By RAE MURPHY

ie months, the
With the ake has ended

hion agreeing to
dictated by the

erms Vir
tually
Many, lly

The

: ne

? twocens agreement calls for
‘the Wage increase over
he 3-cent proposal of

Fy ~OM

tion of fe and for the exten-
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*eement 4 third year. The
a re ime Weakens or re-
YY the wo Y of the gains made

Maets Tkers in previous con-
iy The ;

A talvape 8 of the strike was
Motkers wroecration. For the
twas ee Temained on strike
hretur att Chance they had
the 9 ceo On this point

decreed that work-
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Workerg Which represents
** 8t Coleman is a

By WILLIAM ALLAN
DETROIT

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A LESSON FOR ALL LABOR

directly chartered affiliate of the
Canadian Labor Congress. The
CLC reports that it spent $220,-
000 on the strike, and donations
for the strikers were received
from several unions in the area.
Several mass picket lines were
mounted in solidarity with the
workers. Still the company,
which was hell bent on breaking
the strike and the union, got
police protection to herd scabs
through the lines, and for all
intents and purposes the strike
was lost.

The strike itself leaves a le-
gacy of bitterness. Alex Munro,
former president of the local,
who at the age of 55 and with
16 years seniority in the plant
searches for another job, felt he
had to resign from his position
in the union. He could not bring
himself to accept the strike-
ending agreement, yet he felt
he could not stand in the way of
the necessary return to work.

Munro described some of the
bitterness among the workers.
He cited the “extravagant” pro-
mises of the CLC to fight the
strike to the end, and he men-
tioned the coup de grace to the
workers delivered by the CLC
when they decided five weeks
ago to cease strike pay as the
workers became elegible for un-
employment insurance.

It is not difficult to find other
criticisms of the manner in

which the strike, especially in
its early days, was conducted.
There are a whole number of
lessons to be drawn, yet one
cannot escape thé conclusion
that the defeat suffered by the
workers at Coleman is an ex-
pression of the problems that
confront the trade union move-
ment today, especially in rela-
tion to smaller bargaining units
and the general inequality be-
fore the law of the workers and
the bosses which exists in Can-
ada.

With all due respect to the
anachronisms which exist with-
in the structure of the Canadian
labor movement, which stand as
an obstacle to developing effect-
ive union solidarity and power,
the real crunch that the worker
faces is the legal straight-jacket

‘he is placed in.

Most workers in Canada have
the right to organize and to
strike, even with all the legal
qualifications which make it in-
creasingly difficult to do either,
The real problem, however, is
that workers don’t really have
the right to win a strike.

Organized workers in the de-
cisive areas of the economy find
themselves under the increasing
pressure of compulsory arbitra-
tion. “After all,’ say the courts,
press and governments, “a group
of workers, no matter how large,
cannot be allowed to blackmail

a community or to weaken the
whole economy.”

For the workers in the small
non-essential industries there is
no call for “labor-management
cooperation’, no call for ending
the strike. In these cases the
workers can pound the picket-
lines forever and the companies
are given the untrammelled
right to bust the strike through
herding scabs.

In the Coleman strike it was
not uncommon to see a hundred
uniformed cops giving scabs free
access to the jobs of the strik-
ers. Even companies which bra-
zenly declare their determination
to smash the union are given
taxpayer protection to do just
‘that. Yet on every Labor Day
and other similar occasions
great speeches are made about
our “free labor movement” and
about the “common interests of
labor and management.”

There is not a section of the
labor movement that is not
aware of the problem and many
serious proposals have been ad-
vanced, such as the fight against
injunctions in labor disputes and
the proposition to outlaw strike-
breakers in “legal” strikes.

The only problem with these
proposals is that they arise in
the context of an effective pro-
paganda campaign against labor.
The effectiveness of this cam-

-month Coleman strike ends

paign cannot be underestimated.
Public opinion polls cited at the
last Steelworker’s conference
showed that 7 out of 10 Cana-
dians favor some form of com-
pulsory arbitration. The _insi-
diousness of this anti-labor cam-
paign can be seen in the forma-
tion of and the actual hearings
of the Rand Commission in On-
tario.

The Rand Commission was es-
tablished as a result of pressure
by the labor movement against
the use of injunctions in labor
disputes, yet during its hearings
it has been transformed into an
all-sided attack on the labor
movement, and a good ‘section
of trade union establishment is
plainly running scared of Mr.
Justice Rand.

_ In the meantime, the whole
weight of the establishment
bears down on labor. Workers in
small units, such as Coleman,
find it increasingly difficult to -
defend their unions and work-
ers in essential sectors of the
economy find themselves shack-
led and prevented from defend-
ing themselves.

The defeat suffered by the
Coleman workers reflects a gene-
ral problem of the trade union
movement in Canada which will
not be solved in lawyers’ offices,
Royal Commission hearings or in
public relations activities.

he frightening prospects of

UTOMATION in AUTO

million higher than for the same
period in GM's best year, 1955.”

Woodcock estimated that for
1967 GM after taxes would net
possibly two billion dollars or
more in profits. He said that in
1966, GM set aside a whopping
$114 million for executive bo-
nuses and that it would be about
the same in 1967.

In dollar bills placed end to
end, the anticipated GM-two bil-
lion dollar after-tax profits this
year would reach from any GM
worker’s shop; all the way to
the moon.

That’s the future for GM exe-
cutives. What's ahead for the
380,000 GM _ workers, whose
sweat, toil and effort make
these whopping profits? GM of-
ficials are always talking about
their “world of tomorrow based
on the new technology”.

What’s this doing in the field
of automation, the new techno-
logy sweeping the auto industry,
especially GM _ shops?

e “Unimate”, an Industrial
robot now in use at the GM
Saginaw Steering Gear and
Fleetwood plants is one of the
most startling of the new aulo-
mation devices. Each “Unimate”

consists of a mechanical arm
and hand with complete adjust-
ability at each joint and a me-
mory system that directs the
arm and the hand to accomplish
or repeat a complex program of
movements. The machine can be
used for various plant opera-
tions. It may be programmed
by a foreman instead of being
assigned to an in-unit worker.
At Saginaw it takes the place of
an up-setter operator, one of the
better paying jobs. The “Uni-
mate” robot can even be prog-
rammed to shake hands, Pre-
sumably it could be set up to
shake hands to say “soodbye”
to the workers it replaces.

e A new computerized car-
burator test facility being in-
stalled at GM’s Rochester, N.Y.
plant is being staffed’ by be-
tween three and five out of the
union employees, compared to
approximately 50 who now run
the more than 100 test stands.

e At Fisher Central Engineer-
ing division, Warren, Mich,
some operations, such as tem-
plate-making, are now being
performed by & tape-operated,
numerically controlled setup
that has replaced some model

makers and other workers.

e At. the Oldsmobile plant in
Lansing, Mich., a worker was
transferred to learn how to
handle the program for a ma-
chine that will do the work of
five men.

In plant after plant, UAW
members report that a steadily
growing number of jobs are be-
ing lost or threatened either by
computerized or new technolo-
gical mechanical processes in-
volving non-union personnel.

At the recent UAW conven-
tion in Detroit to prepare for
the 1967. negotiations, two
Cleveland delegates, Bob David,
president of the Big Ford Local
1250, and Leo Fenster, of GM
Local 45, hammered away with
the grim prediction that unless
the union won the 35-hour-week
in the coming negotiations there
would be widespread layoffs by
1970. ;

Fenster told the 3,000 dele-
gates, representing 1144 million
UAW members in the U.S. and
Canada, that failure to win a
shorter work week would lead
to the loss of 150,000 jobs in the
combined hour and salary areas
by 1970, even if 11 million

vehicles are produced that year.

In his remarks to the conven-
tion Fenster pointed out that ia
1958 the auto worker was pro-
ducing annually the equivalent
of 7.2 cars per individual, that
this figure rose to 11 in 1961
and now stood at about 19 cars
per worker. If this figure were
projected to 1970, he said, an
auto worker will be producing the
equivalent of about 25 cars per
worker. This would mean that
about 150,000 jobs would be
lost, even if a highly successful
year were achieved as regards
total production and sales. Fen-
ster declared that the process of
automation and technological
improvement was a never end-
ing one and that jobs could only
be protected through the reduc-
tion of the work week with no
reduction in wages.

The UAW convention, despite
this eloguent plea, adjourned
without any program spelled
out to meet automation and its
job - destroying effects. The
shorter work week is in among
the number of UAW demands
but it remains a token point,
unless the rank and file mount
a great campaign to win it.

June 23, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5