Labour Notes

Rally will launch
UFAWU campaign

The United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union
is kicking off its campaign to stop the export of
Canadian fishing industry jobs to the U.S. with a
rally set for Jan. 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Maritime
Labour Centre in Vancouver.

Canadians are facing the loss of thousands of jobs
processing B.C. salmon following the federal
government’s abandonment of long-standing export
controls which stipulated that salmon and herring
must be processed before export. The controls were
challenged by U.S. processors before a panel of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and last
year Ottawa eliminated the rules, replacing them
only with landing regulations which have proven to
be virtually ineffective.

The full impact of the change will be felt this
summer when the salmon fishery opens but industry
workers are already reeling from the export of
unprocessed groundfish to the U.S. and a new round
of job losses and company demands for concessions
are impending with the opening of the roe herring
fishery next month.

UFAWU business agent John Radosevic said
union members had lost more than 400 jobs over the
last several weeks “because groundfish is going to the
U.S. and processors here are telling fishermen to take
their catch to the U.S.”

Weston-owned B.C. Packers, the largest player in
the processing industry on the West Coast, admitted
that it was sending Canadian groundfish to its plant
in Anacortes, Wash. for processing.

In addition to the job losses, companies are step-
ping up the pressure for price and wage rollbacks.
“They're telling us: take concessions or we go
south,” Radosevic said.

In current price negotiations on roe herring, he
said, fishermen have been offered only $290 a ton.
Last year’s price was $705.

Newfoundland Fishermen’s Union president
Richard Cashin, who is currently leading a campaign
on the East Coast to stop the closure of fish plants, is
the featured speaker at the rally. He will be joined by
UFAWU president Jack Nichol and NDP leader
Mike Harcourt.

Unions win pact
at Southern Rail

Striking workers at Southern Rail, the privatized
rail division of B.C. Hydro, wona new contract Jan.
22 after a weekend-long bargaining session. The 30
members of the Office and Technical Employees and
150 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union
had been on strike against the U.S.-owned rail com-
pany since Oct. 20.

OTEU communications director Paula Strom-
berg told the Tribuné that the weekend negotiations
“were the first real bargaining the company had
done” since it put its concession demands on the
table more than three months earlier and told the
unions to “take it or leave it.”

Stromberg said the three-year contract with the
OTEU, the first agreement with the company since
the rail division was sold off to Itel Corp., calls for
increases of $1.10, 50 cents and 79 cents on April | of
each year, retroactive to April 1, 1989:

A key issue in the strike, the pension plan, will be
sent to a union-company committee to design a new
plan. Issues not resolved within 60 says will be
decided by arbitrator Vince Ready who also
mediated the settlement.

The pact gives the OTEU improved job security
and protection against contracting-out. The ATU
was not available for details on its contract although
the wage provisions were reportedly comparable.
The two unions had bargained jointly.

Although Southern Rail maintained operations
with scabs, the union had estimated that the com-
pany lost more than a quarter of its business during
the strike, prompting the parent-company to press
local management for a settlement.

Also last week, OTEU members voted 96 per cent
to accept a new contract with Canadian Northern
Shield, the former general insurance division of
{CBC and currently the only unionized insurance
company in the province. The two-year contract
provides for wage increases of six percent in each
year as well as improved protection against
contracting-out.

12 e Pacific Tribune, January 29, 1990

Cominco hit on mine closure

Backed by the B.C. Federation of
Labour, the United Steelworkers last
week demanded that the provincial
government act to stop Cominco Ltd.
from shutting down one of the pro-
vince’s oldest mines and turning the
Kootenay city of Kimberley into a
virtual ghost town.

In a terse two-paragraph notice
Jan. 17, Cominco announced that the
Sullivan zinc mine, a key source of ore
for the company’s Trail smelter,
would be closed down “‘indefinitely”
on Jan. 31, throwing more than 700
miners out of work and eliminating
Kimberley’s only major employer.
The mine has been in operation since
1909 and is thought to have at least 10
years life left.

‘The com-
pany claimed
that mine op-
erations had

~ lost money in
the previous
two months of
operation and
with zinc pri-
ces below 1989
levels, produc-
tion could not
be maintained.

But the closure announcement
came only a few months after
Cominco began production on its
Red Dog zinc mine in Alaska,
expected to be one of the lowest cost
zinc mines in the world. And it came
on the eve of bargaining with several
locals of the United Steelworkers
whose contracts with Cominco at the
Kimberley and Trail operations expire
June 30.

GEORGETTI

The closure announcement is also
in line with the economic hardball
that Cominco management has been
playing in the last two years, particu-
larly since Téck Corporation became
a dominant stockholder of the mining
multinational.

Last year, the company cancelled a
planned expansion of the Trail smel-
ter when its campaign to win conces-
sions from the provincial government
on water taxes was unsuccessful.

Also last year, Cominco provoked
a lengthy strike at Highland Valley
Cooper in Logan Lake ina bid to force
miners to accept contracting-out. -
And two years ago, the company sold
off its Western Canada Steel division
amidst unfair labour practice com-_
plaints and charges that Cominco
management had sought to provoke =
picket line incidents to avoid paying
severance pay when the plant was
closed. :

In a statement Jan. 19, B.C. Feder-
ation of Labour president Ken Geor-
getti charged that the closure was a
‘bargaining ploy aimed at “breaking
the spirit of unions before negotia-
tions opened.”

He also noted that the company
had been given financial assistance
from both senior levels of government
to modernize operations as a result of
a successful lobby from the company,
the community and the Steelworkers.

Cominco vice-president Ted Flet-
cher had argued that the assistance
had nothing to do with Kimberley
operations but that “is a complete
about-face from the claims of Com-
inco when it was lobbying for help,”
said Georgetti, who participated in

or their future,” he charged.

the campaign for assistance as presi-
dent of Steelworkers Local 480 in
Trail.

“The communities of Trail and
Kimberley, the unions and_ the
government made a commitment to
Cominco and now that the company
is again immensely profitable, it
shows no compassion for these people

Cominco made profits of $250 mil-
lion last year — $3.30 a share —
and stock analysts for the brokerage
firm of Richardson Greenshields
recently predicted an 18 per cent
increase to $3.95 profit per share in
1990.

Economic Development Minister
Stan Hagen acknowledged that bar-
gaining was a factor in the closure
announcement, telling reporters that
“one of the issues behind this layoff is
an ongoing labour-management con-
flict.”

Energy Minister Jack Davis, in a
statement issued following a meeting
with company officials to explain the
closure, hinted that continued opera-
tion of the Sullivan mine was tied to
union concessions to reduce produc-
tion costs. ‘With reasonable costs and
markets, (Sullivan) could continue to
operate till the turn of the century,” he
said.

Union leaders were still meeting
with government officials and com-
pany representatives last week and
Georgetti said the federation would
continue pressing the provincial
government to “demand some account-
ability from Cominco ...and to make
the company live up to its responsibil-
ities as a corporate citizen.”

Pittston deal stalled by courts

A tentative agreement that could
bring a settlement of the epic nine-month
strike against the Pittston Coal Group
has been stalled for more than three
weeks as members of the United Mine
Workers of America wait for the courts
to withdraw nearly $65 million in fines
levied against the union during the dis-
pute.

UMWA spokesperson Kirsty Smith
said that the tentative agreement,
reached New Year’s Eve, was contingent
on the co-operation of the courts in
resolving the outstanding fines as well as
withdrawal of unfair labour practice
charges laid by the National Labour
Relations Board and approval by pen-
sion fund trustees of proposed changes
to the pension plan.

“We're not even speculating on how
long that process will take,’ Smith told
the Tribune in an interview from
UMWA headquarters in Washington,
D.C. “We’re just hoping that we can
complete those steps as quickly as possi-
ble.”

She added that once the contingencies
had been covered, the union could
arrange union meetings and conduct the
ratification vote within a couple of days.

“The members would like to get back
to work but they recognize that it’s in
their interests to resolve these other issues
before go to the vote,” she said.

Picket lines are still up at Pittston
operations and the UMWA is maintain-
ing its Camp Solidarity in Virginia as
union leaders press the issue before the
courts. Most of the fines and charges
were laid by Virginia State Court judge
Donald McGlothlin Jr. — nicknamed
the “fining judge” for his punitive actions
against the union. °

Last week, judge McGlothlin took

some steps towards resolution, agreeing
to suspend some $30 million in fines, and
although other fines and charges remain
outstanding, it’s expected they will be
resolved.

Details of the agreement have not
been released, but business analysts have
already called the contract a ‘clear win”
for the union. And the strike itself has
been heralded by trade unionists as sig-
nalling the rebirth of the U.S. labour
movement.

That Pittston even came to the bar-
gaining table to settle the strike was a
testament to the epic struggle waged by
the Pittston miners and the UMWA. The
agreement was reached with the assist-
ance of a mediator appointed by U.S.
Labour Secretary Elizabeth Dole whose
direct involvement was an indication of
the powerful impact of the strike.

The union had formidable forces
arrayed against it when miners walked
out April 5, 1989 as state and security
guards hired by Pittston combined with
the courts and anti-labour legislation to
prevent UMWA from taking effective
action against scabs. The coal company
had already set up a non-union subsi-

diary and secured a line of credit from a —
major bank before the strike began in |
what was seen as a calculated union-_
busting campaign.
But taking a card from civil rights and _
other campaigns, the UMWA staged
support rallies across the coalfields and
launched massive civil disobedience —
actions that attracted wide support and —
highlighted the restrictions that the |
labour movement faced. |
At the height of the. strike, in —
November, local UMWA leader Jackie —
Stump was elected to the Virginia state —
legislature in a protest vote over the vir- |
tual martial law conditions imposed on —
the coal fields by state police.
Hundreds of unionists, community —
and_ political leaders and_ celebrities
visited the union’s Camp Solidarity over —
the course of the strike. Last week, union
leaders at the camp hosted a delegation
of Soviet miners, members of the com-
mittees that led the strikes in various —
Soviet coal mines last year. In the U.S. at _
the invitation of the AFL-CIO, it is the
first Soviet trade union delegation to be |
given visas by the U.S. State Depart-
ment. |

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