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¢ During Federal election, NDP Leader Alexa McDonough attended Day of Mourning event conducted by the

B.C. Federation of Labour and the New Westminster and District Labour Council.

Labour council hosts Day of Mourning event

his year marked the 14th
consecutive annual com-
memoration of Labour’s
Day of Mourning of April
28. Across Canada union
members and their supporters held
ceremonies to pay respect to the
working men and women who have
been killed and injured on the job.
1.W.A. CANADA local unions
across the country participated in
such events. Leading up to and
including on April 28, several local
unions had Day of Mourning mes-
sages, spoken by National President
Dave Haggard, played as public ser-
vice announcements on local radio
stations.
In his message, Brother Haggard
requested that the general public
join the I.W.A. in a moment of silence
for the hundreds of workers who are
‘killed on the job and the thousands
who are injured every year. He told
the public that the union is continu-
ing its fight for better occupational

health and safety standards for all

workers.

At a ceremony held by the B.C.
Federation of Labour, in cooperation
with the New Westminster and Dis-
trict Labour Council at City Hall
chamber in Burnaby, B.C., Ken Geor-
getti, President of the B.C. Federa-
tion of Labour, said that the labour
movement is beginning to reclaim
the rights of workers that have been
lost of the years.

The Fed issued a “Declaration of
Fundamental Worker Health and
Safety Rights.”

The declaration included the fol-
lowing points:

° mandatory effective action by
employers and governments to
protect workers from the hazards
of workplaces, r

° the protection of humans from
pain, suffering, and loss of enjoy-
ment of life after injury,

° the right of equal protection for all
working people, regardless of their

occupation or personal character-
istics,

° the rights of children to the pro-
tection of environmental and phys-
ical hazards that are faced at work,

° the right of employment for dis-
abled workers,

° the right for fair and full compen-
sation for economic harm caused
by workplace injury and disease.

Georgetti said that “these rights
and more are fundamental to
progress in workplace health and
safety.”

“Without respect for these rights,
the temptation to reduce the eco-
nomic costs while forgetting the
human costs will be too great,” he
said.

Federal NDP leader Alexa McDo-
nough, in the first days of the elec-
tion campaign, said that the Day of
Mourning represents a day where
working people are “united by sor-
row and united by solidarity.”

She related her experiences, as

the NDP’s provincial leader during
the time of the Westray Mine disas-
ter in May of 1992 when 26 miners
perished in an explosion and cave
in, in Pictou County.

She recalled how the event
“turned hour by hour, day by day
into a nightmare (and then) into
despair.”

Members of surviving families
asked her to push for a full public
inquiry into the disaster which even-
tually took place.

Families pleaded with her to do
everything in her power to prevent
anything like that from happening
in the future.

“It's hard to know what was worse
on the day of the (Westray) memori-
al service (in 1992),” said Ms. McDo-
nough. “The families’ immense sense
of loss or the realization that the
disaster hadn’t had to happen...that
it was the result of deliberate deci-
sions and reckless, criminal disre-
gard for the health and safety of
workers.”

McDonough pointed out that,
each year, about 800 working Cana-
dian are killed and more die from
work-related industrial diseases
than are killed in motor vehicle acci-
dents.

She reminded those in attendance
that it was long-standing former
Member of Parliament Rod Murphy
(from the Churchill riding in north-
ern Manitoba) who introduced a pri-
vate member’s bill which eventually
made the Day of Mourning officially
recognized for the first time across
Canada in 1991.

She also pointed out that 1997
marks that second year that the
International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions, with affiliates in over
70 countries, is recognizing the Day
of Mourning.

“The power of working people,
united in common cause, cannot be
overestimated,” said McDonough.
She said that power has to be used
effectively “so that nobody has to
put their life on the line just to put
food on the table.”

Other speakers included the
mayor of Burnaby, MP Sven Robin-
coe and Colleen Jordan of CUP.

Ohta strike gets talks on track

Forty-eight woodworkers in Local
1-3567 went out on a four day strike
to bring their employer to its senses
after it had laid them off and tried to
bring in non-union contract workers.

Astrike by I.W.A. members at the
NPK Ohta Lumber Canada sawmill
in Maple Ridge, between March 19-
22, resulted in the company backing
down on contracting out work after
it gave lay-off notices to its union-

ized workforce in January. The union
was trying to negotiate a collective
agreement when Ohta started to
bring in non-union millwrights,
welders, electricians and a watch-
man to work in the plant during a
shutdown.

A three year collective agreement
expired in July of 1996.

“We decided to take a strike vote,”
said Local 1-3567 President Sonny

Ghag. “A strike was our only effec-
tive recourse. If the crew would have
sat back at home, the employer would
have continued to do what it was
doing while we would be filing griev-
ances and taking weeks and months
to solve problems.”

The mill is a state-of-the-art two-
line Japanese made vertical grain
sawmill which produces yellow cedar
products. It has 2 pony-rig saws and
a two twin resaws.

As of press time the mill is under-
going an ownership change from a
Japanese owner to a Vancouver-
based company.

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© Out on the picket line at the NPK Ohta Lumber company gate were Local 1-3567 members who are fighting for
b wages and against non-union contractors.

Brother Ghag said that since union
members have returned to work,
their grievances are being handled
under the collective agreement in
place. The’crew members affected
want back pay from the employer
and are now going to arbitration to
get it.

“The employer must learn that if
and when there is work available,
that work must go to our members
who are capable of doing it,” he said.

The union has served notice that
it intends to get coast master agree-
ment rates of pay in the next collec-
tive agreement.

en we organized the plant we
decided to give the employer a few
years to start-up operations,” said
Ghag. “Now we have made it clear
that, whoever owns the mill, should
adhere to the standards of the coast
master agreement.”

Wages, at the time of the strike,
were about $2/hr. below the coast
master rates.

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LUMBERWORKERJJULY 1997/17