Make new technology benefit steelworkers! A new 3-year contract between the 10 basic steel companies in the United States and the United Steelworkers of America give the workers involved an 80 cents per hour increase, spread over the three years. In addition, the amount of cost-of-living allo- wance (COLA) rolled into the Wage scale will amount to $1.19. One new paid holiday, designated as United Nations Day, October. 24, will become effective in the third year of the settlement bring- ing total number of paid holidays to 11. Included in the ‘contract is a Provision for income and employment security for 20-year employees. What was promised as “‘Lifetime Job Security for All’ turns out to be merely an extended supplementary un- employment benefit (SUB) prog-' Tam for the older workers at the expense of the younger ones, thus dividing the workers into two groups. The benefits are less than those won by the UAW where 5- and 10-year employees got some improvements. - : To pay for this plan, younger workers will suffer increased exploitation. Moreover, the union has surrendered hard-won rights by making it possible for the com- anies to transfer older workers © any job, even to other plants. Managements have also been &lven more power overjob.classi- fications, crew-cutting and job scheduling. The contract does no- thing to stop contracting out of steelworkers’ jobs. It cuts off the health and medical insurance of probationary employees who pay union dues. In short, it is a lousy contract, negotiated within the framework of the Experimental - Negotiations Agreement (ENA) negotiated in 1974. The ENA is a no-strike agree- ment imposed on the membership of the USWA by the Abel class Collaborationist leadership in 1974. It was sold to the workers by a barrage of union and com- ‘Pany propaganda, plus a $150 NA bonus. ° This time too, each worker in the 10 companies will receive an ENA bonus of $150 in October _ 977, and a similar bonus will be Paid under the terms of the ENA extension in the 1980 negotiations. So the ENA is a continuing albat- Toss around the neck of the Un- ited Steel Workers of America. Under this diabolical scheme, the minimum guaranteed yearly Wage increase of 3% becomes the Maximum, and this will be con- tinued under the ENA extension in 1980. In other words the legacy left by the Abel administration in June, 1977, whenit retires, will be Continued under the new McBride-Williams administration Or as long as the members allow S policy to continue, or until the Class collaborationist union lead- €rship is defeated. This defeat was only narrowly averted in the International re- ferendum election last February. - t was again narrowly averted in the vote on this year’s contract When a preliminary standing vote Of ratification was taken at the USWA’s Basic Steel Industry Onference which consists of the _ Presidents of basic steel locals, who narrowly rejected it by a vote of 148 to 143. But then the union leadership and its machine set to work and a motion for a roll-call vote, made and supported by a majority of . those in attendance, resulted in ratification by a vote of 193 to 99. Industry conference approval means a vote of the Local Union presidents, since the membership has no right to vote on contracts in the United States, in the same way as they have in Canada, at least until now. The regular voting procedure onroll calls is that local presidents vote for their membership, rather than as individuals. In this case, hawever they were counted as in- dividual votes. If normal proce- dures had been followed, the con- tract may well have been de- feated, just as the opposition Sadlowski-Montgomery _ slate won inost of the large basic steel local’s votes for leadership in the February 8 referendum election. The big question now is, what happens in Canada’s basic steel © negotiations in 1978? If the Com- inco negotiations now under way in B.C. is any criterion the com- panies will hang tough. The 4,500 workers of Cominco operations at Trail, Kimberley and Salmo in B.C. are now facing possible strike action following rejection of a most insulting company offer —, reported. elsewhere ..in..this issue of the Tribune. Two Steelworkers local unions in Canada are covered by the new U.S. agreement reported above. They are Local 4854, with 306 employees at Marmora, Ontario, and Local 2308, with 90 members at Union Drawn Steel in Hamil- ton, Ontario. The drive for productivity in- creases is becoming merciless. The result is death to workers, as at the Wisconsin Steel Works of International Harvester, where four workers wereskilled, and at the Republic Steel Company’s mill in South Chicago, where three steelworkers were seriously burned in an explosion at the Q-BOP furnace. Q-BOP refers to a German variation of the Basic Oxygen Process (BOP) that was being broken in at the South Chicago mill of Republic Steel. This process represents a qual- -itative jump in steel productivity. Republic plans to phase out its four open hearth furnances with two Q-BOP’s, each capable of producing 216 tons of steel in 30 minutes heat. The Open Hearth method produces 255 tons in a five-hour heat. When Stelco in Hamilton opens operations at Nanticoke, it will produce as much steel there with 3,000 men as it now does at the Hilton Works with 11,000 men. If the workers are to reap the benefit from this that they right- fully-.must claim, the 32-hour workweek-at 40-hours pay, plus a hefty wage increase, is the aim they must set themselves in com- ing basic steel negotiations in Canada. Anything less than that. Labor calls on CLC conference to hold jobs OSHAWA — A resolution pas- sed last month by the labor coun- cil here, calling on the Canadian Labor Congress to convene a special conference of trade unionists to discuss solutions to the unemployment crisis has been acknowledged by the Communist Party of Canada. Bruce Magnuson, labor secret- ary of the party’s Central Execu- tive Committee, on behalf of that committee and the party re- sponded to the Oshawa Labor Council’s letter enclosing the resolution which was sent to all political parties in the federal arena. Magnuson said the Communist Party had ‘‘systematically and persistently demanded ‘‘that un- employment be ‘‘a priority item for the federal government to deal with. “Our party is fully convinced that only persistent economic and political mass pressure on gov- ernments, both federal and. pro- vincial, can bring about changes in the direction of government policies toward full employ- ment,” he said. ‘‘This calls for united action — both parliamen- tary and extra-parliamentary — by the trade union movement, the New Democratic Party, and the Communist Party. It cannot be solved in-the parliamentary arena alone, nor by economic action alone through collective bargain- ing. Parliamentary activity needs to be skillfully combined with political mass action along the lines of last Oct. 14.”” The letter from the labor coun- will be a sell-out of their interests. cil, dated April 18, urged all regis- This must not be allowed to hap- pen. tered federal political parties to “do all in their power to find ways Bruce Magnuson, labor secret- ary for the Communist Party. and means of solving the unem- ployment crisis in Canada.”’ Attached to the letter to the political parties was the -resolu- tion passed earlier in April calling on the CLC to ‘‘immediately con- vene a special conference of trade union representatives from all provincial labor organizations and CLC affiliated trade unions to discuss ways and means of soly- ing the unemployed crisis around the slogan of ‘Put Canada Back To. Work’.”’ Interest by the labor movement in the CLC calling such a meeting has already been expressed in a number of areas across Canada. In addition to the Oshawa resolu- tion which was sent to all Ontario labor councils and endorsed so far by the Brantford Labor Council, the B.C. Federation of Labor will be holding a meeting May 13 of its affiliates to discuss strategy ‘‘with respect to a campaign to fight government inaction on un- employment.’’ West interferes in Zaire’s internal situation General Mobutu of Zaire. has failed to convince anyone that Angola, Cuba and the USSR are involved in Zairian’ develop- ments, says the Soviet news agency APN in a dispatch this week. The agency outlines the background to the war in that country and charges that this myth of Soviet involvement is the whole basis for Western interven- tion into the conflict. “They are now extending the range of ‘accused’ to the GDR, Portugal and Mozambique’, says APN. The dispatch continues: Such assertions could have ‘only been laughed at, if the situa- tion in Zaire had not been so dangerous first of all from an in- ternational point of view. A broad-based popular uprising in Shaba province was a culmina- _ tion of the internal opposition to the existing regime caused by acute national problems and largely by the control of foreign monopolies over the economy of Zaire. The fact that the population supports the rebels graphically il- ustrates the nature of develop- ments. This is true not only for the early stage of the uprising when demoralized government troops ceded one town after another to the rebels. Receiving heavy weapons from the NATO arsenals and supported by Moroccan troops, they recap- tured the town of Muchacha. But according to press reports, it was a ghost town because its 7,000 in- habitants had left with the rebels. Hundreds of people crossed the border to Zambia. Not surprisingly, there is more talk now about the perspective of along guerrilla war. This has been confirmed recently by the leader. of the rebel forces, Nataniel Mbumba,_ who - said thousands of volunteers were joining the insurgents. By expanding their interfer- ence in Zaire, the Western pow- ers have become involved in a high-risk adventure, the consequ- ences of which can be clearly foreseen after Vietnam. This line of internationalizing the Zairian conflict, condemned by the Or- ganization of African Unity, has caused deep concer in indepen- dent Africa, especially in the states bordering on Zaire. Remarks made in Kinshasa re- cently confirm Angola’s fears that a new aggression is being planned against it in revenge for the set- backs suffered by the pro- Western groupings supported by the USA, their NATO allies, South Africa, Zaire and China two years ago. A high-ranking official of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs reaffirmed the Soviet view that the matter involves foreign inter- ference into a ‘‘purely internal conflict,” and stated: ‘‘An al- that liance of reactionary forces ready to create a new seat of tension in the centre of Africa is now being set up.’’ Vsevolod Sofinsky, head of the press department of the Ministry, said that ‘‘imperialist forces and local reaction are seek- ing to turn the internal Zairian conflict into a grave international crisis.” There is a clearly coordinated line of the United States which gives Mobutu material and financial assistance, and of the NATO countries and their Afri- can allies who extend direct milit- ary assistance to him. After Moroccan troops were air-lifted , to Zaire by French aircraft, large amounts of heavy armaments continue to be delivered to Kinshasa. The USA has already supplied $13-million in military equipment to Zaire and the gov- ernment has asked the Congress to approve the allocation of another. $32-million for these pur- poses. The International Monet- ary Fund, Washington, promised Kinshasa loans to the tune of $85-million. Zairian developments clearly smell of copper and of the fear of Western corporations for their in- terests, mainly in the mining in- dustry of that country. The Soviet Union notes the priority character of these motives of Western inter- ference. But they also view the problem in a wider, all-African PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 13, 1977—Page 5 controlled by: context. Sofinsky charges that the aim of Western interference is to create a conflict situation of inter- national proportions with an eye to hampering the advance of newly-emerging African states toward independence, to distract- ing the African peoples from the pressing issues, specifically, from the struggle they are waging for liberating Southern Africa. The internationalization of the Zairian conflict reveals the West’s intention to block the way to Afri- ca’s shift to the left, to change the alignment of forces under which the number of the countries with socialist orientation is rapidly growing and consolidating their positions. The African people are increasingly determined to do away with racist regimes in the south of Africa. Military operations against An- gola and Mozambique, the inva- sion of mercenaries into Benin, the attempts to knock together an alliance of some Arab countries against revolutionary Ethiopia and set up a kind of a NATO in West Africa — all these are the components of a _ massive counter-offensive against prog- ressive states and the national lib- eration movement. Backing up conservative and right-wing gov- emments, the West hopes to split Africa with their aid, attain its own neocolonialist goals and con- solidate its waning positions.