eS a

Labour

Rail workers stage

national protest day

Railway shopcraft workers staged a day
of protest at CP Rail yards across the coun-
try April 14 to reaffirm their stand against
concessions and to protest the corporation’s
action in charging 16 Port Coquitlam
workers under last summer’s back-to-work
legislation.

The one-day action, an escalation of the
rotating strikes launched by the Canadian
Council of Railway Shopcraft Unions
March 10, saw beefed-up picket lines at CP
yards across the country but particularly at
the Port Coquitlam yard which has become
a focal point for the strike. Members of the
IWA-Canada, Building Trades unions and
several others, turned out to support the rail
workers’ action. |

Across the picket line, just inside the
yard’s main entrance, the roadway bristled

with CP police and company supervisors.

Many of them carried video cameras, the
latest extension of the company’s aggressive
campaign against the rail unions.

At one point, a supervisor tried to break
through the picket line and demanded that
company police intervene to clear the way
when picketers barred the road. The private
police moved quickly on to the public road
and began pulling unionists out of the way
but later backed off when it became appar-
ent that their action was about to provoke a
violent incident.

B.C. Federation of Labour secretary-
treasurer Cliff Andstein, on the rail
workers’ picket line for the day of protest,
charged that the incident had clearly been
intended as a provocation since other
supervisors had already entered company
property by other gates which were not
being picketed.

Andstein, together with Vancouver and
District Labour Council secretary Frank
Kennedy and other unionists, joined some
150 rail workers for a march to the Coquit-
lam courthouse demanding that the charges
against 16 workers be dropped. They are to
appear in Coquitlam court April 21.

The 16 unionists, members of unions
grouped in the Association of Railway

Unions (ARU) which represents the run-
ning trades, are not themselves on strike but
were charged in March under Bill C-85, the
Maintenance of Railway Operations Act,
for refusing to cross shopcraft workers’
picket lines.

The bill, rammed through Parliament by
the Tory government Aug. 27, 1987, ended
the ARU strike last summer and forced rail
workers back to their jobs under the threat
of fines of $1,000 per day for rank and file
members and $50,000 per day for union
representatives. It also imposed an arbi-
trated agreement on them.

Last month, the Canadian Labour Con-
gress lodged a complaint with the Interna-
tional Labour Organization on behalf of the
ARU, charging that the federal government
had violated the ILO convention concern-
ing freedom of association with the passage
of the restrictive bill.

CLC secretary-treasurer Richard Mercier
called the legislation ‘‘an unnecessary and
unjustified intrusion into free collective bar-
gaining by the government of Canada that
could only benefit the government and the
rail employers and could only strip the rail-
way unions’ of their single effective and
lawful economic lever.”

The corporation’s successful application
to the court to use the legislation against the
16 workers has highlighted the extent of the
force that has been arrayed against the rail
unions as part of CP Rail’s bid for conces-
sions.

Significantly, the attack on rail unionists’
contracts follows the release of the CP Ltd.
annual report which showed net profit for
the company of $826 million in 1987.

Despite the campaign of intimidation,
hundreds of workers have honoured picket
lines during the rotating strikes. But the
impending court case has added a new and
ominous dimension to that campaign and
has posed the threat that legislation that was
intended to deal with a completely different
dispute will be used to break the shopcraft
workers’ strike as well.

At a rally outside the courthouse, And-

CP Rail police attempt to remove picketing rail workers by force in an incident April
1 4 which unionists charge was deliberately provoked by a company supervisor. The
private police later backed off and instructed the supervisor to turn his truck around.

stein warned that unionists were up against ~

a company “which is using the same tactics
it has used for 100 years — trying to bust
unions and pit one union against another.”

_ He noted that shopcraft workers, in try-
ing to avoid back-to-work legislation, had
adopted the rotating strike tactic and had
directed it against CP Rail while maintain-
ing operations at CN. But rather than nego-
tiate, CP “escalated the situation by refusing

to bargain,” and has since tried to break the.

strike by intimidating other workers into
crossing shopcraft picket lines.

The answer to that must be to make
picket lines ‘“‘more and more effective,”
Andstein emphasized.

“We have the living standards that we do
because we have honoured picket lines in
this province. If you want to keep them,
you’ve got to honour picket lines,” he
declared.

“But let’s not forget who the real villains -

are here — the anti-union and anti-people
company and government,” he, said.

At stake in the dispute are four key con-
cessions being demanded by CP, including
cuts in current contract provisions covering
employment security, a 15 per cent cut in
wages for new employees for the first 21
months of employment and elimination of
the medicare allowance paid to union
members since 1970.

The company has also demanded
changes in work rules to enable trades to do
each others’ work, a proposal the union has

deemed to be “‘so dangerous that the coun-
cil has refused to discuss it.” :
Abe Rosner, chair of the Canadian
Council’s negotiating committee, said that
shopcraft unions have accepted the arbi-
trated wage award of 6.5 per cent over two
years brought down by Dalton Larson,
who was appointed to establish an contract
covering the ARU following the passage of
Bill C-85. But the concessions are not accep-
table, Rosner emphasized. ;
“If we don’t show our firm opposition
now, there will be no end to concessions,’
he said. ‘ :
After charges were laid against the 16
ARU members, the Canadian Council also
added its own demand that all charges

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

against rail workers be dropped as a condi- >

tion of any settlement of the dispute.

A telegram signed by Rosner and sent to
CP Rail’s industrial |
March 21 stated: “There shall be no rept
sals, disciplinary measures including dismis-
sal, or legal action of any kind taken against
any railway employee on account of his/her
participation in_ strike-related activity,
including but not limited to the failure of
members of ARU unions to attend at work

relations division”

at time and in places where picket lines of |

our organization were in place.”
: 5
The council has also launched a workers

defence fund to support railway workers, -

regardless of union affiliation. :

The shopcraft council includes machi-
nists, electricians, firemen and oilers, pipe
fitters and sheet metal workers. S

North Vancouver shipyard facing closure

Continued from page 1

“We've been double-crossed — we’ve
been sold down the river,” Marine Workers

president John Fitzpatrick told 150 unio- —

nists at the rally outside the shipyard.

Fitzpatrick said that the federal govern-
ment had reneged on commitments —
made to a joint committee on union,
management and municipal government
representatives which travelled to Ottawa in
1986 and 1987 —to divide the work
equally between the two yards: Instead,
only 20 per cent will come to Vancouver
and of that, a large proportion will be blue-
printing and administrative work.

“And the government’s plan is to shut
down this yard,” he warned, citing a confi-
dential consultant’s report which the
government has refused to release to the
union. Prepared by Appledore UK for the
Department of Regional Industrial Expan-
sion (DRIE), the report apparently suggests
that the government assistance to Versatile
should be made conditional on its closure of
the yard as part of a plan to “rationalize”
shipbuilding across Canada.

The western portion of the yard has
already been fenced off, and is expected to
be sold, probably for commercial re-
development.

“This is a sad day for Canada,” Van-

12 Pacific Tribune, April 20, 1988

couver East New Democrat MP Margaret
Mitchell told the rally.

“It’s appalling that the government can
find millions and millions for nuclear
submarines — but can’t find the money to
keep shipyards open and to build ships for
Canada’s north.”

She told unionists that the NDP “will
keep fighting this issue with you.”

Rally organizer Bob Briere, chief Marine
Workers steward at Versatile, had attemp-
ted to have Chuck Cook attend the rally but
the Tory MP did not return the telephone
message left with his constituency secretary.

But following the rally he got the message
clearly as shipyard workers, chanting “We
need jobs,” jammed his constituency office.

“There’s four generations of workers —
possibly five — working down there (at
Versatile) and they’re looking at the place
closing down. There’s Matsumoto Ship-
yards in your riding — and it’s closing
down,” Briere told Cook. “MacKenzie
Barge is slated for destruction. In Turner’s
riding, Celtic Shipyards is closing down
right now. Shipyards on the West Coast and
in the Vancouver area particularly are being
shut down — and that’s your govern-
ment’s policy.

Reminding Cook of Mulroney’s promise
to make shipbuilding a “priority,” Briere
told the MP: “Now I know whata priority is

with your government — it means the des-
truction of jobs.

“Free trade wasn’t a priority with Mul-
roney. But it’s going ahead full bore. Not
only do we get shafted on our jobs but we
can’t even go get another because free trade
is taking them south,” Briere said.

Cook was jeered when he told unionists
that they should hold “political discussions
somewhere else because what you’re saying
is pure politics and has nothing to do with
what I can do to get you guys jobs.”

Asked what he could do for Versatile’s
sheet metal workers, 90 per cent of whom
are unemployed, he replied, “nothing but

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give them my greatest sympathy and it’s a
tough world we’re living in.”
He did agree, however, to “take your

concerns east.”

Outside, Fitzpatrick told unionists: “This
is the day the fightback begins.”

He said that a co-ordinating committee —

had been established in the yard'and would
be planning further action to save the yard
and press the government for federal con-
tracts, only four per cent of which now goto
West Coast yards.

“And very time a cabinet minister comes
to town, our members are going to be there
to greet them,” he declared. 5

6 SS a a a a Sage