be LABOR ~ Cleaners’ fight for union rights TORONTO — Support is growing for the 250 cleaners at First Canadian Place who are fighting one of Canada’s largest real estate monopolies to stop it from smashing their union, the Food and Service Workers of Canada (FASWOC). Backed by Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton, the city council, the NDP caucus in the Ontario Legis- lature, the Portuguese commu- nity and the local trade union movement, the cleaners, most of whom are Portuguese women are demanding changes to Ontario labor laws to protect their wages, benefits and collective bargaining rights against the re-tendering of contract work. The cleaners work for Feder- ated Building: Maintenance which holds the cleaning contract from Olympia and York Developments Ltd., to clean and maintain First Canadian Place and Exchange Tower, the home of the Toronto Stock Exchange. maintain 16 kilometres. other Delta employees get. union says. Labor Briefs Cuts hurt rail safety OTTAWA — Following a series of railway accidents, includ- ing the disastrous Feb. 8 Hinton, Alberta tragedy which claimed at least 23 lives, railway union leaders are linking cost-cutting and layoffs on the country’s railways to reduced safety. Ed Abbott, spokesman for the 70,000-member Canadian Rail- way Labor Association, was reported last week saying that the overall safety level is being reduced by cuts and the displacement of workers by new technologies. _ Other unions, such as the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen reported on how thorough inspections of railway cars, wheels and other equipment has been replaced by cursory checks done by train crews while trains are moving slowly. The carmen have seen 1,000 members laid off over the past two years. An official for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Em- ployees, the workers who repair and maintain track, said his union has shown that, while a member in 1951 maintained 2.4 kilometres of railway track, today that same member has to The unions plan to appear before the federal inquiry into the Hinton accident to continue pressing their case about the poten- tial impact of cutbacks and layoffs on railway safety. Hotel workers on strike SCARBOROUGH — About 100 part-time and full-time hotel workers, members of the Brewery Workers Union, walked off the job Feb. 17 at the Guild Inn to back contract demands for better benefits and job security. Though operated by Delta Hotels Inc., the Guild Inn is owned by Metro Toronto. The workers earn an average of $5 an hour, which the union points out is about $2 an hour less than what The union has agreed to a 4.6 per cent wage increase but is battling management for job security language in the contract to protect its members from the threat of an influx of part-time workers. Management should increase its current 30 per cent payment into the employee disability insurance plan and let some of the workers take their holidays during the summer, the A boycott of the hotel is being considered by the union as a means of pressing management to bargain seriously. Quebec galley rejects scabs QUEBEC — The 100 reporters and technicians covering the National Assembly voted unanimously Feb. 17, not to accredit any journalist working for a struck publication or media. Last month Olympia, in an ob- vious bid to smash the union, an- nounced it was re-tendering the contract. The move galvanized FASWOC members into action. - The union has organized rallies outside First Canadian Place and joined with Portuguese commu- nity organizations, women’s groups, and local union bodies to form a Committee For Cleaners’ Rights to lobby and press for labor law reforms to protect the workers’ trade union rights, wages, benefits and standards. A rally sponsored by the com- mittee, Feb. 13, launched a peti- tion campaign backing this de- mand. Since then events have de- veloped rapidly. Rusing to meet a 2 p.m., Feb. 17 tendering deadline, Federated Building Maintenance put a ‘‘final offer’ to the cleaners, Feb. 14, which two days later the workers accepted. A two-year contract with a 62- 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 26, 1986 TRIBUNE PHOTO — MIKE PHILLIPS Canadian Place picket. cents-an-hour wage increase, the agreement cut two and a half hours from the cleaners’ 27', hour work week. The workers currently earn $6.43 an hour. The catch, of course, is that they get nothing if Federated loses out to another bidder. In that event. the workers. will be compelled to work for the new contractor without a union con- tract and at whatever wages the new “‘employer’’ cares to pay. A -FASWOC spokesperson said last week that aside from the growing coalition in support of the Jean Claude Parrot, (right) leader of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers joined the Cleaners at th cleaners and its political cam- paign, the union would go back in and re-organize its members and fight for a new contract. Union leaders, including Jean-Claude Parrot of the Cana- dian Union of Postal Workers ral- lied Feb. 13 outside First Cana- dian Place to demand legislated union successor rights for work- ers hit by contracting out. Parrot called on the entire trade union movement to get behind the cleaners’ fight. Referring to the six-week strike FASWOC con- wil : if ducted in 1984 to secure CUPW president said the support the cleaners deserv their current battle ought td pass the outpouring of soli expressed in their strike. “It is important to sho fs mier David Peterson that s can be built and to show Ol and York what the labor ment can do if the cleaners é get to keep their collective gaining rights and their uniot said. AFL meet calls for new work and wages campai By DAVE WALLIS EDMONTON — Focusing on “Work and Wages,” the 30th annual Alberta Federation of Labor convention launched its proceedings Feb. 19 by taking the historic step of reinstating the Car- penters union into the Canadian house of labor. The return of the United Broth- erhood of Carpenters and Joiners to the AFL was unanimously approved by the delegates, reflect- ing the growing recognition by workers throughout the country of the need for labor unity in the fightback against concessions and free trade. Noting the struggles that con- front the organized trade union movement in Alberta, Martin Pipe, a Carpenters union business agent in Calgary told the conven- tion his members had “never wanted to leave the AFL.” Norm McLennon representing an industrial union, the Canadian Paperworkers Union stressed the need for labor “to be united now, more than ever,” and hoped that the Carpenters’ move would even- tually lead to the re-affiliation of all the building trades to the Canadian Labor Congress, its provincial fed- erations and local labor councils. _ AFL President Dave Werlin, in his opening address recalled the On-to-Ottawa Trek of 50 years ago to explain why the federation exec- ~_utive had chosen to focus on Work and Wages as the convention’s theme. “Fifty years ago, in the midst of another economic crisis, more than a thousand unemployed Canadi- ans set out from Vancouver on top of railway box cars in the famous On-to-Ottawa Trek, a trek that iS. ORR Ge Re sce sg RT eR ee oe et " Tie was stopped in Regina on the orders of the Tory prime minister of the day. Their demands were work and wages,” Werlin said. “Tn 1986 we’re fighting again for work and wages, the very same fight that our predecessors had to wage 50 years ago.” Today’s fight for jobs, he said isn’t for the kind of temporary, make-work initiatives governments throw at the unemployed, but “quality jobs to provide the whe- rewithal as consumers so we can participate fully in society.” The corporate-government drive for concessions, the AFL leader said, “is an attempt by the employ- ers to get greater profits and lower costs. : “What trade unions have won in the past is not ours to give away,” he said. “These gains belong to our forefathers and they belong to our children. We have no right to give them away.” : The drive for concessions is based on corporate ambitions to slash wages and conditions, change work rules to the workers’ disad- — vantage, reduce benefits, streng- then work “discipline” and in general to weaken and undermine the effectiveness of the trade union movement, he said. Werlin singled out the strikers at Pacific Western Airlines, who’ve been on the bricks since Nov. 20 in a crucial battle against massive concessions demanded by PWA management. “There is something to be learned from this strike,” Werlin told the delegates. “In the past each - union fought its battles separately. Now they have come together in Co-action. If we unite our ranks, we can stop concessions bar; its tracks. “If we struggle togeth unite, labor can stop cone bargaining not only in t vince but right across the co he said. 7 The trade union moveme! declared, must say “No! to sions and free trade, and rej Americanization of Canada: This rejection of free tra confirmed, later in the conve when the delegates endros® resolution calling on the inc0? executive to lead a broad $ paign, in conjunction with 1¢ tion affiliates, against it. Werlin went on to pledgé support to the Alberta Union whose members aré the prospects of strike acti® defiance of Bill 44 whicl government passed in Oo) strip them of this right. “It would be wrong for president of this federation that I cannot advocate that V the law,” Werlin said. “When the law is wrongs the law is unconscionable, ™, the law is in defiance of bas! stitutional rights, when the an ass, we must defy it!” The AFL president also on Alberta union members t0 women and youth, partic the fight for pay equity. “The government’s excus@ why they can’t bring in equ” for work of equal value aré ceptable,” Werlin told the 00 tion. The delegates were to CO a policy paper on equal work of equal value the fe day. a4