ee Teamsters and members of CBRT, laid off last week without ba company, Transport Route Canada, went belly up, demonstrate ou 16. _ Local Teamsters took to the streets out- Side a federal cabinet minister’s office to demand a government inquiry into the almost bankrupt Transport Route Can- ada Inc. — a company whose impending demise has shown up the Tory govern- Ment’s privatization and deregulation for the disastrous policies they are. The company, created when Canadian National Railway sold off its trucking div- \sion for a fire-sale price in 1986, has left More than 2,000 employees short several weeks back wages and severance and Vacation pay, and without their pension Plans, Ross Peterson, business agent for the Teamsters Local 31 , said outside Treasury Board president Pat Carney’s Vancouver Constituency office last Friday that the Union is demanding an official commis- Sion of inquiry into the affair. Some workers at the Sept. 16 demon- Stration had been with the company for More than 30 years. About 20 demonstrators outside the Howe Street office heard CBRT shop ste- . ward Greg Gigg vow to continue the fight to recover the lost wages and pensions. Demonstrators charged that Transport Route’s owners, with little experience in the business, deliberately drove the com- pany into the ground while amassing a small fortune in real estate. CN, a Crown corporation, sold its trucking division after putting it out to tender to investors Manfred Ruhland, who is company chairman, and brothers David and Paul Fingold for $29 million two years ago. The owners placed the company’s terminals and other properties into a separate company called Route Canada Resources. The value of that land, much of it in prime development locations across the country, was $65 million then and is now estimated at $80 million. CN also spent $71 million in taxpayers’ dollars to divest itself of the money-losing trucking division, including severance pay for 550 employees laid off when the div- ision was privatized. Transport Route owes five pension ck pay and with their pension plans cancell tside federal cabinet minister Pat Carney’s office Sept. i ed when their plans more than $925,000 in unpaid con- tributions, which includes more than $164,000 in employee contributions. Last week the federal government terminated the plans, and the Royal Bank of Canada seized the company’s assets. The Teams- ters have launched a court battle to rec- over the payments. Some 800 employees are represented by the Teamsters, and others by the Cana- dian Brotherhood of Railway, Transport and General Workers (CBRT), while many truckers — some 40 of whom staged a demonstration on Parliament Hill yesterday — are independent owners who have been left with huge bills follow- ing the company’s demise. Charles Thibault, director of the Gen- eral Truck Drivers and Helpers Local 31 — a Teamsters affiliate — telegram- med Prime Minister Brian Mulroney Sept. 1 calling for a commission of inquiry into the company’s affairs and demanding the government prevent the owners from depleting Transport Route’s assets. see PUBLIC page 6 ee September 21, 1988 50° Vol. 51, No. 35 Mexico's free trade zone ‘a warning to Canada’ Mexico’s “‘maquiladoras” — free trade zones — are a testament to how a country has surrendered its future to the trans- national corporations, a New Democrat MP who recently returned from a visit to the zones told unionists in Vancouver this week. And under the Canada-US. trade deal the maquiladoras pose an immediate danger to Canadian jobs and workers because goods made with cheap Mexican labour could pour into Canada duty-free via the U.S. Cowichan-Malahat NDP MP Jim Manly told delegates to the Vancouver and District Labour Council Sept. 20 that the low wages and virtually tax-free status available to corporations in the Mexican maquiladoras “is (Fraser Institute director) Michael Walker’s dream being brought to life in Mexico.” Manly was one of three Canadians to take part in a fact-finding trip to Mexico to tour the free trade zones and meet with government, corporate and trade union representatives. The delegation also included John Dillon, an economist with the church- based GATT-Fly and Jeff Andrew from the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild. ““We’ve all heard the rhetoric from the Conservatives about the Reagan-Mulroney trade deal — and about how those who oppose it are weak-kneed and afraid to compete in world trade. “But the question is: compete with whom and under what conditions?” he told dele- gates. “Tf the trade deal goes through, we’ll be in direct competition with some of the poorest-paid workers in the world,” he said. Under the trade deal, goods must be at least 50 per cent produced in the U.S. to qualify for duty-free status when entering Canada. But most of companies operating in the Mexican maquiladoras are U.S.- based and are assembling products from components made in the U.S. In addition, because of the low wages, very little value is added even when most of the production process is completed in Mexico. As a result, said Manly, the goods will enter Canada duty-free as if they were U.S.- made. see TRADE page 12 aes —