- Chrysler scam angers Windsor workers»

WINDSOR — The immediate reaction of werk-
ers, Jan. 25 and 26, when the United Auto Workers
gave them the details of the proposed contract
between the union and Chrysler Corporation was
anger and frustration.

In a broad sampling of opinion from about 50
workers leaving the meeting the Tribune failed to
find a single worker who said he was prepared to
vote yes on the contract proposal, Jan. 27-28.

A middle-aged Chrysler worker put his thoughts
about the proposal this way: “If I’m going to lose
my house it’s going to be because I’m not working,

and earning enough money and not because I’ve
signed it away in a deal like this.

‘If Chrysler can’t pay its suppliers and cre-
ditors, and it can’t pay decent wages to its workers, ~
then they have no reason to be in business.”

_ For many the proposal agreed to by the inter-
national officers of the UAW prompted angry out-
bursts as they left Windsor’s Cleary Auditorium
where the union meetings to discuss the proposed
contract were held. **Chrysler can shove its offer’’,
was the most frequently heard remark as workers
filed out into the street, heading home to give the

me

Kenora behind arrested strikers

By PAUL PUGH

KENORA — The crowd started .

forming around 10 in the morning
outside the courthouse here, Jan. 26,
as members of the Kenora-Keewatin
Labor Council gathered to show
their support for the 12 arrested
leaders of the Lumber and Sawmill
Workers Union.

Charges against the three top of-
ficers of the local and nine union
members, arrested in five simul-
taneous raids by the Ontario Provin-
cial Police, Jan. 7, were read out,
accusing them of conspiracy to
commit mischief and damage to
property. The year-old charges
arose out of the union’s two-year
battle with Boise Cascade which was
suspended last November. The
court proceeding was short — all 12
were remanded until Marsch.

Jerome Zlabis, president of the

Kenora-Keewatin Labor Council
told the Tribune the arrests have
caused hard feelings in this town on
‘10,000.
‘*These men were taken away from
their jobs and homes like hardened
criminals. They were all brought
under guard here and then re-
leased.’’ There was no reason or
justification for this kind of action,
Ziabis charged. ‘‘This kind of act
makes it look as if the police are a
private army acting for the com-
pany.’

The arrested men also had harsh
words for the police action. Tulio
Mior, president of Local 2693
LSWU told the Tribune the action
‘takes on the appearance of court
harassment of our people. It appears
the entire trade union movement is
under attack.’’ The charges
‘justifies the use of a large police
force on the picket line. Justifies is
the key word here,”’ said Mior. ‘‘The
government is trying to show they
were right in using the police’’ during

the strike.

Another arrested striker, LSWU
vice president Fred Miron, said the
men ‘‘had no idea the arrests were
coming.’’ Since the charges were
laid Dec. 22-he charged, there had
been plenty of time to follow the
normal procedure of serving sub-
poenas, rather than hauling the 12
away under armed guard.

This is not.Miron’s first arrest in
connection with the strike against
Boise. ‘I’ve been charged before”’,

- he explained”, and I showed up in

court. There was no danger to the
public’.

The LSWU union’s two-year bat-
tle with Boise Cascade was marred
by police violence on the picket
lines, injunctions, court ordered sei-
zure of union members’ bank ac-
counts, harassment and innumer-
able arrests. Estimates indicate that
millions of bee erat dollars were

spent on the police in order to break
the strike which began in the sum-
mer of 1978.

Now Boise is going to the trough
for another $18-million to modernize
their mills. ‘‘ Already 400 jobs will be
dropped’’, said Miron. Meanwhile,
he reveals that the company, in a big
public relations job, has agreed to
pay the salary for five years for an
industrial consultant to attract indus-
try to Kenora. Since this is a tax
deductable item the public will be
footing the bill for it too.

LSWU members haven't been the
only target of police harassment in
the area. A demonstrator at the
court, Wendy Sutherland told the
Tribune she had been arrested in
January 1979, during a strike by the
Canadian Paper Workers Union.

It’s also common knowledge in
this town that the scabs employed by
Boise to break the sawmill workers’

strike damaged their own equipment

and then blamed it on the strikers.
‘They knew Boise would pay for
it’, she said.

There is plenty of resentment in
northwestern Ontario against
government use of the police to
trample on working people. This
time it’s the LSWU; next it will be
the mill workers. The unanimous
feeling is, it must be stopped. In
one-industry towns like Kenora and
Fort Francis there’s no alternative.

proposal a further look.

The main features of the plan to bail Chrysler out
by ripping off the workers are:

e an immediate wage freeze with the cancella-
tion of the improvement factor increase which was
due this month, and the dropping of all future
improvement factor hikes;

e cancellation of the cost of living adjustment
(COLA) during the life of the agreement;

e cancellation of three personal paid holidays
which were due for the fall of 1982 and the total
elimination of the 16 PPHs Chrysler Canada work-
ers presently enjoy under the agreement.

The UAW international estimates that the work-
ers are being asked to bail the company out to the
tune of $622-million in what the union admits are
‘distasteful’ concessions.

Though the international urged a yes vote “so
that Chrysler has a chance to survive and the
Chrysler workers keep their jobs and the chance to
fight another day’’, UAW Local 444, representing
the Windsor Chrysler workers made no recom-
mendation to its members, essentially leaving the
decision up to each worker individually.

Though the press was barred from the meeting,
workers told the Tribune as they were leaving that
the overwhelming sentiment expressed in the
speeches in response to the proposal was to reject.

This was confirmed by random interviews of the

jected to having to surrender the COLA. ‘*We’d
like to keep that COLA — is has to stay. A lot of
: people depend on that COLA to pay their bills,’” he
said.

Some were disappointed the union didn’t project
a more militant fightback position in opposing the
plan. ‘‘For 30 or 40 years this local has always
taken a stand on the issues’’, a worker said,
‘*suddenly when the marbles are down, they’re
riding the fence, it’s not very helpful.”

Many workers pointed out that bailing out the
corporation as proposed in the company’s plan
could be a never-ending process. They were skep-
tical of the gas-guzzling product Chrysler is pro-
ducing and of its future plans to get away from car
production altogether.

A few spoke of the long overdue need for the
production of a Canadian car, by a ae
publicly-owned auto industry.

Almost universal among those reeeieal was
the feeling that if Chrysler workers sacrifice again,
there’s no- guarantee the company won't come
back in three or six months asking them to take a

N

workers when the meeting ended. One worker ob- .

ea ee tar aa a ei oN tm

further cut in their living standard. “J

Workers’ struggles bare crisis

Two things taking place this
week in Ontario give an insight

into the nature and depth of the
present monopoly crisis. They
are: the strike of 16,000 hospital
workers, members of the Cana-
dian Union of Public Employees,
and the vote of Chrysler werkers
in Windsor on company and U.S.
Government demands that work-
ers forego negotiated wage in-
creases and cost of living benefits
for the balance of their agree-
ment.

The CUPE strike include the
following ingredients:

(1) It’s illegal. It defies the laws
of Ontario which prohibit hospital
workers from striking. It thus has
strong political overtones as well
as economic.

(2) It came as a revolt of the

membership against a unanimous
recommendation of the bargain-
ing Committee for acceptance of a
cheap settlement. In this sense it
further illustrates a general ten-
dency for trade union leadership
to lag behind their members.

(3) It is directed at the govern-
ment more than the hospital

mahagement, as the hospitals’

‘ability to meet union demands are
largely conditioned by govern-

~worker
.monstrate the terrible conditions

ment grants. Thus the strike is
largely provoked by the govern-
ment as part of their undertaking
to make workers bear the burden
of the monopoly crisis.

(4) It is another in a long line of
provincial and federal public
strikes which de-

and wages of public employees
and also their capacity to unite
and fight.

(5) The majority of the strikers
are women who are once again
showing their high level of mili-
tancy in this strike. At the same
time this exposes the second class
economic status of women in the
work place which gives rise to this
militancy.

(6) It likewise exposes the
hypocricy of those who are shed-
ding crocodile tears for the *‘ poor
workers”’ in Poland, but who
have been strangely silent about
the rights of Ontario hospital
workers. This especially applies
to New Democratic Party MPP
Jan Dukszta who is the party’s
health critic and has not found it
necessary to say a word about the
right of hospital workers to strike
or in support of their present
strike. He is however busily in-

volved in organizing support for
“‘Solidarity’’ in Pland and attack-
ing the Polish Government.

*x* * *

The vote taking place this week
in Chrysler on the U.S. Govern-
ment/Chrysler Corporation de-
mand for wage cuts is likewise
very revealing.

(1) It shows the depth of the
crisis of the world imperialist sys-

tem: theenergy crisis, the crisis of
relative overproduction, the
change in economic relations in

the world imperialist system, to

the detriment of the USA.

(2) It serves sharp notice of the
effects of the technological and
scientific revolution in the stage of
robots and microchip computer
technology, on the jobs and stan-
dards of workers, as long as these

remain under the undisputed con-
trol of monopolies.

(3) It shows the bankruptsy of
the U.S.-Canada auto pact and
supports the opposition to that
pact by the left in the United Auto
Workers, on the ground that it
could only work so long as the

_ system was in boom.

(4) It reveals the need for new
policies by the Canadian UAW
which will ensure a viable Cana-
dian auto industry and protect the
jobs and living standards of auto
workers, auto communities and
the entire Canadian economy.

(6) It points to the need for a
new and more equal relationship
between Canadian-and U.S. auto
workers in which Canadians will
not be hemmed in, restricted and
in this case, downright coerced by
the U.S.-dominated inteniational
decisions which are obviously
against their own interests.

(7) It shows that there are no
multi-national solutions to the
economic problems facing Cana-
da. The difficult process of pro-
tecting the jobs and living stan-
dards of Canadian working
people is openly revealed to be
inseparable from establishing
Canadian control and public and

democratic control over the key
sections of our economy, in-
cluding auto production.

* * *

Both of these critical struggles
taking place this week clearly ex-
pose to workers the need for
dramatically new and different

* policies, a new direction for

Canada, if their jobs and living
standards are to be protected and
extended.

It also reveals the need for an
independent foreign policy of
peace and détente, which would
provide the political and
economic foundations for such
policies.

The economic battles of work-
ing people are leading them into
united struggles and at the same
time opening up to their under-
standing, the need for basic politi-
cal changes.

For workers to move over from
these economic struggles to em-
bracing class and political con-
sciousness however requires a
strong left, united itself around a
working-class program.

The strengthening and building
of sucha strong united left is akey
task for all class conscious work-
ers in the labor movement today.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEB. 6, 1981—Page 5

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