Labour Notes

Auditors protest
contract stalling

TORONTO — Federal tax auditors,
members of the Public Service Alliance of
Canada, set up picket lines outside
Revenue Canada offices in Vanocvuver
June 16, joining PSAC members else-
where in the country in protesting Treas-
ury Board’s continued stalling of contract
negotiations. Auditors in Toronto and
Montreal had walked out earlier in the
week, on June 13.

PSAC representative Jack Rudd told
reporters that the picket was intended to
press Treasury Board “to return to the
bargaining table.”

In Toronto, following a two-hour mass
picket that began at 7:30 a.m., the auditors
broke into small groups deployed at all the
entrances of two taxation offices to talk to

*PSAC members going in to work.

Anne Marie Long, president of Local
013 of the Alliance’s Union of Taxation
Employees, said wages were the main issue
behind the strike action. The auditors’ col-
lective agreement expired more than a
year ago, on April 20, 1987.

Two months ago, they rejected Treas-
ury Board’s “final” offer of a 3.4 per cent
annual wage hike over a 27-month agree-
ment. The union contrasted the offer with
the Il per cent wage hike received in
November, 1987 by the Treasury Board’s
director of negotiations, the 9-14 per cent
increases awarded to government execu-
tives and deputy ministers, and Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney’s 22 per cent
raise. All the increases resulted from
recommendations made in a report to
Mulroney by an advisory group studying
what public service executives should be
paid.

Long said the picket line was part of the
series of job actions the union has been
conducting, including a work slowdown.
“That’s been a pinch so far and that

doesn’t really hurt. Now we’re going to
start squeezing,” she said.

The federal auditors monitor corporate
tax returns to ensure compliance with the
Income Tax Act and Regulations. Long
said an auditors’ strike would have a sig-
nificant impact, including preventing cor-
porations from collecting tax credits on
research and development and closing
down the appeals division, forcing taxpay-
ers to take appeals to court.

Union officials said that over the next
few weeks an escalating program of pro-
test action would be developed.

HEU signs long
term care pacts

Members of the Hospital Employees
Union last week ratified contracts with 13
private long term care facilities, winding
up negotiations that had been in progress
for nearly two years.

The new pacts will increase pay scales
for HEU members anywhere from 11 to
151 per cent and will bring wages and
benefits up to the prevailing standard in
the health care field.

During nearly two years of negotia-
tions, the bargaining agent for the
employers, Continuing Care Employee
Relations Association (CCERA) had
demanded the inclusion of an “ability to
pay” clause in the collective agreement,
prompting the union to take strike votes
and ultimately forcing the issue to media-
tor Dalton Larson. :

The demand was subsequently with-
drawn when the provincial government
agreed to provide additional funding.

Despite the agreement with the HEU,
however, four of the facilities, members of
the Private Care Association of B.C., are
still in dispute with the B.C. Nurses Asso-
ciation. In addition, several other long
term care facilities have yet to settle with
the HEU.

“With 13 contracts now ratified, it

proves that employers at for-profit facili-
ties can afford to pay our members the
prevailing standard of wages and benefits,
“said HEU secretary-business manager
Jack Gerow. “The union will now focus its
attention on settling contracts with the
remaining facilities which opted not to
negotiate with the other 13.”

Charges against
ARU thrown out

A decision by a provincial court judge
who ruled Thursday that CP Rail’s
attempt to prosecute rail workers for ref-
using to cross picket lines was “blatant
abuse,” has paved the way for increased
picket line solidarity in the railway shop-
craft workers’ strike at CP Rail.

Judge Selwyn Romilly ruled June 16
that three CP Rail workers, members of
the Association of Railway Unions, could
not be charged under the federal back-to-
work legislation, Bill C-85, for honouring
shopcraft workers’ picket lines because the
emergency under which the legislation was
passed had long passed and the law was no
longer in force.

And the attempt by CP Rail lawyers 10
prosecute the three under the legislation
was “blatant abuse of the criminal pro-
cess” since the corporation was attempt —
ing to use criminal proceedings to deal
with a civil case, the provincial court judge
decided. :

Although the ruling dealt specifically
with only three members of the ARU
charged under the legislation, it Was”
expected to affect the other cases as well.
In all, 16 members of the ARU were —
charged in March with refusing to CrOSS —
picket lines put up at the Port Coquitlam
rail yards by striking shopcraft workers.

The case was particularly significant
since CP Rail decided to use its own lawy-
ers to conduct the prosecution.

The multinational corporation Was
attempting to use Bill C-85, the Mainte-
nance of Railway Operations Act which
was passed last summer to force striking
ARU members back on the job, to disc
pline workers for respecting shoperaft
workers’ picket lines. an

Shopcraft workers began rotating strike _
action against CP Rail March 16 and fol-
lowed it up with a full-scale strike at the
Port Coquitlam yard in April. But the
impending prosecution and the threat Of
further charges under Bill C-85 had made
it difficult for ARU members to respect
picket lines.

1.

Rail workers demonstrate April
under Bill C-85.

wee

14 in support of 16 ARU members charged

iim

Agains

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Employers ‘have Bill 19 and they’re using it

Continued from page 1

“They know what it means for us to go
on strike — that the orders are all ready at
the courthouse — and they’re arrogant
about that.”

Haynes emphasized that the union would
be continuing to keep up the pressure for a
settlement, including a publicity campaign
now getting underway.

“But if that pressure fails, we'll be out on

strike,” he said.

Georgetti emphasized that the federation
was also “looking for a fair settlement.

“However, we will not hesitate to provide
these 200 BCNU members with the support
it will take to convince their employers that
negotiating is the most prudent road for
them to take,” he said.

If the nurses do walk out, it will be the
first confrontation with the anti-labour leg-
islation since the strike by the 1WA-Canada
at North Mitchell Lumber last fall and pos-
sibly a harbinger of the disputes to come in
this summer’s heavy round of bargaining.

At issue for the nurses is the effort by the
employers to take away many existing
benefits which the BCNU has negotiated in
past years and to impose an inferior collec-
tive agreement.

The 14 facilities (a 15th facility, Simp-
son’s Private Hospital in Langley, is also:

. 20 .e.Pacific. Tubune, June 22,1988 - -

involved in the dispute although BCNU
members have not yet taken a strike vote)
are all private, for-profit hospitals and are
all members of Pri-Care. But they, in turn,
contracted with Continuing Care Employee
Relations Association (CCERA), another
long-term care hospital employers group, to
conduct their collective bargaining for
them.

As a result, “every time we went to the
bargaining table, we knew CCERA had
another agenda,” Haynes noted.

Haynes explained that the BCNU cur-
rently has members in long term care
covered under two agreements: the general
hospitals agreement, negotiated with Hos-
pital Labour Relations Association(HLRA),
covering some 2,100 nurses at long term
and extended care hospitals; and another
with CCERA facilities which covers only
some 200 nurses, and which, because it is
more recent, has slightly inferior wages and
conditions.

Initially, the union sought to negotiate a
unique contract with Pri-Care, but the
hegotiators “were adamant that wouldn’t
happen,” said Haynes.

Instead, he said, “they have pushed the
CCERA agreement.” But even at that, they
want to delete the existing pension plan, he
added.

The union is pressing for the HLRA
agreement as the basis for a new
contract — but without having to give up
some benefits which they now have which
are superior to the HLRA pact. Among
those is a provision that graduate. nurses
who have accreditation from another coun-
try but have not yet been certified in this
province will still be paid the full rate.

That provision is of particular impor-
tance because many of nurses working in
long term care hospitals have been trained
and certified in the Philippines.

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A leaflet distributed by nurses calls on
employers “to recognize the wages and
working conditions that other nurses have
as an industry standard in B.C. — without
taking away what’s been negotiated in the
past.”

Haynes said that the union had some
discussions with employers on maintaining -
essential services in the event of strike
action. But notwithstanding the dispute
over the validity of the strike notice, agree-
ment on service levels had only been
reached at a few of the facilities, he said.

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