Canada

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During the recent federal elections,
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was
forced to make lots of promises to save his
majority government and his free trade
agreement. Those promises did not extend
to labour. That is consistent with his
divide-and-conquer strategy. If organized
labour — the mainstay of the anti-free
trade movement —can be divided inter-
nally and cut off from its natural allies,
labour will be pared down to size and the
opposition to his agenda will dissipate.

A showdown with the labour move-
ment in the very near future is an essential
payback to the transnational corporations
which helped Brian out by intervening
directly in the federal election campaign.

The first big opportunity involves the
180.000 members of the Public Service
Alliance of Canada (PSAC).

The federal government knowingly
allowed all PSAC’s collective bargaining
agreements to expire at the same time.
Parallel to this. the government was negli-
gent in applying for a court order that
would prevent any of PSAC’s 27 bargain-
ing groups from striking by declaring their
work an essential service. Has the
government gone soft on unionism?

Not a Chance! The Tories have been
stalling negotiations for 18 months, and
Treasury Board has offered an insulting
three per cent, while management increases
have ranged from 8 to 13 per cent.

It becomes very clear that the govern-
ment is ‘n the process of setting up the
union and the entire labour movement. It
intends to force government workers on
strike. whip up public opinion against the
union, then use its parliamentary majority
to legislate them back to work.

At the same time, there is a feeling in
some sections of the Alliance that with all

PSAC bargaining first up
as unions face Tory agenda.

John MacLennan

their members coming into a strike posi-
tion at once, this is the time for the union
to score a victory on disputes pre-dating
the Liberal government’s imposed public
sector wage controls in June,1982.

Any under-estimation of the situation
will have disastrous effects on this public
sector giant and the rest of the trade union
movement.

One of the issues in this set of negotia-
tions is redress for low-paid women cleri-
cal workers. Through a major strike in
October 1980, they won a pay raise that
narrowed the gap in wages with other fed-
eral workers but that was before the
second phase of wage controls.

In the second year of their agreement,
they were hit with the government’s cyni-
cal 6 and 5 program. This act (which came
in the year the clerks were to receive a raise
of 12% per cent) by the Liberal govern-
ment of the day added to the mounting
frustrations and the anger of PSAC
members.

Going back to work with a dictated
contract would inflict a major defeat on
the union whose members provide most of
the social services in Canada.

It would open the door for the Tories to
implement more cutbacks and privatiza-
tion in the public sector. This form of
attack would give the government back-
door access to start dismantling Canada’s

LABOURIN ACTION

social programs. It would also send a
powerful signal to the private sector
employers to get in on the union-bashing.

In this situation, because no one union
can go it alone, there needs to be a cam-
paign of full support for the PSAC. This
support should come from other trade
unions and the groups which are directly
affected by the loss of these programs.

A body of experience has developed
over the years which saw support won
around the Eaton’s, Imperial Bank of
Commerce, and Gainers strikes. Around
these battles, strike support committees
were formed at labour councils. There was
good work done though federations of
labour and local unions. And community
and women’s groups became directly
involved.

The Pro-Canada Network needs look
at this up-coming union struggle as part of
its continued fight against the Tory
agenda, and make it a rallying point to
protect social programs in Canada. Major
organizations should tell the Tory govern-
ment, in joint press conferences with
PSAC, that they will not stand by while
the government sabotages Canada’s social
network.

The looming battle pitting Michael Wil-
son and Treasury Board against PSAC
will be the prelude to the negotiations in
the postal service that begin in the spring.

Sask bill rips up labour standards

A major battle between working people
and the Saskatchewan government is loom-
ing over proposed changes to provincial
labour standards.

The Tory government of Premier Grant
Devine first introduced Bill 73, the
Employment Benefits Act, during the fall,
1988 legislative session, as a replacement for
the 1976 Labour Standards Acct. Bill 73 is to
be reintroduced this spring, when a new
session resumes.

Both the Saskatchewan Federation of
Labour and the Saskatchewan Coalition
for Social Justice, as well as individual
unions, are busy educating the people about
the full implications of the bill. As SCSJ
Coordinating Committee member Dave
Durning has pointed out, “ ... it will have
disastrous consequences for working people
in Saskatchewan. Those particularly affected
will be the working poor, especially women
working in the retail sector.”

In an analysis of the legislation entitled A
Bill of Rights for Employees or a Step
Backwards, Bob Sass and Alice Robert
stress that Bill 73 reverses the underlying
assumptions of earlier labour standards
laws — that many employees are “unable

to strike an equal or fair bargain with the -

employer,” and therefore require the state
to establish bare minimum working condi-
tions.

For example, certain new benefits set out
in Bill 73 (pro-rated fringe benefits, adjudi-
cation for unjust dismissals, provision for
meal breaks) are not mandatory. They must

6 « Pacific Tribune, February 6, 1989

be requested by individual employees, leav-

ing the door open for employer coercion.

Even then, the unjust dismissal and fringe
benefit improvements only apply to those
employed two years or more continuously.

The Labour Relations Board would be
replaced by an Employment Benefits
Board, which would replace the courts in
hearing appeals of decisions made by
Labour Standards (or Employment Benef-

its) officers. But the Bill contains loopholes -

allowing employers to get around this pro-
vision, returning disputes to the courts. And
as Sass and Robert point out, Bill 73 makes
no provision for representation of organ-
ized labour or women on the board, which
would be appointed by the labour minister.

As well as showing that the proposed new
benefits are largely illusory, Sass and Robert
list numerous regressive steps in the legisla-
tion:

@ It appears to allow a two-tier or varia-
ble minimum wage schedule;

®@ Employers would not be required to

give notice of temporary layoffs for 30 days
or less (five days or less under the current
Act);

® In the retail industry, employees may
be requested once a week to work two shifts
a day without being paid overtime for work-
ing more than eight hours that day (an
obvious concession to stores seeking more
late-night shopping hours);

@ Employers are to be allowed to deduct
from employees’ wages cash shortages or
property losses, without first having to
prove employee responsibility;

® Equalpay struggles are undermined by
limiting the area of comparison of pay rates
to within the same municipality or an adja-
cent one;

@ An employer may reduce wages upon
notice of one pay period; ;

® Unionized workers are specifically
exempted from claiming the new benefits in
the legislation;

® Under Section (80)5, one of the most
significant in the Bill, future collective
agreements may waive any provision of the
Employment Benefit Act, and there is no
requirement that the Act prevail over collec-
tive agreements, as in the past.

These and other changes, labour and its
allies agree, have a devastating potential for
both organized and unorganized workers.
If Bill 73 is back on the Tory agenda this
spring, as expected, the legislation could
become the focus of the most bitter fight
ever between the Devine government and
working people.

Shoreworkers
shut down
Nfld. plants

ST. JOHN’S — As the Tribune went
to press, over 4,000 shoreworkers had
walked off the job at nine major fish
plants owned by Fishery Products Inter-
national (FPI), following a breakdown
in wage negotiations for a new contract.
The walkout by the members of the
newly-reformed Fishermen, Food and
Allied Workers (affiliated to the Cana-
dian Auto Workers) has hit FPI opera-
tions at the height of the cod-processing
season.

Union president Richard Cashin told
reporters. that plantworkers insist on
making up lost ground for wage freezes
and concessions during the early 1980s.
At that time they were forced to make
many sacrifices when the east coast
fishery was in financial crisis and the
industry rationalized operations.

FPI itself was created in 1983 as a
Crown corporation to rescue the inter-
ests of private fishing companies and to
maintain production. Substantial public
investment and loan guarantees were
extended to FPI, while wage levels for
plant workers were frozen.

Asa result, real incomes of seasonally-
employed workers were seriously eroded
and continue to lag behind historic wage
levels. FPI, on the other hand, has seen
its financial fortunes improve signifi-
cantly. NFFAW members now seem
determined to force the recently re-
privatized FPI to restore those historic
levels.

NFFAW has also given seven-day
strike notice to the other east coast fish
giant, National Sea, Ltd. If that strike
should also proceed, it would involve
another 3,500 shoreworkers and would
bring the Nfld. fish processing industry
to a virtual standstill.

Nurses protest
funding cuts

Two hundred Toronto nurses pro-
tested on the steps of Queen’s Park Jan.
24 demanding action on working condi-
tions in Ontario hospitals. It was the
second demonstration in as many weeks
where immediate care nurses, coming off
night shift at downtown hospitals, made
a detour to the legislature on their way
home.

The nurses’ action reflects their frus-
tration at being caught in the financial
squeeze between the health ministry and
hospitals. Hospitals have closed down
beds and cut back on support staff and
services in order to meet government-
imposed budgets. Nurses say their work-
ing conditions are becoming unbearable
as they’ve been required to take over
tasks previously performed by orderlies,
cleaners and clerical employees.

The Ontario Nurses Association says
the combination of low pay, irregular
shifts and high stress is causing nurses to
leave the profession in droves.

Funding restrictions have resulted in
life-saving surgery being cancelled be-
cause hospitals are unable to adequately
staff operating and intensive care wards.

Last week a 75-year-old heart patient
became the second man to die of compli-
cations as he awaited surgery. The Onta-
rio Ministry of Health launched~an
inquiry into the death of a Toronto man
who died of a heart attack last month.
His operation had been rescheduled 18
times.

Zemin hile aE AMEN Sig OE Soy 8

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