[cazor

_TORONTO — The loss of a
Single job or the cancellation of
a single high school program as
a result of the Ontario
Government's decision to ex-
tend public funding to the
Separate school system will
lead to a strike by the pro-
vince’s 25,000 public high
School teachers, delegates to
the annual OSSTF conference
voted March 12.

Ina near unanimous vote the
400 delegates to the Ontario
Secondary School Teacher
Federation annual conference
adopted the strike call to
underline the high school

teachers’ opposition to the
Tory government’s contro-
versial move, announced by
out-going premier William
Davis last June.

The conference reiterated
the OSSTF’s support for one
publicly-funded school sys-
tem, and opposed any legis-
lation to extend public funding
to private systems, including
religious, or political in-
stitutions.

OSSTF officials have
warned that implementation of
the government’s plan, which
is slated to begin this fall with
the first extension of funds to

ze,

Labor support grows,
boycott hurts Eaton’s

TORONTO — As negotiations

tween the retail workers’ union
and Eaton’s resumed, March 14,
16 trade unionists in two groups
Were marching toward Toronto in
What was dubbed a ‘“‘Trek for
Fairness” in support of the 1,500

Strikers seeking their first con-
tract.

_ The first group of eight, includ-
ing members of the RWDSU, the
auto workers, OPSEU and the
local labor council, left London
March 12. They arrived in Kitch-
€ner the next day as another
8roup of eight women left St.
Catharines heading for Hamilton
and on to Toronto, where both
Stoups were to arrive in time to
JOin the massive rally jointly
Sponsored by the Ontario Federa-
tion of Labor and the Metro
Labor Council.

The two groups met outside
Ort Credit on the evening of
March 14, and as the Tribune
Went to press the entire group was
€xpected to arrive at Toronto’s
Mion Station around 6 p.m.
“arch 15. Joined by representa-
lives of the OF, the labor coun-
cl and women’s organizations,
§roup was to march up Uni-
versity Ave. to the Ontario Legis-
ature for a brief rally demanding
St_ contract legislation. The
@50r council has organized a
T€ception to follow.

on eanwhile, talks have re-
med between the union and the
‘ompany in the strike that began
Ov. 30, They had broken off Jan.
» and the union had taken
aton’s before the Ontario Labor

a

Relations Board on charges of
bad faith bargaining.

The board voted two to one,
with the labor representative issu-
ing a dissenting minority report,
denying the RWDSU’s charges
and letting the anti-union com-
pany off the hook. At press time,
no details were available on the
progress of the talks.

While the company has tried to
insist the strike and the country-
wide boycott aren’t getting any-
where, public support for the
strike is broadening rapidly. Last
week, two Eaton’s strikers,
Linda McFawn. and..Claudia
Giovanetti, touring western
Canada as part of the CLC’s soli-
darity campaign, had their hands
full meeting union locals, wo-
men’s groups, and attending plant
gate collections and rallies out-
side Eaton’s stores in Vancouver
and Victoria.

In B.C., the press, like the
media generally across the coun-
try, beholden as it is to Eaton’s
and its juicy advertising con-
tracts, has been largely ignoring
the solidarity tour, preferring to
focus on the comments of
management in the dispute.

However, organizers say the
boycott campaign is taking its toll.
The OFL’s strike support co-
ordinator, Paul Forder, last week
said the federation’s latest opin-
ion survey of people in Toronto,
London and St. Catharines shows
75 per cent of those polled indicat-
ing they have stopped shopping at
Eaton’s.

Feceive their pensions.

DeHavilland workers
defeat concessions

TORONTO — Workers at deHavilland Aircraft ended their two-
Week strike March 9, successfully rebuffing company demands for
Concessions, and breaking new ground with the guarantee that

Should the plant be sold or closed down, all the workers will

The 2,700 members of two UAW locals voted overwhelmingly to
accept a two-year contract which expires in June 1987. They won
eet wage increases totalling 4.5 to 6 per cent over the term
©Pending on job classifications, a full running COLA with no
diversions, and increased pensions.

Office workers got the company to agree to cover the cost of
on-the-job training for workers wanting to keep up with snenew,
[ ‘'echnology being introduced into the workplace. Also seri an :
_ 89reed to give the UAW notice in writing prior to the introduction o
_Rew equipment into the workplace. ,

grade 11 in the separate sys-
tem, could mean the loss of as
many as 8,500 high school
teachers’ jobs. Grades 12 and
13 will be fully funded in each
of the next two years.

The union has announced
that it was going to challenge
the government’s decision in
the courts, and the annual
meeting voted to use its special
$19.5-million contingency fund
to help finance the OSSTF
campaign against separate
school funding.

While opposed to the move,
the Metro council of the Cana-
dian Union of Public Em-
ployees submitted some eight
recommendations to the
Newnham commission on
planning and implementation,
which focus on the demand for
total job security and transfer
rights throughout both systems
as a result of the decision. The
CUPE recommendations were
recently endorsed by the
Metro Labor Council.

The Committee of Pro-
gressive Electors, COPE, in its
brief to the commission about
three weeks ago, said the Tory

government’s decision
‘should be opposed and re-
jected.”

COPE said the move ‘‘viol-
ates the fundamental principle
of separation of church and
state and therefore of church
and education,”’ and that pub-
lic funds, which come from all
taxpayers regardless of their
religious beliefs or lack of
them, should not be used to
promote any single religious
denomination.

In addition to the teachers’
jobs that are threatened by the
move, COPE pointed out that
rather than costing an addi-
tional $40-million, as Premier
Davis said last June, some ed-
ucation experts predict the
cost could rise as high as
$100-million.

COPE also pointed out that
the Davis decision opens the
way for other religious
denominations and private
schools to demand funding at
the expense of the public
school system.

The brief suggested the To-
ries were paving the way for
under-cutting the public sys-

f OSSTF to strike if T ory plan costs jobs —

tem, fragmenting education in
Ontario, and laying the founda-
tion for the privatization of ed-
ucation.

COPE argued this is part of a
country-wide trend that is al-
ready developing, and in the
end will produce ‘‘a private
school ‘elite’ destined for
higher education, with stu-
dents from working-class
families relegated to an
under-financed public school
system more than ever de-
signed to ‘stream’ them to les-

ser heights.”’
The brief called for ‘tone
free, uniform, non-

denominational publicly and
adequately financed public
school system, universally ac-
cessible with no discrimination
or restrictions of any kind and
in no way related to religion . . .

“Instead of a school system
that divides students, what is
needed is a system that unites
them, a system in which all
students of all religious back-
grounds, or of no religious
background, can study to-
gether in harmony’’, COPE
urged.

weemomemnsgurnanaageess i

CUPW, Post Office settle

Union wins job security

OTTAWA — The 23,000-member Canadian

‘Union of Postal Workers tentatively signed a two-

year agreement, March 10, with Canada Post
Corp., that ensures job security for postal workers.

CUPW national president Jean Claude Parrot
last week described the pact, which will be voted
on March 16-24 by the country’s inside postal
workers, as containing “‘substantial, real and im-
portant’ gains, though the union was unable to
achieve as much as it wanted in wages and longer
vacations.

Included among the gains: the guarantee there
will be no layoffs of CUPW members for the life of
the agreement, and that members will not be asked
to accept job transfers beyond 40 kilometres from
their original employment place.

e 100 per cent employer-paid dental, eye care
and hearing aid programs;

e Canada Post’s agreement to put a lid on hiring
part-time workers, limiting the total number to
4,500 — about 300 more than currently employed
by the corporation;

e A wage increase of 75 cents an hour over two
years, with guaranteed COLA increases if inflation
exceeds 5 per cent after June 1, to the end of the
pact;

e One week’s pre-retirement leave in each of
the last five years of an employee’s service at the
post office;

e Establishment of the principle of compensa-
tory time off for night shift workers, with three
days off a year for some 5,300 night shift workers
who make up about 27 per cent of CUPW’s total
membership.

The union also won increases in shift premium
pay, including an increase in the overnight shift
premium from 81 cents an hour to $1.05.

In addition, the union was able to win the cor-
poration’s approval to open 14 new sub offices and
to continue its experiment of transforming existing
sub offices into Canada Post outlets operated by
CUPW members. Closed circuit television, which
CUPW succeeded in 1981 to keep restricted to the
Gateway plant in Toronto, will now be removed
from that plant and will not be introduced into any
Canada Post facility.

The postal talks were marked by a lot of razzle-
dazzle media manipulation by federal mediator
Stanley Hartt. The Montreal-based lawyer, who is
also an important recruiter for Tory Prime Minister
Brian Mulroney’s forthcoming tri-partite

economic summit, drafted a conciliation report
with recommendations for settlement that fell con-
siderably short of what the corporation had put on
the table.

The aim, postal workers believe, was to bluff the
union into accepting the corporation’s inadequate
offer or risk having the report released to the press.
In the process, the union would also be set up as the
culprit in the event of a country-wide strike.

CUPW, however, didn’t fall for the media hype
about the embarassing references in, and implica-
tions of, the Hartt report, and pressed ahead with
negotiations, maintaining that the level of talks at
the bargaining table had surpassed anything Hartt
would recommend. Parrot insisted that only real
job security provisions and movement toward re-
duced work time would prevent a postal strike.

Finally at about 7 a.m. March 9, the corporation
agreed to the job security promise, and CUPW
negotiators said it was good enough to take back to
the membership for a vote.

Ratification of the agreement by CUPW, how-
ever, does not automatically mean a country-wide
postal strike has been avoided. Still to settle their
contracts are two groups of postal workers repre-
sented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

The 1,800 workers, members of the Alliance’s
Union of Postal Communications Employees, ser-
vice and repair post office equipment as well as do
custodial work. They were negotiating last week in
the presence of a conciliation commissioner, in
what the union described as a final effort to settle
their dispute with the corporation.

UPCE members have also targetted job security
as a top issue, demanding a no layoffs clause, an
end to contracting out and one country-wide uni-
form wage rate for all its members. The union
wants its members to also get the same benefits,
vacation leave and shift premiums as other Canada
Post workers.

UPCE president Denis Gagnon has already said
the union is ready to strike to back up its demands.
Last week, before the CUPW settlement, PSAC
national president Pierre Samson called on the
union’s 6,000 members working at Canada Post to
observe CUPW picket lines in the event ofa strike.

Undoubtedly, if UPCE hits the bricks in the next
few weeks, CUPW members, will uphold the finest
of working-class Canadian traditions — respect for
the picket line.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 20, 1985 e 7

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