MEO

Peace and B.C. fightback
focus of lively CUPE meet

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Peace and the looming showdown
With B.C.’s Socred government dominated the Canadian
Union of Public Employees’ 20th anniversary conven-
tion, as delegates throughout the five-day meet de-
Manded organized mass action of the union’s 295,000
members to back the convention’s militant rhetoric.

In.a powerful finale, capping her eight years as the

leader of Canada’s largest union, CUPE president Grace
Hartman opened the convention Oct. 24 by focussing on
the sharpened danger of global nuclear holocaust and the
intensifying, vicious attack on working people by big
business and their governments.
_ ‘Let’s not have any illusions about what is happening
in this country’’, she declared. ‘‘What we are witnessing
1s a carefully planned and executed campaign. by the
Wealthy and powerful to roll back the gains that working
people — through their unions — have made over the
Past century.”

She called Canada’s decision to allow Cruise missile
testing by the U.S. on our soil ‘‘simply another step
down the road to giobal annihilation and welcomed the
growing peace movement throughout the country.

This growing movement, she said ‘reinforces the
heed for the members of CUPE and other unions to
double their support and involvement in the all-
important campaign to prevent a nuclear holocaust. :

*‘Nothing’’ she stressed, “‘ultimately is more urgent
than the survival of the human race — and that brothers
and sisters, is what is at stake — the future of humanity.

“Please, please, if you aren’t already active in the
Peace movement, make a pledge to get active as soon as
you get home from this convention,”’ she urged. “‘If you
love your children, if you love this planet, you must do
your bit to make sure they have a future.”

Hartman’s speech set the stage for a debate that
electrified the whole convention on an emergency
Tesolution pledging CUPE’s full support to the union’s

.C. division. With a unanimous standing vote, the more
than 1,300 delegates pledged CUPE’s ‘“‘full support to
B.C. CUPE members in any actions deemed necessary
by the (27,000-member) British Columbia Division to
Oppose (the Bennett government’s) repressive laws.”

B.C. division president Owen Dykstra outlined to the
Convention CUPE’s action plan adopted by all locals in
the province. In the event a single CUPE member is fired
Under the Socred government legislation all members of
the affected local will immediately stop work. If this
action doesn’t reverse the situation, he said, all CUPE
locals in that region of the province will refuse to work,
and if the situation remains unresolved 10 days after the
nl firing, all CUPE locals in B.C. will walk off the
Job.

As a founding member of Operation Solidarity,
Dykstra said CUPE will support its major public sector
Job actions to protest the Socred legislation.

CUPW hits cuts

OTTAWA — The 23,000-member Canadian
Union of Postal Workers has issued a warning to
Canada Post management to stop trying to
achieve financial self-sufficiency for the post
Office on the workers’ backs.

In a recent statement, Jean-Claude Parrot, the
Union’s president, charged that during the past
two years of the post office’s existence as a fed-
eral crown corporation “‘it has proceeded to cut
back services to the public while improving and
€xpanding services used by the large corporate
Mailers’’. Parrot also charged that these cuts, in the
name of financial self-sufficiency, were being made
at the expense of the health, safety, and job sec-
urity of the CUPW members.

Specifically the union is objecting to such ser-
Vice cuts as elimination of rural mail delivery on
Saturday, decrease in Saturday postal station op-
erations, and temporary closings of postal
Stations.

“In addition, the introduction of changes to the
Method of processing mail means not only fewer
Jobs in the post office, but worsened working con-
ditions for those who continue to work there’, the
CUPW leader said.

Parrot said the changes have meant less day
Shift and more night work, a steady decrease in -
Mail sortation, higher noise levels and more

rous working conditions leading to acci-
dents and long-term health problems.

The B.C. Government Employees Union has prom-
ised it will pull its entire membership out on strike if the

. government fires any of the 1,600 BCGEU members it

has targeted for dismissal Nov. tl.

CUPE treasurer Kealy Cummings told the convention
that the union’s national executive board had contri-
buted $150,000 to the fight in B.C. and that the union’s
full-time solidarity co-ordinator, Ray Whitehead, was
being dispatched to the province to mobilize the CUPE
locals there for the historic fight facing them.

The fightback mood of both the delegates and B.C.
CUPE members was reflected in the standing ovation
the entire convention gave to B.C. division secretary-
treasurer Bernice Kirk when she said her members
would defy jail terms and back-to-work legislation in
their fight for justice. :

B.C. delegate Harry Greene noted how the current
situation in that province confirmed all of the earlier
predictions of other CUPE conventions.

In an interview, he stressed the breadth of the attack
by the B.C. Government on the people of the province
and spoke of the need for CUPE and the entire labor
movement to back up its convention decisions with con-
crete mass action. ‘‘We’ve made decisions before in
conventions but failed to carry them through. Over the
past two CUPE conventions we’ve been predicting
where government attacks on the public sector and so-
cial services would take us, well now our predictions
have become reality.

“We are still suffering from the letdown after the CLC
failed to live up to its commitment to fight wage controls.

‘All the talking in the world won’t do anything by itself,
now’s the time for action,” he said.

It was action that National Union of Provincial
Government Employees Union chief John Fryer prom-
ised in his address to the convention after the emergency
resolution was passed. ‘‘When Bill Bennett next ‘Tues-
day, fires 1,600 government employees in B.C., you can
be sure that at 12:01 a.m. Nov. 1, every single public
employee in the province will be on strike.”

He charged the federal and B.C. governments with
making plans to use the army and the RCMP to break the
strike, but added that this wouldn’t deter the labor
movement from carrying on its fight.

Fryer called for maximum trade union unity to stop the
‘‘Bennett cancer’’ before it spread to other provinces,
and called on CUPE to join in setting up a federation of
public sector unions.

The convention was equally inspired by resolutions

TORONTO — Jeff Rose, president of Canadian
Union of Public Employees Local 79 defeated
CUPE national treasurer Kealy Cummings by a 90
vote margin to succeed Grace Hartman as presi-
dent of Canada’s largest union.

Hartman, who told the convention she was retir-
ing to other responsibilities in the fight for women’s
rights and the peace movement has been president
since the 1975 convention which was also held in
Toronto.

The race between Cummings and Rose was a
close one from the first day of the convention and it
appears the CUPE treasurer couldn’t overcome
the solid lead his opponent held among Ontario’s
663 delegates. When the votes were counted Rose
tallied 690 to Cummings’ 600.

Cummings ran on a platform of ‘‘more of the
same’’ maintaining the style of leadership charac-
terized by Hartman and himself since their elec-
tions to office in 1975.

Cummings’ failure to recognize that the dele-
gates were looking for a more militant style of
leadership than the ‘‘stand pat’ motif he was offer-
ing prevented him from closing the gap between
himself and Rose. His was the same kind of lack-
lustre performance as Ontario NDP leader Bob
Rae and CLC president Dennis McDermott
brought in their greetings. Neither guest of the
convention mentioned their organizations stand on
the two most critical issues dealt with by the dele-
gates at that point — peace and the fightback,
particularly that of the Solidarity Coalition in B.C.

“In the final analysis the convention satisfied its
desire for change in the leadership, while main-

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

Rose elected CUPE president

The convention unanimously supported CUPE’s 27,000
member B.C. division in its program of escalating strike
action and other protests against the Bennett govern-
ment legislation such as this 60,000-strong rally recently
held outside the annual Socred Party convention.

and debate on the peace question. It placed itself
squarely on record against the testing and deployment of
the Cruise missile and for labor, particularly local union
participation in the peace movement. The same resolu-
tion committed CUPE to working toward conversion of
military production to peaceful purposes and authorized
the convention. to communicate to the prime minister
demanding he call a halt to the testing of the Cruise and
that his government declare Canada a nuclear weapons-
free zone.

The convention also voted for another resolution call-
ing on CUPE to urge its provincial divisions, district
councils and locals to set up trade union peace commit-
tees and to pressure the Canadian Labor Congress to set
up a national trade union peace committee.

taining continuity with the incumbent executive,
when Quebec’s Jean Claude Laniel nominated
Cummings for secretary-treasurer.

This was a surprise to many at the convention,
since Laniel had challenged Cummings, narrowly
losing to him for the treasurer’s job at the last
convention, and was running for the number two
spot in the CUPE executive this year unopposed.

“There comes a time, when for the good of the
union, one has to set personal desires aside’’,
Laniel said in nominating Cummings, thus remov-
ing himself from the race.

Cummings was acclaimed after Laniel and
another delegate declined their nominations.

In accepting the election victory, Rose paid tri-
bute to both Hartman and his opponent and went
on to pledge the union’s full support to the workers
in B.C. CUPE workers in that province, he said,
deserve and will receive the union’s full support
against what he called ‘‘the rising tide of reaction.”’
It is CUPE’s number one task to support these
workers who are on the front lines defending the
rights of all working people, Rose declared.

Cummings said he’d work ‘‘unhesitatingly’’ with
Rose, ‘‘because the badge I believe in isn’t the
badge of Kealy Cummings or Jeff Rose, but it’s
our union badge, the CUPE badge.

“‘T pledge with all of my heart and every ounce of
energy that I will work as hard as possible with Jeff
Rose, the in-coming executive and all of the dele-
gates assembled here to defend our members
against the worst attack the working people have
ever been under,” he said.

ee

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 2, 1983—Page 3