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Trade unionists in this pro-
vince could be stripped of the
right to -picket. ‘‘allied”’
‘employers if resolutions slated
to go before the Social Credit
provincial convention Nov.
19-21 become government.
policy. ;

A resolution demanding
removal of Section 85, subsec-
tion (4) of the Labor Code,
which allows striking workers to
set up picket lines around an ally
of a strikebound employer, is
one of several resolutions sub-
mitted to the annual convention
by constituency associations.
The labor resolutions are
among the most pointed in the
85 resolutions included in the
resolution booklet to the con-
vention, obtained by the
Tribune However, resolutions
inanumber of areas are likely to
embarrass the cabinet for their
openly anti-democratic
character. One resolution from

Socreds seek ban
on allied pickets

Vancouver Centre association
calls for repeal of the Civil
Rights Protection Act because it
allegedly infringes upon
“freedom of speech, expression
and conduct.”

- The labor resolution, from
Vancouver Centre and sup-
ported by Comox and Saanich
and the Islands, for removal of
the right to allied picketing, has
long been a goal of employer
organizations and one which the
labor movement has warned
would create immediate chaos.

Yet another resolution, sub-
mitted by Comox and Victoria
associations, demands bluntly
that ‘‘all essential services in-
cluding ferries, police, firemen,
hospital employees, ambulance
attendants and those in water,
electricity, B.C. Railway and/or
oil and gas services to be covered
by legislation outlawing these
persons against striking.”

Delegates from the building
trades will be absent for the first
time from a B.C. Federation of
Labor convention in Nov., but
the Carpenters’ union has cir-
culated a resolution to Federa-
tion affiliates which it hopes will
reach the floor of the conven-
tion sponsored by another
union.

A letter from Carpenters’
provincial secretary Lorne Rob-
son states that the resolution

~ would have been submitted by
Carpenters’ locals if they were
able to do so.

Robson pointed out that the
Carpenters were prepared to
pay per capita directly to the
CLC but could not accept two
conditions laid down ‘by the
CLC, ‘‘namely that they will not
affiliate our industrial local
unions; and that our local
unions must be in confrontation
with our international in order
to be affiliated.””

The resolution states:

Whereas: The Canadian
Labour Congress has taken a
principled objection to amen-
ding the CLC’s constitution to
remove the historical right of
Canadian union locals to elect
their delegates and submit
resolutions to conventions,
which has been demanded by
the international offices of the
building trades unions; and

Whereas: The Canadian
Labour Congress has not
facilitated affiliation of building
trades unions’ locals by placing

Carpenters offer
resolution to Fed

roadblocks in their way, of
refusing acceptance of in-
dustrial locals, and of deman-
ding that craft locals be in con-
frontation with their interna-
tionals as a condition of affilia-
tion to the CLC; and

Whereas: The founding con-
vention of the Canadian
Federation of Labour now has
been postponed for a year, due
mainly ‘to the efforts of those
building trades unions which
favour one united labour move-
ment in Canada;

Therefore be it resolved: That
the B.C. Federation of Labour
support a principled rejection
by the Canadian Labour Con-
gress of the demands to remove
the democratic rights of Cana-
dian locals to elect delegates and
to submit resolutions to conven-
tions; and

Be it further resolved: That
the Canadian Labour Congress
be urged to make every effort to
negotiate a return of the
building trades unions, based on
acceptable conditions which do
not lessen the democratic nature
or rank and file character of
CLC conventions; and

Beit finally resolved: That the
Canadian Labour Congress be
urged to accept affiliation of
all building trades union locals

and/or councils, including in-
dustrial locals, and without any —

preconditions of building trades
unions’ locals-or councils hav-
ing to be in confrontation with
their respective internationals.

=] ={ es

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‘Labor can’t fight bosses
divided,’ transit workers

What — can the Steelworkers, —
Telecommunications and Carpen-
ters’ unions tell us? This was the
question asked in a leaflet handed
out to Vancouver-Victoria transit
workers this week by supporters of
the Independent Transit Workers
Union, making its second bid to
wrest certification from the Amal-
gamated Transit Workers. 5

Those who attended the meeting
in John Oliver auditorium called by
the ATU to mobilize members
against the raid found that leaders
of the three unions had much to tell
them about their own successes in
fighting for Canadian autonomy
against international union
bureaucracy, lack of democracy
and decisions ignoring the interests
and wishes of the Canadian union
membership.

The ICTU leaflet derided gains
made by the Canadian delegation
at last month’s international union
convention as ‘“‘branch office’
unionism, not autonomy, and ex-
ploited differences between the
Canadian Labor Congress and
building trades unions in urging
transit workers to break away from
the international.

Countering the argument that
breaking away from the interna-
tional was the only alternative,
Dave Patterson, newly elected
director of the Steelworkers’
District 6 in Ontario, pointed to his
own experience in Sudbury.

“TI came: out of a traditional
Mine Mill local where workers had
their own strong feelings about the
past,’’ he declared. ‘‘Isoon realized
that if you are going to build a
union, you have to build it on the
future, not on the past. But you
can’t disregard the past.

“You haveto remember the men
who founded the union, who

‘fought the strikes and walked the

picket lines, and what they fought
to build.

“It’s much easier to break up a
union than it is to rebuild it if it fails
to satisfy its members’ needs. But if

- you want to change a union, you

have to stay within it to fight effec-
tively.

“TI am not going to take part in
breaking up any union — I have
seen too many bosses do that.”

Patterson said he did not con-
sider himself a member of an inter-
national union, but rather of a
North American union.

‘‘An international union is more
that an organization uniting Cana-
dian and American workers and in-
ternational labor unity is far more
than the unity of North American
labor,”’ he said.

“Labor in every country has
common needs and aims. What
difference is there in the problems
of bus drivers in Vancouver or
Spokane, Tokyo and Paris in com-
parison with their needs?”’ —

The issue of labor unity — unity
in defending living standards and
hard-won rights — was placed
before the intent audience by

Carpenters’ provincial ‘secretary

Lorne Robson.
“The big corporations are using

‘inflation to cut living standards by

taking on unions if they won’t ac-

cept settlements below the inflation
_ Tate,’” he pointed. out. ‘Public sec-_

_ tor unions — and the ATU is one
— are being Suite out for attack.

a

tacks? By dividing ourselves so that
we can be picked off? No, we have
to reinforce our unity so that we
can fight as effectively as we havein
the past.’

Robson recalled the campaign
headed by the B.C. Federation of
Labor which broke compulsory ar-
bitration legislation, declaring,
“Such fights can’t be waged suc-
cessfully by a split and divided
labor movement.’

Relating the Carpenters’ own ex-
perience, he pointed out that by
struggling to reshape the union

from within — ‘‘a union which was"

built by Canadians and is being
rebuilt by Canadians in accordance
with their own interests’? — the
members had made great ad-
vances. :

“At one time in the fifties the
Vancouver local was placed under
trusteeship by the international and
no meetings were held for nine
months. But we fought back and
we won. We. still have to fight
bureaucracy, but bureaucracy is
not peculiar to international
unions, and we now have more
democracy than many Canadian
unions.”’

Replying to a questioner, he said
the Carpenters wanted to remain in
the international because “‘what we
might save in per capita is going to
cost us one hell of a price on the
picket line — and that’s where the
struggle is.”

Bill Clark, president. of the

-Telecommunications Union, was
another who drew on his own ex-
periences, recalling his own reac-
tion to the raid on the telephone
workers’ union by the international
more than 20 years ago.

“T was a member of what in ef-
fect was a company union and my
impulse was to seize any means of
getting rid of it,’” hesaid. ““But my
father advised me to stay within the

_ union and fight to transform it.

And that is what we did. Today we
have a union which few would
trade for any other union.

‘‘We know the strength of unity
within the house of labor. B.C.
Telephone had hired so many scabs
that we couldn’t have won our re-
cent strike without the help of the
B.C. Federation of Labor af-
filiates. The demonstration of sup-
port given by the organized
workers of Nanaimo was the most
compelling answer labor could give

to the Employers Council of B.C.”’ -

In a reference to the air traffic
controllers’ strike in the U.S., he
noted that they had suffered “‘the
worst thing that can happen to any
union — they had their trade union
rights taken away by the stroke of a
pen.”

But, he continued, ‘‘if the AFL-
CIO had been willing to do for the
air traffic controllers what the B.C.
Federation of Labor did for us,
they would have been back at the
bargaining table within 24 hours.”’

Refuting claims made by the IC-
TU that changes approved by the
international convention were
more form than substance, Jim

Daley, one of two Canadian vice- -

‘presidents, said that in fact the
changes were those sought by the
Canadian delegation... _

not yet full autonomy,’’ he

told as ATU resists raid

can have full autonomy, given our é
determination to win it.”’
That, added B.C. Federation of
Labor secretary Dave McIntyre,
who acted as chairman, ‘‘is the real
message of this meeting — stay
within the house of labor andif you ~
want changes, fight for them from a
within.”
ATU member Tom Hawken, a
bus driver and talented folk singer,
put the same message in another.
way with his newly composed song, —
“Breakaway Unions — or Out of
the Frying Pan into the Fire.”

B.C. Hydro

criticized

Continued from page 1
charged that B.C. Hydro not only
had failed to. encourage outside
participation but had been evasive —
when demands have been made for
information.

“The UFAWU has sought to —
participate wherever it could. If
you have some new means of
achieving funds for this end, your
advice will carry more weight,” —
said Tomlinsen.

Information blocks were also
cited by Hat Creek Coalition
representative Peter Deverell
whose organization has been
fighting the proposed thermal
power project, which includes a
1200-foot high stack designed to
spread toxic emmissions over a
wide area, enough to produce
“seven times as much acid rain as is
produced by the total emmissions
of the Lower Mainland,’’ accor-
ding to Deverell.

The Suzuki Foundation, named
after the late UFA WU life member
and Fraser River environmentalist
T. Buck Suzuki, had two further —
panel discussions in progress at Tri- |
bune press time.

Fed seeks
moratorium

B.C. Federation of Labor ex-
ecutive director. Jim Kinnaird is
calling on consumer and cor-
porate affairs minister Peter
Hyndman to reconsider his has-
ty rejection of the request for a
90-day moratorium on the clos-
ing of Labatts Brewery in Vic-
toria.

“Tt defies all logic not to give
the request the famous Social
Credit second look. All the
Brewery Workers Union asks is
the 90-day period be allowed to
study the feasibility of a locally
owned and operated facility,”
said Kinnaird.

__ “All information received tc
date indicates that the proposi-
tion not only has the possibility
but also the probability of suc-
cess. The result of that success
would save the jobs of 80
workers and would maintain a
viable ‘home town’ industry for
Victoria.

‘We are asking the minister

“They. are real gains. Wen now wo to step in and assist in saving} —

have a measure of autonomy, but —

| these jobs. It will not-cost the} —

[ieetfor.”

government aor! than a lit- if