Labour

Protect fishery, UFAWU demands

Continued from page 1
objected and Canada immediately scrapped
the proposal.”

The action left advisors with no choice
but to walk out “totally frustrated,”
Nichol said.

The members of the industry working
group subsequently met with provincial
officials, including Premier Bill Vander
Zalm. Consultations were continuing be-
tween Victoria and Ottawa at press time
but the provincial government's position
was expected to be of critical importance.

Nichol said that Crosbie fears that the
U.S. would go after the East Coast
fishery — currently exempted from the
free trade agreement — if the Tories press
for landing requirements on West Coast
salmon and herring. But in taking that
position, the trade minister is prepared
give the U.S. unfettered access to west
coast fish and sacrifice thousands of pro-
cessing jobs, Nichol warned.

“Clearly, we must insist that Ottawa get
much tougher with Washington, tabling a
comprehensive package of proposals,

including grading requirements, which
meet Canadian needs,” he said.

He said that the UFAWU has the ba¢k-
ing of the Native Brotherhood, represent-
ing Native fishermen, as well as the
Amalgamated Shoreworkers and Clerks
in Prince Rupert if the union is compelled
to take job action to protect jobs and the
Canadian fishery.

The union was expected to work out a
comprehensive program of action at the
UFAWU convention which opens in
Vancouver Jan. 30.

JACK NICHOL..
tough with U.S.

. Canada should get

Mergers make Canada
‘the most monopolized _

The takeover of Texaco Canada by
Imperial Oil, the merger of Molson
Breweries and Carling-O’Keefe and the
acquisition of Wardair by Canadian Air
Lines International are part of a new
wave of corporate re-structuring, launch-
ed three years ago but gaining in momen-
tum‘in recent months.

Since 1985, 135 major acquisitions,
each worth more than $100 million, have
been carried out, with a total value of $54
billion’ Both the numbers of acquisitions
and the size have increased over those
three years.

The snowballing merger momentum,
according to University of B.C. com-
merce professor William Stanbury, has
given Canada a level of corporate con-
centration unmatched by any other capi-
talist country.

In 1986, the 100 largest non-financial
corporations in Canada controlled 55
per cent of the country’s business assets,
a degree of control far exceeding that
found in other countries. It is nearly
double the concentration in the U.S.
where the top 100 non-financial corpora-
tions control 28 per cent of the business
assets.

The rapidly increasing trend towards,
greater monopolization in Canada has
echoed the trend throughout the capital-
ist world as major corporate groups

merge and acquire new companiesin an _

effort to control major markets.
The corporate re-structuring has
involved billions of dollars in assets while

creating few new companies and reduc- _

ing jobs substantially. The chief objec-
tives have been increased profitability
and market domination.

The shrinkage of employment that has
resulted from re-structuring has also
been accompanied by a stepped-up
demand from the corporate sector for
reductions in social programs as well as
“safety net” programs such as unem-
ployment insurance and welfare.

In this country, the merger process has
been accelerated by the free trade agree-
ment which is itself part of a massive
corporate re-structuring plan, intended
to integrate the North American econ-
omy and create a powerful trading bloc
in which huge multinational corpora-
tions dominate the various sectors of the
economy.

(Ironically, the companion to free
trade — de-regulation — which was
touted as a means of enhancing competi-
tion, has the opposite effect in the War-
dair takeover. After a brief period of
competition, the industry has emerged
with an even greater degree of concentra-
tion than existed before de-regulation.
Unionists and others opposing govern-
ment de-regulation had predicted just
Such an outcome.)

eventually have to remove discrimina-

The Molson’s-Carling-O’Keefe merger
was clearly a re-structuring prompted by
free trade considerations even though the
brewing industry was nominally exemp-
ted from the'trade deal. As the result of a
ruling of the General Agreement. on
Tariffs and Trade last year, Canada will

tory pricing on Canadian beer, opening
the way for big U.S. and European
brewers.

It was revealed this week, in fact, that
Canada has given an undertaking to the
European Economic Community that it
will seek an end to the discriminatory
pricing systems currently used by pro-
vincial liquor control boards. In order to
protect Canadian beer and wine sales,
imported beer and wine is subject to a
higher price markup — a system which
the EEC has demanded be removed.

By completing the merger, which will
give the new company a 53 per cent share
of the market, Molson’s wants to posi-
tion itself both to dominate the market
when the new trade regime comes about
and also to make new inroads into the
U.S. market.

The company has also declared its
intention to launch an assault on
decades-old provincial regulations which
stipulate that beer companies must
maintain a brewery in any given province
in order to sell there. The policy has been
a major factor in providing stable
employment in many communities.

But Molson’s, together with the
former parent company of Carling-
O’Keefe, Australian multinational Elders
IXL Ltd., has put heavy pressure on
government for the removal of the pro-
vincial regulations so that it can close
several plants and centralize beer pro-
duction. And to no one’s surprise, the
news of the merger last week was fol-
lowed by an announcement by Robert
Knox, a representative of the federal
ministry of Industry, Science and Tech-
nology, that provincial officials are being
invited to re-open the question of brew-
ery regulations.

As has been the case in all the mergers,
the Molson’s re-structuring will produce
no price reductions for consumers — -
and will kill thousands of jobs across the
country. The Texaco Canada takeover is
also expected to result in the closure of
dozens of service stations and higher pri-
ces resulting from the increased market
control.

Jim Matkin, president of the B.C. Bus-
iness Council, in statement this week,
acknowledged that the increasing tempo
of mergers was not producing new jobs
or new companies. “It’s paper capital-

ism,” he said.
— Sean Griffin

12 « Pacific Tribune, January 30, 1989

Job losses predicted

Continued from page 1
of Molson’s with Carling-O’Keefe.
“The impact of this merger and every
other merger of large companies holds the

same potential,” he said in a statement Jan.
20. “Corporate Canada benefits — but

what about the rest of us?”

As the Molson merger was_ being
announced, Fletcher-Challenge — the pro-
duct of two-year-old takeover by the New
Zealand multinational of Crown Forest
and B.C. Forest Products — announced it
was rationalizing plywood preduction and
cutting 115 jobs.

Georgetti noted that the direct job losses .

resulting from the brewery merger would be
repeated throughout the economy because
of lost business to other companies which
are dependent on employees’ incomes as
well as reductions in tax revenues.

“Unless we are prepared to accept a
much different Canada than what we have
had in the past and have today, we must
force the government to regulate such
mergers and approve them only when the
overall impact of the mergers have been
analyzed and addressed,” he said.

The demand for federal regulation was
echoed by others who have called on the
director of Bureau of Competition Policy,
which administers the federal Competition
Act, to use its powers to hold up the mergers
until all the issues have been addressed pub-
licly.

John Fryer, president of the National
Union of Provincial Government Employ-
ees, whose members include brewery
workers, demanded last week that the
bureau conduct public hearings on the
recent mergers before the required approval
is given them.

Under the 1986 Competition Act, which
replaced the old Combines legislation,
mergers, acquisitions and takeovers must be
approved by the Bureau of Competition
Policy, headed by Calvin Goldman, who
has 21 days in which to study the effects of
the corporate re-structuring before making
a report.

Although Goldman has in the past -

ordered some modification of corporate
plans, mergers have usually gone through
without opposition and all three companies
are clearly expecting the same routine
approval.

But the legislation does provide for refer-
ral to the Competition Tribunal which is

Name

INTRODUCTORY
SUBSCRIPTION OFFER
$6 for 6 months

TRIBUN

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5. Phone 251-1186

iam enclosing 6 mos. $60

empowered to hold public hearings before
granting approval or demanding alteration
of corporate acquisition programs. And it is
that course which unionists are urging be
taken.

Kamloops NDP MP Nelson Riis, speak-
ing for the federal NDP caucus, also called
for review of the mergers under the Compe-
tition Act in a news conference this week.

But if the mergers are to be held up to
public review, there will have to be “‘enor-
mous heat” generated on the federal
government, Fred Wilson, B.C. organiza-
tional secretary for the Communist Party,
emphasized this week.

He noted that the Competition Act was
contradictory in its intent in that it stresses
both the need to “maintain competition”
while allowing companies to “expand
opportunities for Canadian participation in
world markets” — in other words, giving
the Bureau an opening to justify the mergers
on the basis that Canadian companies have
to get bigger to compete with other multina-
tionals.

“The Competition Act itself won’t stop
these takeovers,” Wilson said, “but enough
pressure on the government might.”

He pointed out that the Canadian
Labour Congress was holding a special
ranking officers’ meeting Feb. | which is
scheduled to discuss protection for workers
in the wake of passage of the Canada-U.S.
trade deal. That meeting could provide a
forum for the labour movement to discuss
how it will deal with the mergers and its own
proposals for economic alternatives, he
said. a

He added that there was “a major role”
for the CLC and other groups in the “social
solidarity” network, such as the churches
and the National Action Committee on the
Status of Women, in pressing for public
hearings and full consideration of the public
interest before corporate re-structuring is
allowed to proceed.

The mergers also highlight the need for —
the labour to renew its demand for plant
closure legislation — and to step up the
campaign around its own economic alter-
native program, outlined in the CLC’s
“‘Workers’ Agenda” and echoed in various
programs adopted by provincial federations
of labour.

“The prospect of a new round of corpo-
rate re-structuring makes that more impor-
tant than ever,” he said.

6200 2-8 e8 ee eee ee eee

Postal Code .........
1 yr. $200

Eanes nce an eg ge