct. 21, the Mulroney government was lashed for placing UI on the “‘hit list’? of social services the Tories want to wipe out. The party charged that ‘‘the (Forget) Commission is just a smokescreen from behind which to launch yet another neo-con- servative attack on the people of Canada ... in line with the gov- ernment’s drive for maximum profits at the expense of people’s living standards.” On Oct. 13, it was learned through a media leak of the re- port, due to be presented to the government, Nov. 30, that Forget planned changes to the unem- ployment insurance system that would slash $3-billion from the system’s $12-billion annual pay out. In their minority reports Jack Munro of the _ International Woodworkers of America and Steelworkers representative Fran- ces Soboda predicted that Forget’s plan to “annualize” qualifications for benefits would cut the benefits for about 78 per cent of UI claim- ants by an average of $72.50 a week. Forget’s ‘‘annualization™’ scheme would mean a claimant would have to work 52 weeks to qualify for full benefits, while re- gressively docking the benefits of those who couldn't find a whole year’s work. Munro and Soboda said the 47 per cent of future UI recipients would end up with less than $100a week in benefits, while 62 per cent of claimants would qualify for less than what many provinces cur- rently give to single parents on welfare. Forget also would eliminate the regional differences in qualifying periods. “The 25 per cent cut in UI benefits proposed by the Forget Commission will not satisfy big business, but only whet their ap- petite for further cuts, as well as encourage attacks on pensions, family allowances and other so- cial benefits. Moreover, the changes pro- posed by Forget strike at the very heart of ‘universality’ for social programs’’, the party stated. Adding insult to injury it was later revealed that the royal commission, and its bloated ex- pense account were financed out of the UI budget. The statement charged the Tory government with deepening the federal fiscal crisis with its lav- ish handouts to the corporate sec- tor while at the same time slashing social services. “This attack on the unem- ployed is designed to create even more desperation, placing even more pressure on the trade unions, which up to now have re- sisted concessions”, the central executive warned. In calling for a massive cam- paign to halt the attack on the UIC, it also urged the linking of such a drive to the forging of “a popular majority movement of Canadians, outside of Parlia- ment” led by the trade unions, to fight for an alternative to the crisis policies of the Mulroney govern- ment and its corporate friends. Charging Mulroney with ignor- ing the plight of Canada’s more than one and one half million job- less, while dipping into the public treasury to help the corporations, the central executive demanded a new agenda for Canada. ““What has been absent from the Prime Minister's agenda has been a strategy for job creation — a massive public works program, vast increases in social services, or an industrial strategy to use Canada’s wealth to create secon- dary industry, publicly-owned and under democratic control. **What has been absent is a strategy to break the grip of the transnationals, and develop a Canada which is independent economically, politically, mili- tarily and culturally”’. people that’s built into the free enterprise system. gram The case involves the owner of a ing homes here and in Toronto who had to be chased all the way to the Ontario Supreme Court for back wages he refused to pay to members of Local 220 London and District Service. Workers Union. Hugh Maclean, the lawyer in question who owns the St. Raphael’s chain, agreed earlier this month to an out of court settlement that some $400,000 in back pay to 86 full and part-time workers in Kitchener and to 39 more in Durham. But there’s a catch. While the provincial sup- reme court has endorsed both settlements, and the union is holding $92-thousand of the total money in trust, Maclean: has filed for a judicial review of the arbitration awards the settlements are based string of nurs- . Raphael’s rip-off KITCHENER — The monumental rip-off at St. Raphael’s Nursing Homes here and in Durham clearly reveal the discrimination against working on, claiming they could not have been imple- mented legally during the Ontario government's 1982, two-year public sector wage controls pro- - Dates for the reviews haven’t been set, so the union is in the position of having its hands on the cash but unable to give its members their back pay. Local 220 staff rep Bob McFee says the union is confident the awards won't be scuttled by a judicial review because there is no error in law involved in should return the case. As far as the workers are concerned it’s a clearcut example of a cheapskate boss trying to get out of paying workers what he owed them and using every legal loophole at his disposal to stall them from getting their money. “The law is obviously tilted in the employers favor,’ McFee said recently. “If the boss says he won't do a certain thing the workers have to run after him for years, in this case our members have been stalled since 1982. IMAGINE IF PETER POCKLINGTON HAD ACTUALLY BE- COME PRIME MINISTER... don't buy Gainers meat products Gainers-Switts meat prod: ucts PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 29, 1986 e 7