Full employment

the only answer

by Ken Georgetti

uring the past decade, more than
120,000 workers in British Columbia
\have joined unions affiliated to the
wp J B.C. Federation of Labour. The Fed-
< / eration membership is now just un-
"der 340,000 workers, the highest in
the history of labour in our province. Almost
fifty percent of all non-agricultural workers in
B.C. belong to a union. Never in the history of
the province have we experienced such a
rapid growth in union membership.

The reason for the phenomenal growth of
unions is simple; working people recognize
unions as the organizations in our society that
best represent their economic and social in-
terests in difficult times.

For the past ten years, workers in our coun-
try have endured real unemployment levels
well over 10 percent. Real wages have fallen
steadily, and family incomes have been erod-
ed to the point that, in 71 percent of families
with children, both parents must now work
outside the home just to keep family income
steady.

Over 1.2 million Canadian children are
growing up in poverty; over 4.5 million Cana-
dians depend on food banks to survive.

But Canadian corporations and their politi-
cal allies offer only one solution - more of the
same. They have no alternative to “structural”

unemployment levels
as high as 8 percent. In
fact, even small im-
provements in the em-
ployment picture trig-
ger panic in the invest-
ment community. The
markets thrive on the
misery of workers.

Corporate Canada in-
sists we can only enjoy
economic growth if we
choke off inflation, cur-
tail government social spending, cut unem-
ployment insurance and welfare, and end the
minimum wage.

They say we must scale back environmental
protection and eliminate health and safety
regulations that pre-

prepared to accept their threadbare policies.
They're turning to unions for alternatives.

Canadian unions insist that economic
growth must benefit us all, instead of simply
generating high returns and obscene salaries
for the few. It’s not enough for Canadian busi-
ness to haul in greater and greater profits
while shedding more and more jobs.

We're lobbying government and business to
join us in adopting full employment as a cen-
tral economic and social policy goal. We must
have job creation to maintain social harmony
in Canada and place our country on a sound
fiscal footing. Only a national commitment to
job creation will protect our society from con-
vulsive social unrest and violence that visits a
society in which young people and the unem-
ployed have lost all hope of sharing in even a
small portion of the

vent workers from
being crippled and
killed on the job.
Groups like the
B.C. Business Coun-
cil and the Mining
Council lobby con-
stantly for lower tax

Only a national committment
to job creation will protect
our society from convulsive
social unrest

country’s wealth.
Unions are lobby-
ing for the training
that will allow work-
ing people and our
children to adjust to
the rapid economic
and technological

levels, even though
this will squeeze off revenue we desperately
need for hospitals, schools, roads and sewers,
and will make it more difficult for govern-
ments to pay down debt.

These are the same tired economic pre-
scriptions that now bring unemployment and
poverty to 35 million people in the western in-
dustrialized countries annually. If economic
growth results from these policies, few Cana-
dians will enjoy any of its benefits.

National surveys, like the recent EKOS poll,
show the majority of Canadians don’t share
the priorities of the business elite and aren’t

changes. We’re de-
manding strong employment standards, im-
proved health and safety, pensions and health
care reforms.

Membership in unions is increasing because
organized labour is the only force that can
narrow the widening gap between those that
have and those that have little or nothing.

Working people are looking for something
different, something positive, something that
works, and they are finding it in unions.

Ken Georgetti is the President of the B.C.
Federation of Labour.

Harris government hits
working people in Ontario

What will happen to working peo-
ple and their families if their NDP gov-
emment lost to the Gordon Campbell
Liberals or the Jack Weisgerber Re-
formers? Ask workers in Ontario.

The Ontario Federation of Labour
(OFL) is circulating information on
some of the extreme right-wing mea-
sures already made by the Mike Harris
government. There are some very
hard changes coming in the Spring
budget.

Here is what is happening and what
will happen to the province's
Medicare system, according the the
OFL.

e the Health budget has been cut by
$132 million and there are $2 billion
more in upcoming cuts.

° up to 38 hospitals will be closed,
hospital budgets were cut by $20 mil-
lion as of October 6.

e Senior citizens will have to pay
user fees for medicines under the On-
tario Drug Benefit Plan.

Looking at job creation, the view is
equally grim.

¢ JobsOntario has been cancelled
last July and training of welfare recipi-
ents has been terminated.

e Jumpstart, the program for sup-
port of 66,000 youth has been

scrapped.

e $200 million has been slashed
from rapid transit, roads and high-
ways.Cuts of $16 million in Municipal
Operating subsidies have put the
Wheel-Trans service for disabled per-
sons on the chopping block.

e the Canada-Ontario Infrastructure
job program has been cut by $287 mil-
lion.

Looking at the tax system, the gov-
ernment has vowed a 30% provincial
tax cut which will benefit someone
earning $100,000 annually for $6,000
but will benefit those earning under
$30,000 only about $300.00.

This tax break will increase Ontario
public debt by over $30.8 billion over
the next five years.

"Everybody but the wealthiest 10%
of the population of Ontario will suf-
fer because of these cuts," says Gor-
don Wilson, President of the OFL. "It's
easy to tear things down, dismantle
whole service areas like: shelters,
group homes, the Royal Commission
on Workers' Compensation, welfare
and community projects. It's not easy
to build, develop and create - to posi-
tion Ontario to survive in the new
global economy."

Sm

Dues Balloting

A national referendum ballot on the
issue of a National Per Capita formula
is now being taken in I.W.A. CANADA.
The new Per Capita formula would
eliminate inequities between local
unions who currently pay almost 50%
of their montly dues to the National
union and other local who pay only
23% of their dues.

A resolution which passed at the
union’s National Convention in early
October calls for local to pay 73% of
one hour of the base rate in each indi-
vidual operation to the national office.
Of the money sent, 70% would go into

REED LUDO ELE BLES LTE:

16/LUMBERWORKER/NOVEMBER, 1995

the National Union's general fund and
30% would go into the Strike Fund.

In a message to I.W.A. members,
National Union President Gerry
Stoney says the the ballot is of great
importance to the future of the union
as is provides a fair and equitable for-
mula for payment of dues to the Na-
tional.

The formula will allow the National
union to maintain existing services
and expand in the future. The Strike
Fund, which now has an all-time high
of $13 million in it, will have over $15
million in it by the time B.C. provin-
cial negotiations begin in 1997.

See Message from President - Page
Four

Here's what's happening to Work-
ers' Compensation.

© benefits will be cut 5% for work-
ers while premiums for employers are
being cut by 5%.

e a bi-partite Board of Directors
with equal labour and management.
membership will be replaced with an
employer-dominated Board.

e an estimated 20,000 employers
who should be paying into WCB re-
main undetected.

In other moves by the Harris gov-
ernment, the Chair of the Ontario
Labour Relations Board, Judith Mc-
Cormack was fired in July. Then in
July the Workplace Health and Safety
Agency was disbanded, to be taken
over by the WCB.

"Why is the Minister not addressing
the real problems in the system..such
as the thousands of workers who are
disabled and unemployed whose WCB.
benefits are so low that they must re-
ceive social assistance?" asks Wilson.

Ontario's minumum wage has been
frozen for likely five years and will
not be increased until U.S. border
states have increased their minimum
wages to Canadian levels.

In the areas of labour laws there is
bad new for workers. Bill 40 reforms
will be wiped out this fall with the in-
troduction of a Bill 7 by the Harris
government. Here are some of those
changes.

e the sign-up card system of union
certification will be placed by manda-
tory certification votes, allowing em-
ployers to organize anti-union cam-
paigns.

° employers will be allowed to insti-
gate anti-union petitions and not be
disciplined for intimidation and inter-
ference.

e union successorship rights for
Crown employees are being stripped
away, while workers in the contract
service sector will also lose those
rights. That will also Harris to further
privitize Crown corporations and strip
workers of their collective bargaining
rights.

¢ the Ministry of Labour will have a
46% cut in its budget resulting in stag-
gering layoffs of 20% of Health and
Safety Inspectors, and one third of
Employment Standards Inspectors,
meaning that employers will be under

less pressure to maintain safe work-
places.

¢ employers may instigate decertifi-
cation procedures.

The Harris government is also tak-
ing aim at the province's education
system. Minister of Education John
Snobolen has told his bureaucrats to
"invent and education crisis."

° grants to school boards were
slashed by $32 million this past July
with more huge cutbacks coming in
the spring budget,

° community college budgets have
been cut by $6 million and universities
have been cut by $17 million.

e junior kindergarten programs
have been made optional and the ND-
P's program to make all child care
centre into non-profit operations has
been ended. :

¢ the Ontario Training and Adjust-
ment Board has had its 1995-96 train-
ing budget chopped by $10 million.

In the area of welfare, social assis-
tance rates have been cut by 22% as of
October 1. That will take food off the
table of 500,000 children across the
province.

"Workfare" will be introduced for
all able-bodied welfare recipients,
raising the question of which jobs will
be for welfare-level wages in the fu-
ture.

Special assistance to municipalities
with high welfare caseloads is termi-
nated and has been shifted onto the
property taxes.

Union workers across Canada
should understand that this assault on
workers’ rights and benefits is not

something that the Harris government
dreamed up on its way to office. It is
much like the program of Alberta's
Ralph Klein government and like the

programs of B.C.'s Bennett govern.
ment in 1983. on

Just as I.W.A. CANADA members
want to buy more groceries for their
families for less money, so too do
right-wing supporter want to buy
cheaper and more obedient labour,
This is the thread that ties these

spending and program cuts together,