STRIKE FRONT REVIEWED

‘UNIONS FACE NEW PROBLEMS

_IN FIGHT WITH MONOPOLIES

By OBSERVER

Many progressives have expressed concern over the current
strikes and lockouts in oil, telephone and supermarkets. It would be a
wonderful situation if we could take these strikes, wrap them up in
one package, add hot water and come up with an instant solution.

THE OIL STRIKE

Let’s take the oil strike, for example. On page two of the
Executive Council report to the 1968 Convention of the British
Columbia Federation of Labor we find this:

“A short, but hectic strike by the American Newspaper Guild at
Pacific Press (Publishers of Vancouver Sun and Province) made
history when all other unions at Pacific Press refused to be
intimidated by the management and co-operated in seeing that no
work was done to assist the company in publishing a ‘scab paper’.

“Sit-ins reminiscent of the sit-down strikes in the 1930’s proved
extremely effective. The strike proved that labor must at all times
give considerable thought to strike strategy, as the same policy or
strategy in one dispute is not necessarily the best approach in
another’. (Emphasis mine - Observer).

This raises a serious problem. Is it enough for oil workers,
employed in a highly automated industry, to go on the picket line
after handing over to local supervisory personnel? In the current
strike, supervisory personnel have also been brought in from out of
the province to augment the local force. Production has been
maintained at close to full capacity. In addition, the strikers are
being clobbered with court injunctions on every side.

A good deal of the frustration felt by striking oil workers flows
from the fact that they are dealing with some of the largest

corporations in the world. It should be obvious that the Socred govern-

ment has no intention of intervening now by appointing a high-level
mediator. Further, the corporations cannot expect Bennett to step in
with compulsory arbitration under Bill 33, because Bennett, for
political reasons, doesn’t want to use compulsion while he is wooing
the votes of trade union members.

For that matter, as long as the petroleum products move to the
consumer and the public, he is under no pressure to use the big stick.
The current tactic of treating all Imperial Esso products as hot
appears to be the only one that can unite the trade union movement at
this time. ‘

If no settlement is achieved by this method, consideration will
have to be given to tightening the squeeze by extending the boycott. It
may even be necessary to consider such tactics as a 24-hour shut-
down of all industry and mass demonstrations and picket lines.
Politically, organized labor should actively raise the issue of
nationalising the oil industry in Canada.

' The following chart describes the face of the enemy:

Standard Oil Standard Oil of Calif. | Gulf Oil Corp. (Texas)
of New Jersey owns 100% of owns 67.8% of
owns 69.9% of Standard Oil of B.C. B.C. Oil
Imperial Oil owners of Chevron which owns
which owns 97.6% of
Home Oil (100% ) Royalite

Union Oil of California
owns Union Oil of Canada
83.3%

Bataafsee Petroleum
Maatschappij (Dutch Shell)

owns Shell Canada Ltd. >
Texaco Inc.

owns 68.2% of
Texaco Canada Ltd.

Further research shows innumerable connections among the
above companies. .

THE SUPERMARKETS

The lockout of the meatcutters and grocery clerks by the
supermarket chains in Greater Vancouver is another example of
what the Executive Council of the B.C. Federation of Labor meant
when it said, “The same policy or strategy is not necessarily the best
approach in another situation.’’

Some 500 meatcutters decided that the supermarkets could
afford, out of their vast profits, to concede a four-day week, with a
compensating wage increase. The four-day work week in 1969 is no
more revolutionary than the five-day forty-hour week was 40 years
ago. It would appear that the ruling class is obdurately opposed to
making this concession, although they are not in the position to use
the anti-union tactics of 40 years ago.

It was the original intention of the meatcutters to concentrate on
Super-Valu stores, but the employers combined and some two
months ago locked out all the meatcutters in six chains with 103
stores. Instead of searching for an honorable settlement, the
companies shut their doors, thus locking out the 500 meatcutters and
3200 retail clerks, in addition to the in-store bakers.

One of the terms of the settlement rejected by the meatcutters
was the right of the employers to transfer cutting and fabricating of
fresh meats to plants separate and apart from the stores. With a five-
day week, this would mean reduction of staff. Instead of the four-day
week, the chains offered one week-s severance pay for each year of
service, up to 26. .

*e*

The corporate ownership of the supermarkets is shown by the

__ following table. A star marks the chain stores originally involved in

ra aeat

WESTON
*Loblaws Chess Bros. McCormicks
Westfair Foods *Super-Valu Neilsons
Dominion Fruit Kelly Douglas. Pauline Chambers
*High-Low Foods Nabob Foods Willards Chocolate
W.H. Malkin Dickson Importing Weston Bakeries
Western Grocers plus: — innumerable
*Shop-Easy B.C. Packers other companies

ARGUS CORP (E.P. Taylor)
*Dominion Stores - B.C.
(sold to Lodom Interests)

SAFEWAY STORES INC. (U.S.)
*Canada Safeway —
MacDonald’s Consolidated

A study of the above chart will indicate the powerful aggregation
of corporate capital food workers have to contend with. It also raises
the need for one union in the food industry, to match the corporate
structure and social power of the food chains, in British Columbia
and across Canada.

It appears that all of the chains, with the exception of Super-Valu
will now re-open without operating their meat counters. The clerks
have accepted a two year agreement with a 60-cent an hour pay hike
over two years and improved vacations. The solidarity displayed by
the retail clerks is outstanding in the history of B.C. trade unionism.
Without this solidarity there would have been no crack in the
employers’ front.

The demand for a four-day week, of nine hours a day, is one that
the meatcutters have been discussing and planning for in the U.S.A.
and Canada for many years. Their basic problem is that they are
fighting a gigantic food empire that operates all over the continent.
One of the big propaganda ploys of the employers here is ‘‘Why
should Vancouver be first?’ If the struggle was in Calgary,
Edmonton, Toronto, or Montreal, would the cry be any different? For
that matter, wouldn’t the same cry be raised if the struggle was in
Seattle, Portland, San Francisco or Los Angeles?

No employer raises the cry ‘‘Why me first?’’ when he comes up
with a new labor-saving device or a new method of rationalising
labor to make more profit. But let the trade union ask for a bigger
share of the increased productivity and wow — the employer begins
to shed tears that he is being victimized! All this brings to mind the
pithy saying of Norman Mailer, the controversial American novelist,
that politics is property.

THE TELEPHONE STRIKE

The B.C. Telephone strike is another example of the new
situation facing organized labor in its attempts to obtain a fair share
of improved productivity and the increasing profits accruing from
advanced technology and automation. Here, there is a similar
situation to that of the oil strike. With some 6,500 employees on
strike, some 1,200 supervisors, with the assistance of 300 scabs, are
maintaining the operation at almost peak capacity, except for the
installation of new services. Here, again, we have to ask, if the tactic
of going on strike and putting picket lines around the telephone
exchanges and properties is sufficient to meet the new situation?

To a generation of trade unionists who trace their activities back
to the thirties, and even to the twenties, these strikes pose a number
of fundamental problems. For example, no one with his head
screwed on right would call upon the public to stop buying gasoline
for their cars, to stop buying food and to stop using the telephone —
all at the same time.

However, if the telephone exchanges and the oil companies had
been hit by sit-ins, and if the authorities had used force, an
electrifying situation would have been created that would have led to
a successful general strike in B.C.

Some say that the Executive of the B.C. Federation of Labor
should do more to co-ordinate and lead the struggles of its affiliates,
and no one can deny this statement. But there are two obstacles to
overcome. First, there is the close liaison between the leadership of
the New Democratic Party and the leadership of the Federation. On
too many occasions, decisions on trade union struggles are based on
short-term, electoral.considerations of the NDP rather than on the
long-range interests of the labor movement as a whole. Second, the
Federation executive has no more authority over its affiliates than
the unions are prepared to concede voluntarily.

When we look at the monopoly set-up of the telephone cartel, we
can agree that the popular demand for nationalising the privately-
aa telephone systems in Canada is in the interest of the Canadian
people.

Organized workers cannot afford the illusion that an NDP
government, preferable as it would be to a Socred government,
would solve all trade union problems. The fight for a more equitable
share of what they produce, for a shorter work week and for
improved working conditions, would have to go on.

A strong, anti-monopoly program by a legislative majority made
up of the NDP, Communists and progressives, boldly implemented,
would gain immeasurable strength from militant, responsible trade
union struggles. The experience in Great Britain proves that when a
Social Democratic government turns against the mass labor
movement, it digs its own grave.

The Social Credit government in Victoria is a classical example
of a capitalist government living in common-law marriage with big
business.

The strikes we have discussed in this article can be won by a
united labor movement— and a united labor movement can give flesh
and bones to the slogan BENNETT MUST GO!

sig Pes

YHERE IS ASERMON ON WHE BENEFITS
OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE WITH A
LAYOFF NOTICE ON THE OTHER SIDE.

Aug. 8

Hiroshima
Day vigil
“No More Hiroshimas” will
be the theme of a special s!*
hour Silent Vigil to be stag
by members of the Peace
Action League on ‘friday,
August 8 to commemorate
the dropping of the first atom!¢
bomb 24 years ago. :
Special feature of the Vigil
will be a display of photo
graphs of victims of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bombs and of radiation
sickness taken by Japanes®
photographers and neve!
before shownin Canada.

Vigil will start at 4 p.m. 07
front of the Court House o”
Georgia Street and the public}
is cordially invited 10]
participate. A leaflet will be
distributed pointing to the
terrible urgency of stopping
the manufacture of all
nuclear, chemical, biological
and other weapons of mass
destruction which can obliter
ate the future of mankind.

Election rallies

Communist Party provincial
leader Nigel Morgan will spe@
at an all-party meeting called PY
‘the B.C. Teachers FederatiO®
on Wed., Aug. 6 at 12:30 noon!) —
the ballroom of the Student
Union ebuilding, U.B.C. A!
party leaders have been invite
to attend to discuss the education
crisis.

ee

RESOURCES

Cont'd from pg. 1
today’s realities, and estab-
lishing of a Prices Review Boat@
to stop profiteering.

e@ Take the profit out of auto
insurance, telephone and othe
utility services through creatio? —
of a government-run C4!
insurance scheme and_placilb

B.C. Tel and other utilities unde?

public ownership. These to

run by democratically
controlled boards to pass on the
benefits to the public, not the

monopolies.

Another section urges the
strongest action to curb pollu: —
tion, aimed in the first place —
against the big monopolies tle
main culprit.

Communist candidates named iS
to this date are Nigel Morg24
and Ernie Crist in Vancouvel
Kast, William Turner in Burna?
Edmonds and Rod Doran in Ne
Westminster.

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