ae

Labour

Maintenance workers

Challenging GN cuts

Representatives of the Brotherhood of
Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE)
gave notice Tuesday that the union intends
to fight the drastic staff cuts proposed by
Canadian National that would see more
than 1,500 of the railway’s 3,395 mainte-
nance employees laid off across the country.

“There is no way
the railway can main-
tain track safety with
just over half the |
employees,” Jasper
Brar, general chair
of MBWE told a
news conference in
Vancouver. “Some
drastic accident is
going to take place.”

Brar, flanked by
Robert Bessey and
Soofi Uppal, chair and president respec-
tively of the union’s bridges and mainte-
nance component, said the union had
already retained lawyer David Patterson to
explore all the legal avenues that members
have in opposing the cuts.

“But I would like the public to speak up
for their safety,” Brar said.

“With all the cuts in manpower, it will be
next to impossible to maintain the track up
to par,” he said. “These trains not only haul
lumber, coal, grain, sulphur and potash but
also petroleum products, gasoline acids,
gases, dangerous commodities and radioac-
tive materials.

“Any derailment in the vicinity of a pop-
ulated area would be a disaster for the
employees as well as the public.”

CN announced May 24 that it was cut-
ting 1,503 maintenance workers from the
railway, arguing that mechanization of the
system would enable the company to main-
tain the safety standards despite the staff
cuts. The cuts, some 179 of which are in
British Columbia, are scheduled to go into
effect Oct. 31.

The union protested the move to Trans-
port Minister Benoit Bouchard, and Surrey .
NDP MP Jim Karpoff, in a Sept. 20 letter to

BRAR

Bouchard, called on the government to
impose a moratorium on CN layoffs pend-
ing a review of safety and environmental
factors.

But Bouchard, in a letter to the union
Sept. 5, repeated CN’s assurances that
safety standards would not be comprom-
ised and insisted that there would be no
reductions in maintenance or inspection.
He also echoed CN’s statement about
mechanization.

But the mechanization the company ref-
ers to is only what is known as a “high rail
boom truck” which has a crane attached to
it and can travel either on the rails or off.

“It’s not a magic truck — it’s not going
to replace the men who do the work now,”
Brar emphasized.

The union chair noted that in Greater
Vancouver alone, there are 350 miles of
track and 1,100 switches, all of which have
to be maintained on a regular basis.

Karpoff pointed out in his letter to Bou-
chard that even at current maintenance lev-
els, there have already been 45 derailments
so far in 1989.

“My concern is that by reducing staff,
CN is threatening the safety of residents,
passengers and cargo ... I am concerned
that there may be a serious derailment of
hazardous cargo,” he said.

Union leaders also suggested Tuesday
that the staff cuts are the prelude to privati-
zation of the Crown-owned railway, as was
the case with Air Canada. Even with its
current staff, CN made $212 million in prof-
its last year but further cost-cutting would
make it even more attractive to private
investors.

The numbers of layoffs also lends cre-
dence to that theory since the cuts will elim-
inate all CN maintenance workers who do
not have eight years seniority — the cut-off
point for a permanent position.

The union has provisions for early
retirement and severance pay but hundreds
of workers would still be affected if the
layoffs go through. And many of those still
on staff would have to re-locate.

Congress firms up stand;
calls for scrapping GST

The Canadian Labour Congress will be
calling on the federal government to aban-

don its proposals for a nine per cent Goods -

and Services Tax when the Congress
appears before the parliamentary commit-
tee, a CLC spokesperson said this week.

“The GST proposal should be scrapped.
It should be ripped up and thrown in the
garbage,” CLC researcher Andrew Jackson
told the Tribune.

The unequivocal stand against the GST
appeared to be an distinct change from the
position outlined in an letter sent out to
executive council members and federations
of labour last month in which the CLC
suggested that a federal sales tax should be
re-structured so as to collect only $16 bil-
lion, less than the amount projected under
the GST. The letter also indicated CLC
support in principle for a tax on services.

But that letter was really only an internal
memorandum intended to solicit the opin-
ions of unionists and was never intended as
“the full-blown CLC position,” Jackson
said.

He noted that there had been criticism of
the position and acknowledged that the
position in the letter “was open to misinter-

pretation. The letter had been the object of
considerable criticism in the labour move-
ment and economist Bruce Yorke in an!
article in the Tribune Sept. 18, called the

12 e Pacific Tribune, October 2, 1989

Congress approach “flagrantly inconsist-
ent.” :

“It’s true, it didn’t make clear. our fun-
damental opposition to the GST,” said
Jackson, who developed the Congress’
position on the GST.

‘As far as the Congress is concerned, the
GST is fundamentally flawed and should be
scrapped,” he said.

At the same time, he noted, the Congress
did not want to be identified in any way
with a right wing “tax revolt” aimed at
scrapping the tax in favour of further cuts in
social services.

Consequently, the CLC wanted to pro-
pose an well-developed alternative, he said,
based on reform of existing taxation and
establishment of a genuinely progressive tax
system.

The CLC brief, which the parliamentary
committee is scheduled to hear Oct. 10, calls
on the government to appoint a Royal —
Commission on Taxation “to open up the
whole tax issue for examination.”

It also calls for development of a fair and
progressive tax system including cuts in
interest rates; a tax on wealth (Canada is
one of only a few western capitalist coun-
tries which does not have one); a sales tax on
luxury items such as luxury cars and yachts
and a complete overhaul of corporate taxa-
tion to eliminate loopholes and handouts to
corporations.

The executive council of the Canadian
Labour Congress will be meeting soon.
There’ll be a very full agenda — all of it
important to Canada’s working people.

Since the last council meeting the
Tories’ attack on workers has continued.
In recent months it has escalated with the
introduction of the Goods and Service
Tax (GST), scheduled to kick in Janu-
ary, 1991.

At the same time the Tories are hold-
ing so-called legislative committee “hear-
ings’ across Canada on _ proposed
changes that will gut the Unemployment
Insurance Act. These meetings have been
scheduled to have the minimum input
from concerned groups.

How the CLC reacts to these events
should critically affect the council gather-
ing. With a convention next year, this
meeting should include a critical review
of the leadership that checks just where
and how the CLC stacks up as to the
implementation of policies adopted at
the last convention.

Another major question which should
be on the CLC agenda is the leadership

CLC executive council
faces important agenda

from the labour movement or the NDP.
That debate has two major, and dis-
tinct, positions that are being put for-
ward by the two different sections of big
business on how Canada should move
ahead economically.
The reactionary Fraser Institute from

_ British Columbia is spearheading the

debate with the vision of an economy
that relies on natural resource extraction
and the growing service industry. Tories
and neo-conservatives generally share
this line.

On the other side of this economic
debate is the Ontario Premier’s Council
(OPC) that naturally reflects the forces
who feel that the development of the
manufacturing.sector should take prior-
ity.

The OPC finds agreement with Liber-
als provincially and federally. The coun-
cil has looked at how to make Candian
manufacturing transnational corpora-
tions (TNCs) more world competitive —
possibly employing public money.

No longer can the question of eco-
nomics be left to big business and the

John MacLennan

aio a ae ope ee

race now underway within the New
Democratic Party A. question that
should be asked is: Why is there a grow-
ing list of reluctant high profile leader-
ship candidates in the NDP?

Do these high profile candidates feel
the NDP is entering into a prolonged
state of decline — that nothing can be
done without a huge personal commit-
ment of time and effort?

If this is the-case, the labour move-
ment and the left can’t be indifferent to
the possible results, particularly when the
Tories are pushing their reactionary
agenda.

With the biggest ever caucus of MPs in
Ottawa the NDP is an important part of
the opposition to the neo-conservative
agenda. At the same time, it has the
potential to link up and help unite all the
pro-Canada forces.

What seems to be missing in the lead-
ership race is the projection of a Cana-
dian vision that is an independent
political and economic alternative to the
big business agenda.

The CLC adopted an economic pro-
gram in Toronto in 1988 that is a major
contribution to an alternative economic
program. The coalition organized around
the statement “A Time to Stand
Together, A Time for Social Solidarity”
has developed that program further.

Economic debates have been under-
way for months in the business pages of
the monopoly press without much input

LABOUR IN ACTION

Tories or the Liberals. Both labour and
the NDP, along with the rest of the left
must start to win Canadians to the idea
that they can effectively deal with eco-
nomic questions.

What is needed is a vision for Canada
that is a realistic, comprehensive, and
independent political economic alterna-
tive that will bring working people into
the fight for Canada’s future. This is
where the CLC can play a major role.

Another question that is on the CLC
council’s agenda which has been the sub-
ject of this column and other pages of the
Tribune is the policy on international
affairs.

With all the controversy around the
recent high-powered trade union delega-
tion that went to the Sandinista’s 10th
anniversary celebrations in Nicaragua,

’T’m told that Ontario Federation of’

Labour president Gord Wilson has
requested this item on the agenda.

At the same meeting, Jean-Claude
Parrot from the Canadian Union of Pos-

tal Workers (CUPW) will be attending —

and should restore the voice of the left
that went missing after Dave Werlin
stepped down as president of Alberta
Federation of Labour in May of this
year.

This meeting has all the earmarks of a
historic event that could produce the
kind of action that will finally see the
labour movement move into forefront in
the fight against the Tory agenda.

Aen
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