——.- Ryder family out in the cold
People lose homes, banks get richer

By MIKE PHILLIPS

FORT ERIE — No matter what
comes next, January 5 will remain a sad
and frustrating memory for Richard
Ryder, his wife Theresa, and their
daughters Michele, 10 and Melissa, 7.
That date will permanently scar their
past as the terrible day the Bank of Nova
Scotia literally threw the family out into
the cold and.locked them out of their own
home.

It wasn’t something the Ryders had to
face alone thought. The presence of
some 30 trade unionists from the St.
Catharines and surrounding area made
the eviction the kind of public and neigh-
borhood event it needed to be. But that
didn’t take the sting out of the profound
injustice inflicted on the unemployed
auto worker and his family.-

The scene was bleak outside the
Phipps St. house as fellow workers
quietly picketed. Their placards angrily
denounced the bankers and big-business
government of Ontario’s Tory premier
William Davis, the Bank of Nova Scotia,
and the federal Liberal government for
letting the banks outrageously gouge the
public with criminally-high interest
rates.

Newspaper and television reporters
milled around, recording the ‘grim evi-
dence of a decaying economic system
that increasingly is failing to provide its
people with the necessities of life. Inside
the well-kept house, still more reporters
jockeyed to interview the Ryders.

Richard Ryder, a 44-year old, laid-off
worker at the Chevrolet plant in the Buf-
falo, New York, suburb of Tonnawanda,
just across the river from Fort Erie, kept
his dignity throughout the ordeal of bar-
ing his misery to reporters in his living
room, kitchen and incessantly on the
telephone.

His gut instinct told him to fight for his
home. In fact, he told reporters on sev-
eral occasions: “‘I’m goint to stay.

- There’s no way I’m going to let anybody
put my family out on the street on a cold
day like this without any place to go.

“Tm staying, even if I have to board
myself up in this house’’, Ryder quietly
declared.

Crisis Deepened

. The chain of lousy breaks climaxed by
the eviction, started at the beginning of
1981 when Ryder was forced to stop
working because of illness. The family’s
crisis deepened later in the year when
Ryder found himself among the members
of United Auto Workers Local 774 laid
off at the Chevy plant, in the U.S.

It was tough enough trying to meet the
monthly mortgage payments of $265
without drawing his regular $245 a week
pay cheque, but the task became totally
impossible last February when the Ryd-
ers were hit with a 24% interest rate hike

“It’s the children who are going to suffer the most from all of this”, Theres Ryder said on

TRIBUNE PHOTO — MIKE PHILLIPS

the day she, her husband Richard, inset, and daughters Melissa, 7, left, and Michele 10

were turned out of their home by the bank.

and the bank’s demand they cough up
$323 a month to keep their home.

The Ryders had bought the yellow
frame house on Phipps Street in 1977 and
paid their monthly instalments to the
bank like clockwork.

Remarkably, considering the only
regular source of income to the family
was Richard’s weekly New York state
unemployment benefit of $125, the fami-
ly, as ademonstration of good faith to the
bank, was abie to scrape together $1,000
in October, to pay toward their
mortgage. °

“Since then we’ ve tried to dig up more
money, but we just can’t do it on $125 a
week and still meet the bills’’, he said.
**My stomach is in a knot over all of this
right now.

**The government ought to step in and
put a stop to this kind of thing’’, Ryder
said, “it’s always the working man who
suffers.”

The strain of the humiliation and an-
guish the bank had put her through was
beginning to tell on Theresa Ryder. La-
ter, when the county sheriff would arrive
with a representative from the bank, and
a locksmith to change the locks on the
house, she would defiantly inform these
grasping flunkeys for the bank that there
was no way she would voluntarily leave
that house without her furniture and
other possessions.

Kids Suffer Most

But, sitting in her kitchen before these
nerds arrived, the words didn’t come eas-
ily to describe her feelings on that ugly
day.

“‘Our lawyer told us to put the house
up for sale and that would stop the evic-

tion, but it didn’t so I don’t know what to
believe’, she said. ‘‘Now we’re being
told by the bank that we just have to
leave...”

With her daughters sitting next to her,
Theresa explained how they would be
affected. ‘‘They have to go to special
school nearby because they have speech
problems, now we don’t know where
we're going to be. There are no houses
available around here, we’ve looked. If
we move away they won't be able to go
to the same school and get the special
help they need”’, she said. ‘‘ The kids are
going to suffer the most by all of this.’’

As the sheriff, then the bank repre-
sentative, and finally the locksmith all
slithered passed the pickets into the
Ryder home to take possession for the
bank, they were greeted with the well-
deserved contempt of the angry crowd of
Ryder supporters. Two, among those
supporters had special cause to be angry.

Michael Jacques was evicted from his
Fort Erie home last year, because he lost
his job through illness and couldn’t pay
his mortgage. He was accompanied on
the picket line by his young son, who still
keeps the memory of that terrible day
among his childhood recollections.

“I got the same dirty deal as this guy
here’’, Jacques’ said. ‘‘I lost $15,000 that
I'd invested in that house. Do you want
to know what’s happened to my place
since I was evicted? That house is com-
pletely deteriorated, and this place is
going to be just the same. It’s going to
drop in value $4,000 to $5,000 or more.”’

Next Protest

Jim Cunningham, an unemployed
refrigeration mechanic suggested his St.
Catharine’s home may be the scene of

‘Jan. 1, 1982. The financial squeeze is so

- Harrison, whose organization had called |

the next workers’ protest against an evic-
tion. It’s the Royal Bank that has its ta-
lons into Cunningham.

They told him two months ago that the |
rate of interest on his mortgage would |
jump from 10'2% to 17'4-18% effective -

tight that his two oldest children have —
moved out to ease the burden. He’s. used

up all the holiday pay and severance

benefits acquired from the layoff and |
with the growth in his outlay for the”
mortgage there isn’t much left to keep —

him, his wife and their 12-year old son |

going.

“*T guess I'll have to start selling off the
furniture next to keep the family in
groceries and such’’, Cunningham, hae
came to Canada 18 years ago from Bri-
tain, admitted.

Having been among the first workers
to open up northern Alberta’s tar sands
development, Cunningham feels he’s put
his ‘‘bit in for this country’ but laughs off |
the claims of corporate politicians like
Tory federal leader Joe Clark when they —
speak of Canada as a land of opportunity.

“People can’t even afford to live in
their own homes, but the banks are col-
lecting houses just like it was some kind |
of giant game of monopoly,”’ he said.

So far, none of the Liberal or Tory |
politicians at the federal.and provincial |
levels have seen fit to answer Cunnin-
gham’s letters or phone calls requesting
help in dealing with the bank:

After.a couple of hours of discussion
between the sheriff, the Ryders, St.
Catharines labor council president Len

the protest, and a community lawyer in--
side the house, it was agreed the Ryders
would leave and return for their belong-
ings later.

Outside Premier’s Door

They were to stay with relatives until
the All Peoples’ Church in St. Catharines
was able to find them suitable rental
accomodation. Sadly and reluctantly the
family left the house, planning to return
the next day for furniture and personal —
belongings, with the protesters offering
them expressions of support and en-
couragement.

Len Harrison, visibly angered by the
family’s ordeal told the sombre crowd:
“I hope Bill Davis is proud of himself
today — helping to put a worker out on -
the street:”’

Ryder’s experience, Harrison em-
phasized, is being shared by many in the
St. Catharines community. ‘‘It’s happen-
ing a lot more’’, he said, ‘‘but so far
people are ashamed to talk about it.
They’re just quietly walking away and
it’s not being recorded.

“‘Well, I can guarantee that the Bank
of Nova Scotia will not just be hearing
from us, they'll be seeing us and very

soon.”’

jevceenuseeusenenaacenacaovenasnianeait eS eee ERP eee eer ee |

the provincial council took the
international union before the On-
tario Labor Relations Board for
denying rank and file Ironworkers
and their elected officers the right
to bargain a new contract in 1980
with Ontario Hydro, international
union president John Lyons froze

It is a fight that pits the majority the council’s funds last July, then and the means to squash any | Piss
of Ontario’s 4,500 Ironworkers placed it under trusteeship. He movement toward this goal.”’ As the Tribune went to press,
s members, local officers and pro- appointed James Phair of Local 721 is the biggest Iron- Jan. 7 representatives from the
rooted in a council executive, all Windsor as the trustee. workers local in Ontario and has__five locals met in Toronto with
we the trustee and international lead-

TORONTO — The struggle
for Canadian autonomy in the
building trades was spotlighted
again last week as five Ontario
locals of the Ironworkers union
battled their international leader-
ship for control of the provincial

bargaining council.

by Canadian Labor Con-
gress president Dennis McDer-
mott and a tiny handful of auto-

The provincial council’s com-
plaint that the international, by
signing a new contract with

Lyons’

move to place the.
council under trusteeship, in the
opinion of Toronto Local 721 was
designed to ‘‘prevent the ongoing
movement toward autonomy for
Ironworkers in this province’’,
and was. meant to show that the
U.S; leadership has the ‘‘power

consistently been in the front
ranks of those building trades
forces fighting for Canadian au-

Thunder Bay, and Ottawa locals’
appeal to the labor board to over-
throw the union’s trusteeship
over the provincial bargaining
council, warning that if the law
upheld the international’s posi-
tion, the labor movement would
launch a fight to change that law.

ers to block the U.S. mandarins’
efforts to dump locally elected

cratic and dictatorial union Hydro that wasn’t ratified by the tonomy. negotiators at this Spring’ s round
Officiers ensconced in their workers in any way, had robbed CLC president Dennis of contract talks in favor of ap-
autonomy Washington, D.C. international the members of their right to bar- McDermott has called on the On- pointees from the international.
headquarters. gain collectively under the law, is _tario government to support the The outcome of the meeting was
> Flowing from a fight in which still before the board. Toronto, Hamilton, Sudbury, unknown at press time.
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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JAN. 15, 1982— Page 8