WORKERS’ JOBS
~- HAMMERED IN MARCH

TORONTO — Ontario’s Tory government proudly an-
nounced last week, that at least 4,169 workers lost their jobs
during the month of March in 22 Ontario plant closings. The
latest figures bring the total number of closings to 33 since
January with more than haif of them in the Metro Toronto area
alone. The pro-big business economic policies of the federal
and Ontario governments have produced a grand total of
1,233,000 unemployed in this country, with 389,000 of them
coming from Ontario and 120,000 Metro citizens looking for
work. The figures only suggest the true picture, because the
Ontario government surveys only permanent and indefinite
layoffs, (more than 13 weeks) involving more than 50 workers.
The figures also don’t include production line shutdowns for a
week or two at a time by manufacturing concerns.

IWA PROTESTS LAYOFFS

THURSO, Que.— The International Woodworkers of Ame-
rica, representing about 80 workers at the Raddison Furniture
Co., have vowed not to let the Quebec government stand by and
watch a community die without taking any action to stop it. The
workers have been told by the Canadian National Bank which
has taken control of the bankrupt Radisson Co., that they will be
allowed to return to work if their union agrees to sign a new hiring
form that would leave the trustees free of the contractual obliga-
tions of the company to the workers. To the workers this means
no paid vacations which they had negotiated under their collec-
tive agreement with Radisson.

IWA eastern Canada vice-president Jean-Marie Bedard told
the Tribune recently that the union is advising the workers not to
sign the new forms while the provincial government, = city
council and the mayor will be alerted.

Bedard adds that another company sharing the same premises
as the bankrupt furniture company, Thurso Pulp and Paper Co.,
has laid off its entire workforce of 150, indefintely. ““These are
among Thurso’s main industries’’, Bedard said. ‘‘The layoffs
could almost turn the town into a disaster area, if not a ghost
town.”’ The IWA, he said will organize a delegation to meet the
Quebec governmient **We have to show them they have a respon-
sibility to do something, that they just can’t sit by and watch the
de-industnialization of Quebec.”’

The union will also call on the Quebec Federation of Labor for

TORY GOV'T REJECTS
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

TORONTO — Not even the recommendations from its own
appointed Advisory Council on equal opportunity for women
could budge the Ontario Tory government from its reactionary
Opposition to mandatory affirmative action programs for women.
The council's three-year report, released June 15, noted that its
biggest disappointment was the ‘absolute lack of response’’ from
the government to demands for affirmative action laws.

Russell Ramsay, the Tory labor minister, rejected the recom-
mendation saying he preferred the government to promote af-
firmative action on a voluntary basis, even though the report
demonstrates that the number of women workers in the prov-
ince’s traditional female job ghettos — clerical, sales and service
sectors — had only dropped to 62.2% in 1981 from the 1978 figure
of 62.3%.

Ont. public sector union
backs general strike Call

TORONTO — The 75,000-member Ontario
Public Service Employees Union, (OPSEU) gave
its full support June 9 to the call for a Canada-wide
general strike by the Canadian Labor Congress, if
wage controls are re-imposed.

Some 750 delegates to the union’s annual
convention, June 9-12, overwhelmingly endorsed
an emergency resolution pledging OPSEU’s sup-
port of the CLC general strike call ‘‘to fight back
against wage controls, rollbacks, wage cuts and
concessions.”” The resolution committed the
union to launching ‘‘an immediate campaign to
educate (its) membership and the public regarding
the evil of wage control guidelines and the need
for militant action in the form of a general strike.”’

Re-elected to his third term as OPSEU presi-
dent, Sean O'Flynn in his report to the conven-
tion, blasted both federal and provincial govern-
ments for their disastrous, conservative eco-
nomic policies.

“‘The decision by governments to combat in-
flation by feeding it unemployed workers has
turned the present economic contraction into the
worst recession since the second world war’’,

.O’Flynn said. The call for wage cuts by these

governments and the corporations, he said, was
the same disastrous recipe which these same
forces proposed during the 1930s depression.
“The wage cuts which conservative governments
believe will bring recovery will only deepen the
recession’, the OPSEU leader said.

Threatens Labor Foundations

O’Flynn warned that the drive for concessions
aimed at industrial unions not only threatens the
‘‘very foundations”’ of the labor movement, but is
also aimed at destroying the living standards of
public sector workers. ‘‘The struggle which now
engages the major industrial unions in this coun-
try is one of the most important economic strug-
gles of the labor movement since it first estab-
lished itself’, he declared.

“*The struggle of autoworkers and steelworkers
is our struggle too.”

The resolution noted the support for the general
strike given by the Public Service Alliance of
Canada and the Canadian Union of Public
Employees and the fact that provincial govern-

ments in Quebec, Newfoundland and British .

Columbia either have already, or are intro-
ducing controls.

In a statement after the convention O'Flynn —

declared, “‘when an issue of vital importance to
our members arises — and the imposition of wage
controls might well be such an issue — our mem-
bers will strike, whether it is legal or not.”’

The convention also voted to step up the
union’s fight to win the right to strike for all of its
members. Presently four out of five OPSEU
members are forbidden by law to strike. Most of
these victims of Tory government discrimination
are in the Ontario public service.

The delegates backed the resolution up with a
telegram to Ontario premier William Davis de-
manding the same right to strike for OPSEU

- Unions, (SACTU).

- peace protests that were unfolding in New York

‘winding up.

members as the government permitted to medical _
doctors. :

Banners and buttons at the convention echoul
O’Flynn’s declaration to the delegates in his
presidential report: ‘‘The right to strike — — good
enough for doctors, good enough for us.’

Other resolutions adopted during the ee day
convention reflected the growing militancy
maturity of the union, which only 10 years ago.
emerged from its “‘association’’ status to take its” |
place in the organized trade union movement.

This militancy was reflected in the convention's
$2,500 donation to the striking members of Local
6500 United Steelworkers at Inco, and by the
convention’s decision to continue a $5,000 annual |
donation to the South African Congress of Trade

Disarmament Resolutions

The convention also: endorsed the principle of
equal pay for work of equal value; called for lower
interest rates; demanded ‘‘quality, compre-—
hensive, affordable’’ 24-hour child care facilities;
urged the development of union programs to en-
courage more women to play a larger role in OP- -
SEU; called for contract guarantees to cushion
OPSEU workers from the impact of technological
change and to protect them against health hazards
associated with video display terminals, (VDTs). —

Unfortunately a number of resolutions dealing ©
with peace and disarmament didn’t make it to the
floor of the convention. Among the proposals put —
forward in these resolutions were: urging the
Canadian Government to develop an independent
foreign policy based on the interests of Canadians
and declaring Canada a nuclear weapons free —
zone; that OPSEU oppose nuclear weapons on
Canadian soil and in Canadian airspace and that
the union, through the CLC condemn the testing —
of the Cruise Missile in Alberta.

Adoption of some of these resolutions woulll
have been very appropriate in view of the massive

and across Canada as the OPSEU convention was —

“when an issue of vital impor-
our members will
strike, whether it is legal or not.”

SEAN O’FLYNN ...
tance to our members arises ...

St. Kits labor protests auto plant closing

By JOHN MACLENNAN

ST. CATHARINES — The planned
closing of the two-and-a-half year old
Welland Avenue General Motors plant,
brought more than 1,200 angry workers
out on the streets, June 16 in protest.

Backing the members of United Auto
Workers Local 199 who organized the
protest and rally were striking regional
public health nurses, striking Inco steel-
workers from Port Colborne, members
of the Canadian Union of Public Em-
ployees (CUPE), and members of the
United Electrical workers (UE), from
Welland.

Although the demonstration was cal-
led against plant closings the unions in-
volved, along with the St. Catharines and
Welland labor councils took the oppor-
tunity to protest the bankrupt economic
policies of both federal and provincial

governments, and to demand imple-
mentation of the UAW'’s proposal for
Canadian content legislation. The pro-
testors also used the occasion to speak
out militantly against the policy of
concessions advocated by the big three,
and the corporate media throughout
Canada.

They marched from the Local 199
union hall to the doomed GM plant carry-
ing banners with slogans reading: ‘‘No
Concessions’’, and ‘Content Laws
Now!”’ Niagara Regional Police had to
close off traffic to allow the massive
demonstration to pass.

At the rally, Gerry Michaud, Local 199
president reminded the workers assem-
bled on the lawns outside the Welland
Ave. plant that ‘‘another company had
been here, Columbus McKinnon, and its
owners had left 200 families broken and

flat while they walked out of the
country.”

GM plant chairman John Clout
charged the giant multi-national with try-
ing to blackmail the UAW into accepting
concessions at the bargaining table this
fall when a new contract is up for negotia-
tions.

Tory MP Joe Reid won a hearty round
of boos for suggesting there should be
more ‘‘co-operation’’ between the cor-
porations and the workers during ‘‘such
a critical time’’.

CUPE Ontario division president
Lucie Nicholson hammered the Ontario
budget, blasted the Tory government’s
hateful treatment of hospital workers,
while caving in to the salary demands of
the province’s doctors, and called for
maximum unity in the face of wage con-

trols and concessions, between public
and private sector workers.

“‘The fight against wage controls is the
same as the fight against concessions’,
Nicholson said in a speech which was
capped by a standing ovation from the

y.
. Gerry Michaud concluded by pledging
that Local 199 would not walk back-

- wards in this set of talks. ‘‘There is no

case anywhere where workers have
given concessions and they have saved
jobs’’, the Local 199 president said.

The rally ended with the unanimous
adoption of a resolution calling on the
federal government to introduce Cana-
dian content legislation, (where 85% of
the value of goods sold in Canada by a
foreign company would have to be made
in Canada), import quotas and drastic
reductions in interest rates.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 2, 1982—Page 4