OSHA APPEALS
DECISION

The Occupational Safety and Health
Administration announced it is appealing a
decision by an administrative law judge
which dismissed citations against the
American Cyanamid Company in a land-
mark case involving reproductive rights.

The American Cyanamid case involves
the sterilization of five women employed at
the company’s Willow Island, W.Va., plant.
The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers
claimed the women were coerced into the
action in order to keep their jobs. OCAW
requested an OSHA inspection.

The agency issued a citation against
Cyanamid for its alleged exclusionary
e policy forbidding women of childbearing

e

age from working in its pigment depart-
ment, where exposure to lead could harm
unborn children. OSHA claimed the policy
violated the general duty clause of the
federal job safety law that requires employ-
ers to provide a workplace free of recognized
hazards. A $10,000 penalty was proposed.

In a key decision by William Brennan, the
$10,000 citation was thrown out. Brennan
said that a time limit on issuing a citation
had already expired. He alsoruled that since
the Equal Employment Opportunity Com-
mission had proposed rules on the treatment
of women of childbearing age, OSHA did
not have jurisdiction.

OSHA announced it is appealing the
decision to the full three-member Occupa-
tion Safety and Health Review Commis-
sion, an independent, quasi-judicial entity
os up to rule on enforcement decisions by

HA

OSHA spokesperson James Foster said:
“There is no binding precedent at this point
and will be none, at least until the review
commission acts.”

However, OCAW Health and Safety
Director Anthony Mazzocchi reportedly
warned the decision is “a signal to the rest
of the chemical industry to go ahead and
exclude women.”

He said the real issue is that levels of
chemicals that can damage the fetus and
affect reproduction in women also are likely
to be harmful to male workers.

Meanwhile, 18 women workers, including
four of those who underwent sterilization,
have filed a federal sex discrimination suit
against American Cyanamid.

DEFENDING PUBLIC WORKERS —

To most editorialists the solution is easy:
ban all strikes in the public sector.

That simplistic answer to a very complex
question gets short shrift in a new book by
the former chairman of the British Colum-
bia Labour Relations Board. ]

Paul Weiler says that a strike ban strips a
union of its main countervailing force in
hegotiating with an employer that may not
he willing to bargain in good faith. And
anything that replaces the strike — whether

——L__

its compulsory arbitration of final offer
selection — simply isn’t as effective in
promoting serious negotiations which pro-
mote hard bargaining.

The book, Reconcilable Differences: New
Directions in Canadian Labour Lau, gives
three solid reasons why strikes should be
allowed in most areas of the public sector.
First, he notes that many private sector
companies (Bell, CPR) are also in monopoly
positions, yet still have to deal with strike or
lockout threats in negotiations. Second, the
public is far from being the innocent bys-
tander it claims to be in public sector
disputes.

Weiler argues that the public is the
employer. It is the public’s interests that are
being advanced across the bargaining
table, both as consumer of government
services and as taxpayers. It is the public
that elects the officials responsible for
settling the disputes. And therefore, it is the
public that must be made to feel the hard-
ship of losing government services it might
use. Only in this way, Weiler argues, will it
put enough pressure on politicians to be
more accommodating.

Finally, Weiler says that the balance of
power at the bargaining table has really
swung toward the government. Unlike the
case in the private sector, a lengthy public
sector strike means the employees’ wage bill
is being pared while revenues are still
coming in (remember the ‘‘thermometer”’
showing increased revenue in front of
Victoria City Hall during a municipal strike
several years ago?).

Moreover, heightened public attention on
any sharp increase in taxes, mill rates and
the like have made most governments very
touchy negotiators.

Weiler can also find no reason for singling
out public employees for any form of wage
controls while their private sector counter-
parts are free to go after whatever the
market will bear.

Reconcilable Differences: New Directions
in Canadian Labour Law, by Paul Weiler.
Published by Carswell Legal Publications,
Toronto. $25.30.

FINANCIAL
DISASTER

Massey-Ferguson Ltd. has been one of the
world’s largest and oldest manufacturers of
agricultural machinery. It is a multi-billion
dollar corporation whose controlling inter-
est has been held by one of Canada’s most
powerful financial groups — Argus Corpo-
ration. Yet M-F is heading for bankruptcy
unless some wizard comes up quickly witha
life-saver.

Argus Corp.’s latest move encouraged
nobody, least of all federal and Ontario
governments which have been asked to aid
M-F financially. Conrad Black, young and

daring head of Argus, has donated his -

company’s three million shares of M-F to
two M-F pension funds, one of which is the
UAW Pension Fund for Hourly Employees.

Black’s move is not a charitable act. It
simply means that Black and his cohorts
are ducking further responsibility for what
happens to M-F, its creditors and employees.
No mean duck, considering that creditors
are owed about $1% billion and 35,000
employees — 6,000 of them in Canada — are
out of work.

On Oct. 8, the federal government
announced the appointment of a Wood
Gundy executive to help devise a plan to
refinance Massey-Ferguson. Wood Gundy is
Canada’s largest brokerage house and was
involved in underwriting a substantial M-F
financing in 1975. This makes Wood Gun-
dy’s representative hardly an objective
consultant.

A major impediment to financial assist-
ance from government is how the money
will be used. The largest creditor is the
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
which is into M-F to the tune of $400 million.

There are other clouds darkening M-F’s
future. Management is mediocre, its product
range is showing signs of age, so isits plant
and technology. Argus itself is in large part
to blame for this state of affairs, particularly
the big shots who preceded Black.

Another question: Should Canada be
saddled with the M-F bail-out when most of
the investment and jobs are in other coun-
tries and headquarters are now in Des
Moines, U.S.A.?

The consensus is that the huge corpora-
tion cannot be successfully revived as it is.
Without major changes, public money for a
bail-out would be money down the drain.
What is needed is a complete reorganization
of Massey-Ferguson under new manage-
ment aimed at establishing M-F as a viable
manufacturing business in a very competi-
tive field.

And yet the federal and Ontario govern-
ments have agreed to guarantee $200 mil-
lion in common or preferred shares as part
of a $700 million refinancing package
unveiled by Massey-Ferguson in late
October. The Bank of Commerce will pur-
chase $150 million in convertible preferred
shares.

COURSE
FOR WOMEN

The B.C. Federation of Labour, in con-
junction with the Canadian Labour Con-
gress Labour Education Studies Centre, will
be sponsoring an Instructor’s Training
Course for women at the annual Harrison
Winter School.

The course will be held January 18-23,
1981. Scholarships are available which will
cover room and board to the amount of
$280.00 plus transportation costs for those
living outside the Lower Mainland.
Initially, the union will be required to pay
these costs and reimbursement from this
scholarship will follow.

This course will be of interest to women
active in their unions and who have a
sincere commitment to use the acquired
knowledge within the labour movement.
Scholarships are limited, so those interested
should apply by letter to the B.C. Federation
of Labour as soon as possible.

W.C.B. GRANT
FOR RESEARCH

The Workers’ Compensation Board has
announced a grant of $1,826,500 to fund
research for five years at the University of
British Columbia. Each annual grant will
be $365,300.

Funding will be used for research into
industrial disease and for the development
of a training program for physicians in
occupational health. These activities will be
a joint undertaking of the Department of
Medicine and the Department of Health
Care and Epidemiology.

The WCB has funded several major
projects by UBC researchers in the past,
including a study of worker health at Alcan,
Kitimat, which is due to be completed next
month.

A five-year funding period was requested
by UBC so that scientists can be hired for
continuous work, rather than on particular
projects.

Lumber Worker/Nov.-Dec., 1980/5

Soiste. pwn ve

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