LABOR

Scab recruiting hit
as LCUG strike opens

Canada Post Corporation touched off its
long-prepared showdown with postal unions
early Tuesday morning, as it pressed its
demand for major concessions right up to
the midnight strike deadline set by the Let-
ter Carriers Union of Canada.

Members of the LCUC began imme-
diately setting up picket lines at depots in
Montreal and Calgary as part of the union’s
initial strategy of rotating strikes.

Canada Post operations elsewhere in the
country continued to work as usual and
even in Montreal and Calgary post offices,
the picket lines were lifted briefly to allow
other postal workers to report for work.

The arrangement is part of a national
agreement worked out among the unions in
the post office. None of the other unions,
including the 24,000-member Canadian
Union of Postal Workers, is in a legal strike
position and Canada Post has threatened to
fire anyone who does not report for work.

It was widely feared that the corporation
would use the pretext of workers refusing to
cross picket lines to carry out mass firings
and move in scabs as part of its strategy to
cut costs and privatize the post office. But
even if its members are working, CUPW
will continue to everything possible to assist
the Letter Carriers, said CUPW national
president Jean-Claude Parrot.

Although the Letter Carriers had con-
tinued negotiations with Canada Post right
up to the deadline — nearly six months
after the contract expiry date — it was clear
from the time negotiations began in Sep-
tember, 1986 that neither the corporation
nor the federal government was interested
in a settlement.

“There are only two people to blame for
this dispute — Don Lander (president of
Canada Post) and Brian Mulroney,”
charged Ray Andrus, business agent for
District 9 of the Letters Carriers.

“The basis for a settlement has been
there,” he said. “But they’re not interested
in a settlement — they’re just out to beat
the hell out of us.”

Throughout the eight months of bargain-
ing, Canada Post has remained adamant in
its demand for changes to letter carriers’
work schedules and job security provisions
and has called for introduction of a two-tier
wage system that would cut the starting
wage by 25 per cent from current levels.

Andrus said the changes in work schedul-
ing alone would cause the loss of 100 posi-
tions in Vancouver, creating even greater.
cuts in already-reduced service to the public.

CUPW has faced the same adamancy in
negotiations, with 23 concessions on the
bargaining table at last count. The union
expects that it will be August or September
before it is in a legal strike position, how-
ever.

Canada Post has attempted to win public
support for its demands for cuts in wages
and staff on the basis that costs must be
reduced if the post office is to fulfil its man-
date to establish financial self-sufficiency.
But even federal postal conciliator Ken
Swan noted in his report last week that
many of the concessions sought by Canada
Post “would not serve the public interest”

but would certainly be the.root cause of any
strike that might occur.

More revealing than Canada Post’s pub-
lic relations message about cutting costs is
its active scab-recruitment campaign, car-
ried in advertisements in newspapers across
the country calling for people to cross picket
lines. The corporation has also upgraded
helicopter facilities on major post offices to
allow for the movement of mail from
behind picket lines.

In Vancouver, Canada Post has been
signing up scabs at offices at 1010 Howe
Street in the downtown core.

But ads to recruit scabs which were slated
to run in the Vancouver Sun and Province
were declared hot by the Joint Council of
Newspaper Unions at Pacific Press and
dropped from the papers. Pacific Press has
applied to the Labor Relations to stop the
ad boycott.

CUPW Vancouver local president Mar-
ion Pollack told the Tribune Monday that
Canada Post was reported to be preparing
warehouses — perhapsas many as three, in
Richmond, Burnaby and Surrey — from
which scab letter carriers would pick up
mail if the rotating strikes move to British
Columbia.

Significantly, Canada Post manager
Mike Bradshaw refused comment Monday
on the existence of the warehouses, stating
that it would “not be smart management to
lay out our strategy in advance.”

The post office plan to use scabs against
the postal unions has clearly come from the
top ministerial level of the federal govern-
ment, backed by such groups as the Cana-
dian Federation of Independent Business
which has carried out private polls gauging
the support for maintaining postal service
during a strike.

But there is little doubt that those surveys
made no hint of the potentially explosive
situation that would be created by the
involvement of a huge scab force in a postal
strike — particularly at a time when the
government is clearly intent on slashing jobs
in the post office and cutting the unions’
effectiveness.

Not surprisingly, Canada Post has
sought everywhere to emphasize the main-
tenance of service and has insisted that the
term be “replacement workers” — the
same language used by Peter Pocklington to
describe the strikebreakers he hired during
the bitter Gainers’ strike.

And for unionists, the comparisons
between the two disputes are apt.

“Tt looks to me like the federal govern-
ment is trying to set up another Gainers,”
Andrus said. “But they’re not going to be
successful.”

Andrus said the postal unions would be
meeting with the B.C. Federation of Labor
June 17 to tackle the issue of scab-herding
by Canada Post and to co-ordinate trade
union support.

Pollack also cited the campaign launched
by the Alberta Federation of Labor to dis-
tribute hundreds of stickers which say: “I
support my letter carrier — I don’t want
scab mail.” She said CUPW would be urg-
ing unionists here to do something similar.

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READ THE PAPER THAT FIGHTS FOR LABOR

12 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 17, 1987

Roger Crowther, regional vice-president for the Canadian Association of
Industrial, Mechanical and Allied Workers, addresses a union rally June 12
outside the Centennial Hotel in Vancouver, one of five hotels where CAI-
MAW members have been locked out by the B.C. Hotels Association since
May 22. The employers are demanding a 25 per cent cut in starting wages as
well as reductions in health and welfare benefits. Some 225 workers are out
at the Centennial, Pacific Palisades and Ming Court in Vancouver as well as
the Seagate in Port Hardy and the Courtenay Hotel in Courtenay.

It’s still too early to draw the full bal-
ance sheet from the tremendous struggle
being waged in British Columbia. Never-
theless, Canadian workers are catching a
glimpse of how it is possible to deal effec-
tively with the neo-conservative pheno-
menon, and in particular its union-
busting agenda.

and the postal strike(s) ahead of us, and
attacks on New Brunswick foresters and
the CNTU union offices among other
skirmishes sandwiched in between, a pre-
liminary analysis needs to be made with-
out delay. ;

The first lesson is that the neo-
conservative attack is rooted in the crisis
of capitalism. The labor movement is,
therefore, in this fight for the long haul.
There will be no quick and speedy one-
shot victories.

The second lesson is that many in the
labor movement have yet to fully grasp
the first lesson. Some still cling to the
misguided belief that the trade union
movement can manoeuvre its way out of
this most serious assault; that “business
unionism” can be patched up. Vander
Zalm’s assault is putting this myth to bed
for good.

The third lesson is that the attack on
unions by big capital and its govern-
ments has created opportunities for uni-
ting the trade unions as never before.

The fourth lesson is that if labor is
fully united, capital can be divided. That
is a very basic lesson of British Columbia
as a result of the highly successful general
strike involving more: than 300,000
workers, or more than one-quarter of the
work force of the province.

Lessons on 19 and 20

With the Gainers dispute behing us_

Labor in
action

George
Hewison s

The working class of B.C. is very —
determined to stay united and to fight
back. Bill 20, aimed at splitting the
teachers, is having the impact of speeding —
up the teachers’ decision to become full
members of the trade union movement,
and to fight back in united style with the |
B.C. Federation of Labor.

The nurses of B.C. are moreand more |
uniting with the trade union movement |
and engaging in militant activities. |

Even more, united action by laborhas |
the effect of rallying the community. A ~
survey by BCTV (a member of the far-
right think tank Fraser Institute) found —
that 73 percent of British Columbians
want Bill 19 withdrawn.

The strategy of the B.C. Federation of
Labor has now shifted from the eco-
nomic to the political front to take
advantage of the disaffection of the pop-
ulace with Vander Zalm and to further
split the Socreds. And still in the back-
ground is the implied possibility of
further mass job action to complement
political action. The stage is clearly being
set for further showdowns between the
Socreds and the people if Vander Zalm
presses forward with the bills.

The possibility exists to get rid of three
bad bills — 19, 20 and Vander Zalm.

—