LABOR

By CATHARINE GRACE

CORNER BROOK, Nfid. — A leaked report of
the planned, devastating closure of the Bowater
pulp and paper mill in this 24,000-member com-
munity, brought premier Brian Peckford scurrying
to town last month.

In a lengthy press conference, Oct. 31, the pre-
Mier bitterly described the company’s refusal to
keep the plant open past the end of 1984 even
though the provincial government offered short
term financing to keep it open until a new buyer
could be found.

The government had also offered longer term
financing to replace four old paper machines still in
Operation with two new ones, but the company
Said no.

The mill is the major industry in Corner Brook.
In fact the city was built for and around the mill
when it opened in the 1920s.

‘The story of the closure was leaked by federal
M.P. George Baker, but rumours have been strong
since last spring’s permanent layoff of almost 750
workers. At that time production was cut by one
third with the shutting down of the largest paper
machine.

Baker was told by a provincial forestry depart-
ment official that Bowater would shut down in
April 1984. The official was responding to Baker's
queries regarding a herbicide spray program cur-
rently being pushed by Bowater and Abitibi-Price,
the other transnational which dominates New-

Plant closure will devastate Nfld. town

foundland’s forest industry.

Even though Bowater is leaving the province ina
matter of months, it has joined Abitibi-Price in
insisting on the controversial spray program,
which is to be financed by the people of Newfound-
land.

Bowater, according to Peckford, has insisted on
keeping its plans secret —a secrecy that has been
shared by the provincial government. The premier
claimed the government kept the mill unions and
Corner Brook city council in the dark about the
planned closure in order not to jeopardize ‘‘deli-
cate negotiations’’ for the mill’s sale to a myster-
ious possible buyer.

Evidently, Bowater isn’t even telling Peckford
the identity of what the community is now calling
the “‘phantom buyer.”

Signs of the British-owned company’s intentions
to abandon Newfoundland have been evident for
the past few years as Bowater has been unloading
its local properties. Presumably anticipating a
slump in real estate, following the planned mill
closure, the company, a couple of years ago, sold
off the houses it owned in Corner Brook.

Last year, a lodge that Bowater maintained for
visiting company directors was donated to Memo-
rial University, which is now paying for its upkeep
but hasn’t yet found any use for the facility.

In tracing the negotiations between Bowater and
the government, Peckford added that in addition to

rejecting the government's offer of financial help,
the company asked the province to assume re-
sponsibility for the corporation’s $50-60-million
debt to the Bank of Montreal, and to buy its assets
such as timber rights.

Despite a determined effort at optimism focus-
sed, especially among Corner Brook’s business
community on the ‘‘phantom buyer’’, mill workers
don’t share in it. They’re expecting the mill to close
as early as next April, just as Baker originally
reported.

The New Democratic Party devoted a lot of the
discussion at its recetn biennial provincial con-
- vention, in Corner Brook to the imminent plant
closure. The National Film Board film about the
Tembec pulp and paper mill at Temiscaming
Quebec, where the workers and managers took
over the plant on the eve of a closure, provided the
basis for discussion.

The NDP proposed a Tembec-like operation to
keep the Corner Brook mill operating.

Calvin White, president of the Federation of
Newfoundland Indians told the convention that all
of the province’s forestry resources have been
badly depleted, and that reforrestation has been
insufficient.

He predicted that following the Bowater closure,
Abitibi-Price may start to pull out of Newfound-
land in the next five to seven years because their
wood supply is running out.

pees

Two sides of political action

The Saskatchewan Federation of Labor convention

found itself polarized around the issue of support for the ©

New Democratic Party. What should have been healthy
and useful debates around the issues of the fightback and
the always necessary examination of guidelines for poli-
cal and economic struggles, was buried in two
Counter-productive lines.

One line, supported by the top leadership and backed
by the main industrial unions in the province (who rep-
Tesent the minority of the province’s trade union
Reaavership) placed all their emphasis on support for the

P

__ The other, coming mainly from the public service
area, tended, no matter how they may have denied it, to
downplay the importance of electing an NDP govern-
Ment in Saskatchewan.

The working class in Saskatchewan lost the debate

_ S€cause it came out of the convention divided in the face
Of'an unprecedented attack on it by government and big

Usiness,
There need be no divisive argument in the trade union
Movement in English-speaking Canada over the endor-
Sation of the NDP. Nor should there be any argument
at the election of an NDP government would bring
8ains for working people.
What then is the argument?
he question was best summed up by Ontario Fed-

€ration of Labor secretary-treasurer Terry Meagher a
€W years back in the heat of debate when he asked the

Question: “I'd just like to know what the hell these

People are referring to when they speak of independent

labor Political action?”’ =e

Clearly to Brother Meagher political action means
action designed to lead to the election of the NDP —
RIOD. Political action is ipso facto, electoral action, or

&ction subverted to, or predicated on, electoral politics.

But in fact real politics transcends capitalist electoral

Politics. Politics embraces the entire struggles of the

Working class to advance their interests, curb the power
of capital over their lives and lead in the direction of

_ “Undamental social change.

Victory in B.C.

a this process the trade unions support, and indeed
Ip to form political parties of their own to fight in the
qectoral and political arenas against capital. This is in-
fy pensable. They share with such parties responsibility
inte otecting and advancing their economical and social
Tests.
logic of such a relationship is clearly demon-
strated in the recent developments in B.C . There is no
Uestion of the support of the B.C, Fedderation of Labor
or the NDP, but in real life it was not possible for the
of P to defeat the Bennett legislation in the parliament
that province, and labor had to enter into mass labor
democratic political action including the threat of a

Labor in action
_

William Stewart

general strike to win what it was not able to secure at the
legislative level.

Nor can one argue that such struggles are rendered
unnecessary if labor is successful in electing NDP
governments. Experiences in British Columbia, Sas-
katchewan and Manitoba showed that NDP govern-
ments in all three of those provinces brought down legis-
lation hostile to the trade unions and the working class in
the area of labor legislation. This is not for one minute to
downplay the many positive gains from NDP govern-
ments nor to deny the importance of their election.
Those who do that, in our opinion, harm the cause of
labor. It does however show that the trade unions have
to be able to defend themselves in the political arena in
capitalist society no matter who is in power.

Workers together with their allies in B.C. won, in the
arena of mass labor and democratic political action, a
victory which they could not win in the legislature. This
is not an argument for slacking off the struggle in the
parliamentary arena, but an argument for combining
economic-political and extra-parliamentary form with
efforts to secure victories at the government level.

Two Forms of Struggle

Polls across Canada show that both the majority in
B.C. and in the rest of Canada lined up against Bennett in
favor of solidarity in the recent struggles there. If an
election were to take place in B.C. now, the stage has
been set for the defeat of the Socreds.

Thus the two forms of struggle merge and complement
one another to the extent that labor’s political friends
also support them in such critical battles.

Furthermore the line between politics and economic
struggles is not a fixed line, but one that changes with the
ebbs and flows of the crises of capitalism and the ensuing
class struggle.

In the relative boom period that Canada experienced
since the end of the Second World War, the economic or
trade union struggles of working people took place
largely around issues of dividing up a pie which seemed
large enough to feed both workers and owners.

Presently however workers are faced with declining
jobs, declining purchasing power, declining social ser-
vices, and declining opportunities. — th

Plants are closing, whole industries are shifting to
other areas or other countries. Technological change is
looming over their shoulders, not as a blessing, as it

should be, but as adoomsday machine. On top ofall this,
the whole world is threatened with nuclear annihilation.

In these circumstances the role of collective bar-
gaining needs to be redefined. It must much more en-
compass questions previously considered to be the do-
main of politics. The right to a job, trade union parti-
cipation in decisions dealing with layoffs, plant closures,
meaningful input into the application of technological
change: Collective bargaining must take up the demands —
for workers’ rights in the work place, as opposed to
management rights. These items, alongside the unavoid-
able struggle for shorter hours of work and maintenance
of take home pay, must become strike items on the
bargaining table, — no longer just slogans advanced by
the unions without concrete plans for their imple-
mentation.

Unity, Unity, Unity

These new bargaining demands also carry with them
the necessity of passing over from fractured bargaining
which has typified the Canadian trade union scene since
its inception, to the era of country-wide and industry-
wide demands and co-ordination at a provincial and
Canada-wide level. Without such a new approach to
collective bargaining, scattered bargaining units will be
unable either to win through on such major issues, or
stand up against the organized assault on their existing
contracts. Unity, unity and more unity at all levels is the
watchword for collective bargaining and collective ac-
tion.

What is clear here is that two things are demanded at
the same time. One is to give a more political character to
collective bargaining. The other is to extend the eco-
nomic needs of the working people much more into the
area of the political and electoral arena.

Too much, or wrong emphasis on either one or the
other side of this process will not serve the interests of
the working people, any more than they will serve those
of the NPD, the trade unions or the Communist Party.

Developments in B.C. are rather interesting in the
above connection. The Canada-wide defeat of the par-
ties of monopoly, and the election of alternative
governments, could well take the form of coalitions in
which the NDP will play a major, but not a necessarily
exclusive role.

Working class leaders who approach the question of
politics from the standpoint of the need for fundamental
political change, of replacing the rule of the owners with
the rule of the producers and their allies see, in whatever
way, the weakening of the power and rule of the mono-
polies as a victory for the working people. Whether this
takes the form of an NDP government, or a coalition
government, including the NDP cannot be the deciding
question. Which is the most possible at the given mo-
ment is rather the issue. To place the matter in any other
way tends to counterpose partisan politics to the needs
and interests of the working people and their allies.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 23, 1983—Page 7