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Education workers on strike
for job security in Quebec

By YVES LAWLER

SHERBROOKE — The 71,000
primary school teachers and
some CEGEP (community -col-
leges) teachers, as well as mainte-
nance workers, all members of
the Quebec Teachers Union
(CEQ) launched a strike Jan. 28.

Teachers at the other CEGEP’s

belonging to the Confederation of
National Trade Unions
(CNTU-CSN) will probably be
hitting the bricks sometime during
the first week of February.

The Quebec government is sol-
ely responsible for the teachers’
strike. It’s been a year since the
Levesque government placed its
contract offer before the CEQ
negotiators. Many teachers and
maintenance workers were hop-
ing for serious negotiations with-
out the government leaning on
special legislation, and without
any attacks on union members’
acquired rights. But it was a false
hope.

CEQ president Robert Gaulin
said of the government's offers,
‘“‘they are unacceptable propos-
als. There are take-aways every-
where!”” ~

Certain trade unionists were
hoping the Parti Québécois would
pursue a tactic of maintaining the
status quo on the collective
agreement as a whole. But the
status quo is already unsatisfac-
tory, and the CEQ didn’t join that

e.
Quebec could return to a situa-
tion where more than 2,000 edu-
cation workers are without job
security at the end of every school
year if the government has its
way. Teachers can’t support
proposals for increasing
management rights giving the
administrators arbitrary powers,
teachers increased work loads,
budgetary restrictions, and the
lumping of teachers and mainte-
nance workers in the same bag as
“chalk, heating costs, and snow
removal’.
Rights Under Attack

After proposing rollbacks
everywhere in the contract, Fi-
nance Minister Jacques Parizeau
last September proposed ac-

celerating negotiations and to re-
turn to the status quo on all the
items where the parties couldn’t
come to an agreement.

Acquired rights. thus came
under attack. The school ad-
ministrators look at negotiations
as a chance to win clauses in the
agreement that will roll back gains
previously won by the workers
through years of struggle. ;

In September management laid
down their priorities in these
negotiations. Through these
“‘priorities’’, education workers
can see that management rights,
and their desire to establish con-
trol over selection, evaluation,
and departmental rules, will all be
hot points.

These facts show the applica-
tion of counter reforms in educa-
tion urged by organizations such
as the OEDC, (Organization for
Economic Development and
Cooperation), and the
Rockefeller-financed Tri-lateral
Commission.

In addition to having passed
into law Bills 24, 25, and 71 the PQ
government wants to negotiate
these ‘‘innovations’’ into the col-
lective agreement. °

Responding to these rollback
proposals by the government,
Gaulin replied: ‘‘The regulations
won't stand between our acquired
rights and our demands. Negotia-
tions are for solving workers’
problems, not to make them
worse.”

From October on, it became in-
creasingly obvious that the CEQ
would have to take direct action
to make gains and protect their
existing working conditions. At
the beginning of November the
workers voted to strike.

PQ Credibility Stumps

The government then changed
its strategy. After having taken
part in negotiations, it passed Bill
62, a special law ‘‘against the
Common Front’’ and changed the
rules of the game for the negotia-
tions.

For the government it was no
longer a question of negotiating,
but of putting forward its global
ruling for the labor movement and
of imposing a vote on its ‘‘offer”’

by-passing the union’s demo-
cratic function.

PQ members in the union
leadership were thus forced to
weaken the credibility of trade
union representatives by bringing
their members to vote to respect
this ‘“‘illegal’’ law which pre-
vented workers from using the
only means available for putting
pressure on the government —
the strike.

This is how the PQ’s ‘‘favora-
ble bias’’ toward the working
people was expressed.

The CEQ respected the law
during this period. Workers in
other public and para-public sec-
tors supporting the CSN, particu-
larly the hospital workers, ended
their strike and won some gains.

The CEQ, for its part, was of-
fered a totally unacceptable con-
tract. It was enough to convince
the members now that without di-
rect action, even ‘“‘illegal’’ action,
the government wouldn’t budge
from its take-away position.

Big Business Hits Education

The struggle education work-
ers will have to conduct must be
“‘lucid if they want a satisfactory
contract negotiated’’ Gaulin has
said. They must take into account
that the government has dirtied its

hands with the passage of Bill 62

to smash the common front and
Bill 88 to break the strike at
Hydro Quebec.

There is no longer any question
of the PQ’s ‘‘bias’’ toward: the
workers. There’s no longer any
question of getting through
negotiations without a fight.
There’s no longer any question of
a guaranteed status quo.

These negotiations are very
important for the pursuit of the
democratization of education in
Quebec. Big business and the
multi-nationals want to pinch
pennies and have an educational
system that is at their service.

Yves Lawler is one of the strik-
ing teachers and member of the
CEQ. He is a candidate in Sher-
brooke for the Communist Party
of Canada in the current federal
election.

Worker brushed cop’s arm

O’Dell charged with assault

ST. CATHARINES — It’s get-
ting pretty hard these days to be a
militant trade unionist and not
come within the reach of the long
arm of the law.

With the recent jailing of On-
tario Public Services Employees
Union president Sean O’Flynn
and Canadian Union of Postal
Workers president Jean-Claude
Parrot for defending their mem-
bers’ democratic right to strike for
better living conditions, the ruth-
less hatred shown by big business
and its governments toward labor
hasn't been so obvious in a long
time.

Like the current fight for justice
being waged by Hamilton transit
driver Bob Jaggard against a
trumped-up criminal charge, the
root of this vicious legal assault on
labor and trade unionists is the
insatiable greed of the corpora-
tions for maximum profits.

The recent developments

around tthe arrest in St.
Catharine’s of auto worker Sandy
O’Dell, Jan. 24 show that as a
class the employers share their
greed and hatred in every corner
of this country, and can always
rely on the police to back them
up.
On Jan. 24, O'Dell, a member
of Local 195 United Auto Work-
ers was arrested for allegedly as-
saulting a policeman while trying
to distribute a union election lea-
flet to workers at the Delco plant.
Traditionally the company had
allowed union members to distri-
bute leaflets and information in-
side the plant. O’Dell was hand-
ing out leaflets on behalf of the
Unity Slate, one of the caucuses
which operates in the local.
After being told by Delco
management and Niagara Reg-
ional Police that the company no
longer allowed distributions in-
side the plant, O’ Dell went to the

street to pass his shop committee
election materials out to fellow
UAW members coming and going
from the plant.

Followed by the police, who
outside were ‘‘reinforced’’ by a
second cruiser with two cops,
O’Dell handed out leaflets with
the police looking over his shoul-
der.

The trade unionist was arrested
when his hand brushed against a
cop’s arm while trying to hand a
leaflet to a worker passing by.

As a result O’ Dell must appear
in court Feb. 5 to hear the charge
of. ‘‘assaulting a -policeman’’.
He’ll be backed by three witnes-
ses in his defence. But if the re-
cent miscarriage of justice im-
posed on Hamilton Communist
and union activist Bob Jaggard is
any indication, O’ Dell is going to
need the backing of the entire
labor movement in St. Catharines
to ensure that justice is served.

LABOR " BRIEF

CIVIC WORKERS
TAKE STRIKE VOTE

MONTREAL — On Feb. 12 the
city’s 6,000 outside civic workers
will begin an unlimited strike un-
less the city decides to resume con-
tract talks. Contracting out of
union jobs by the city is one of the

._key bargaining issues with 1,500

jobs having been cut by the city
over the past five years through the
use of private non-union contrac-
tors.

STEEL STRIKE
STRENGTHENS

LONDON — Workers at Bri-
tain’s private steel companies
Jan. 27 began joining the coun-
try-wide strike by 175,000 work-
ers at the state-owned British
Steel Corporation which began
Jan.-2.

British Steel workers are on the
bricks for a 20% wage hike that
will bring their wages in line with
the country’s annual inflation
rate. BSC is offering what
amounts to a pay cut by trying to
force acceptance of a 12% in-
crease.

LABERGE SUPPORTS
BELL STRIKE

MONTREAL — Louis Laberge,
president of the 300,000-member
Quebec Federation of Labor said
Jan. 26 the federation is urging its
members and the public to call Bell
supervisors who are on
striking operators to place long dis-
tance calls — at no extra charge on
weekdays before 6 p.m. — instead
of dialing directly. Phone users, he
said should then complain to Bell’s
business office if they get a record-
ing after dialing for directory assis-
tance.

SARNIA TEACHERS
ON STRIKE

SARNIA — Stubbom and ar-
rogant attitudes by the Lambton
County Board of Education dur-
ing negotiations has forced the.
Ontario Secondary School
Teachers Federation to take
strike action to back contract de-
mands. The county’s 493 high
school teachers want a one-year
pact with an 11.9% wage in-
crease. The board is offering
9.6%. The strike began Jan. 29.

WALDEN ON
TRIAL AGAIN

VANCOUVER — A new trial
was ordered Jan. 30 for Canadian
Union of Postal Workers Western
Regional Director Fran Walden,
after the federal government ap-
pealed an earlier acquittal on
charges of refusing to obey Parlia-
ment’s strike busting anti-CUPW
law in Oct. 1978.

BUILDING TRADES
REJECT OFFER

MONTREAL — Negotiators
for 100,000 Quebec construction
workers announced Jan. 29 that
the 40 unions represented in the
talks with Quebec’s Contractors
Association have rejected the
association’s contract offer.

Maurice Pouliot general sec-
retary of the Quebec Building
Trades Council warned the con-
tractors that the series of rotating
strike now taking place on some
job sites

Maurice Pouliot, general sec-
retary of the Quebec Building
Trades Council, warned the con-
tractors that the series of rotating
strike now taking place on some
job sites could be stepped up to
increase pressure on the bosses to
hegotiate.

Helo
CIACK Bell

local CWC oftice.

Poster of the striking Bell Canada workers tells the story. Local. .
unions wishing to help can get posters and buttons in their areas.
In Toronto, support messages, requests for materials or invita-
tions to organize plant gate collections should be sent to: Local 50,
Communications Workers of Canada Strike Headquarters, 33
Cecil Street. Telephone 977-9892. In other areas, contact your

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 8, 1980— Page 5