PATERNALISM ENDS WITH STRIKE

Turnaround at Batawa

Special to the Tribune

-BATAWA — On the rare occasions Tom Bata
visits his company town, along the banks of the
Trent River, he lives in a fenced-in mansion on a

top overlooking his shoe factory and the homes
of his workers.

Tom sleeps well in his hilltop mansion, which

Side housing the many symbols of his enormous
Wealth, contains a bomb shelter.

In the town below, the 800 workers who stamp
Out 90,000 pairs of shoes a week for the world’s
biggest shoe company, have to cope with the brutal
assault of inflation on their meagre wages. Those
Who've been with Bata Footwear, ever since the
big-business government of the day allowed the:

Zech emigre to set up his company town in 1940,
approach retirement with fear and dread — there is
RO pension plan at Bata.

Bata sleeps secure surrounded by his wealth.

1S minions and the underlings who manage his
business in Batawa make sure the hilltop mansion
18 ready for the boss on a year-round basis. Every-
thing will be comfortable and cozy, when Tomas J.
descends from the clouds in his personal helicopter
Into the mansion grounds and house, where no
Bata production worker has ever set foot.

But the Bata workers, many of them young, 600
Of them women, know too well that the mansion,
the helicopter, the wealth, the land the town sits
On, even the homes Bata still rents to the workers
for $22 a week, are there because every day the 800
Workers stamp out 90,000 pairs of shoes in the

atawa plant.

They look at the $2.5-million the plant cleared
last year in profits after taxes. Then they look at
their Wages. The shoe makers on piecework rates
are guaranteed a minimum wage ranging from
$3.41 to $4 an hour plus a 25 cent cost-of-living

Owance.

A few among them will earn more, but many say
they seldom earn more than their classification’s
Minimum rate. One worker may average $6 or $7
an hour but many more will only take home $3.50

Wages and Pensions ‘

That’s why on Oct. 27, along with workers in
Campbellford, Picton and Trenton, the 1,100
Members of the United Food and Commercial
Workers union, (UFCW) began their strike for bet-
ter wages and a decent pension plan.

It didn’t take long for the true face of Tom Bata’s

carefully cultivated paternalism to be shown. Like
a wounded animal, the Bata company lashed out at
the workers who’s strike had cut off the flow of
profits from the plants.

To get machinery from its engineering plant, and
shoes from the warehouses, Bata hired scab driv-
ers to break through the picket lines, and if neces-
sary, drive over the bodies of the same workers
who’s labor had built the company into the world’s
largest shoemaker.

Naturally, the workers defended their jobs and
their right to stop production in order to win better
living conditions and decent wages. They moved to
stop the scab trucks from trying to smash their
picket lines and their just strike.

Since the strike began, 15 strikers have been
charged by the company, and the courts have is-
sued an injunction limiting the pickets outside the
engineering plant — another clear indication of
who’s side the police and courts are on.

Consumers’ Boycott

The UFCW is demanding a COLA escalator
clause in a two-year pact, wage increases of 15%
and 13% in the first and second years. Also they
want the company to agree for the first time since
the plant was opened, to the creation of a pension
plan that would give the union an equal role with
the company.

Bata has offered 10% in each year of the two-
year pact, and an insulting pension offer of $260 a
month for a retiree of 40 years service with the
company. This amounts to the princely sum of
$6.50 a month for every year worked with Bata.

The workers are determined to win and with the
help of workers throughout the country they can.
The UFCW, Nov. 13, launched a consumers’ boy-
cott of all Bata Footwear products, including
North Star joggers, to support the stiking workers.

Bata, based in pre-war and pre-socialist Czecho-
slovakia was the shoe king of Europe. His descen-
dent now proclaims himself shoe king of the world
with 96 factories around the globe, 92 subsidiaries,
and some 4,912 retail stores, all employing some
90,000 workers.

It is worth noting that in Canada, the workers
have helped to make Bata shoe maker of the world.
In Czechoslovakia, the workers have the factory,
the jobs, the wages and the pensions. They don’t
have Bata. We do.

TIN BASHERS WIN IWA SUPPORT

KELOWNA, B.C. — In a display of industrial and building
trades union solidarity, 250 members of Local 1-423 International
Woodworkers of America refused to cross the picket line set up
Nov. 19 by two members of the Sheet Metal Workers union. The
sheet metal workers threw the picket line up when it was disco-
vered a non-union roofing firm was being used at Crown Zeller-
bach of Canada’s sawmill and plywood plant here.

WINE, LIQUOR, BEER, — HOT CARGO
IN SASKATCHEWAN

REGINA — All liquor, wine and some beer products coming
into the province or manufactured or processed here were de-
clared ‘‘hot cargo’’ by the Saskatchewan Federation of Labor,
Nov. 17 on the request of the Saskatchewan Government Em- ~
ployees Association representing provincial liquor board work-
ers. The action is in keeping with last October’s convention
decision instructing the SFL to take necessary action on behalf of
the liquor board workers in case of.a strike, lock-out, or legisla-
tion being imposed to force an end to any work stoppage.

Two levels of struggle are essential

An old friend of mine, John
acArthur just landed a job as a
Periodic columnist for the
Windsor Star. Most of us know
aan as the editor of The Guar-
lan, the Windsor United Auto
Orkers paper. I would like to
Wish John well on his new job and
iF Pe that he brings to bear on it,
€ kind of militant trade-unionist
Point of view he imparts to the
Guardian,

I read his opening column on
October 16 in which John con-
Cluded that the poor turn-out of
1 € unionists in a pre-October

8 prep rally held in Windsor was
not an omen that Windsor work-
*Ts Would not support the Queen’s

demonstration.

xe He goes on to speak about,
the tendency for union members
© let their full-time executives
vi in-plant representatives run
me) Show”, which he calls a pe-
eo headache for their leaders,
~~ 80€S on to observe that “‘they
On't accept that empty seats at

oe x €mbership meetings are cause

Or alarm

thoy’ John! ‘‘Administratively,
Structure of unions differs lit-
ae from that of other organiza-
Ons: they are of a necessity
ewority led. Union members de-
gate authority to their elected
th Presentatives just as corpora-
On stockholders. defer decision

making to their boards of direc-
tors’. Moreover, ‘“‘he has scant
interest in what he sees as
abstract and academic exercises
about long term solutions.”

He does go on to say that,
“when the chips are down, the
rank and file can be relied on to
stand fast, which is a comforting
thought for union leaders.”

Cause for Alarm ‘

John ... I find your reasoning
somewhat disquieting!

If what you say is true, and

there may be some elements of
truth to it, then it should certainly
be cause for great alarm to union
leaders and its solution must be at
the top of their agenda.
"Such ‘‘apathy’’ (which is more
apparent than real) exists because
immediate or short term solutions
have appeared to meet the needs
of most of the: post-war genera-
tion. Thus, not only have they
tended to confine themselves to
short term solutions, but they
have spawned a leadership which
likewise fails to see the imperative
need for long term solutions.

In today’s crisis situation some
short-term gains can be won on
the basis of militant struggle, but
the major problems facing the
trade union movement can only
be addressed and solved on the
basis of longer term solutions
which call for radical new

policies. To its credit, the recent
Canadian Labor Congress Con-
vention began to look at such
policies.

In this sense the Canadian
trade-union movement faces

what might be called a crisis of
collective bargaining policy.
Placed in another way it might be
called a crisis of leadership.

There is considerable evidence
that the leadership of many Cana-
dian unions lag: behind its mem-
bership. This was true in INCO
Sudbury, it was true in the
CUPW-CLC dispute, it was true
in the PSAC Clerks strikes, and it
was most graphically true in the
recent 91% rejection by the
CUPE hospital workers of a poor
settlement recommended by their
leadership.

Readiness to Struggle

Behind this readiness to strug-
gle by workers in all parts of
Canada lies their essential under-
standing that there are two ways

out of the present crisis, the bos-
ses’ way — which is also the
government’s way — or the
workers’ way.

‘It is not only possible but essen-
tial that this basic class instinct be
connected with the struggle for
longer-term solutions. This
should not and need not be some-
thing separate from the collective
bargaining process which is at the
heart of trade unionism.

The very nature of the prob-
lems now facing workers in the
big plants, mines and office com-
plexes and public service areas,
demands new collective bar-
gaining demands which will give a
new and much more political
dimension to unions. :

Demands such as: prohibiting
management from closing and
transferring operations; demands
for a say over the implementation
of new computer chip technolo-
gy, robots and technological
change, which will materially af-
fect the jobs of workers; demands
for a full say over plant safety in-
cluding pollution level control. In
a word, demands which challenge
the whole gamut’ of management
rights which is now being used
against the interests of workers,
entire communities and even the
country as a whole.

Back to the Grass Roots

The advent of big monopolies
and now huge. transnational

corporations which treat even na-
tion states as they do their own
employees; of computer technol-
ogy and robots which threaten
further the jobs of factory and
office workers, demands new
policies and new collective bar-
gaining programs by the unions to
protect their own members and
the entire community.

At the same time it demands a
new level of struggle, a new level
of understanding, a new level of
unity of the working people as a
whole.

In this situation the concept ofa
union made up of a leadership
elite, and a membership voting
with their feet, is less than
enough.

We need a return, and quickly
to grass-roots trade unionism.
This will not be an easy nor over-
night task. It is one however
which is absolutely essential if the
unions are going to protect their
own members and stand at the
centre of the struggle to advance
the interests of all Canadians who
work by hand and brain to make
our country great.

Good luck on your job John.
I’m sure you’ ll remember that the
paper you work for is part of a big
monopoly chain and that if the
time comes when you are asked to
choose between your principles
and being a periodic columnist,
you will pick your own class.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOV. 28, 1980—Page 5

Teor eA