LABOR Labor campaign ensures free trade debate goes public By MIKE PHILLIPS TORONTO — The Ontario Federation of Labor officially launched its province-wide campaign for jobs and against free trade, Feb. 13, with a promise by president Cliff Pilkey that labor will lead the public debate over the issue that the Mulroney government is trying to sup- press. : ‘““We’re taking the whole debate into more than 20 communities throughout Ontario culminating on April 26 with as large a demonstra- tion as we can mobilize outside the Legislature at Queen’s Park’, Pilkey said in an interview. The campaign’s focus will be on the need for job creation and to mobilize against any kind of free trade agreement between Canada and the U.S., Pilkey stressed. 3 ‘““On the whole question of free trade we feel there ought to be a public debate. The Mulroney government has ensured there is none on this question, so we’re going to have to take it out to the public,”’ the OFL leader said. Noting the elaborate ‘troad shows” the government has either sup- ported, like the Macdonald Commission on the economy or the current country-wide hearings before the Forget Commission on unemploy- ment insurance in Canada, Pilkey added, ‘‘it seems to me that a policy on free trade impacts on the lives of so many more people than either the Macdonald Commission or unemployment insurance. “Tn fact, it will impact to the point that we'll have to live with it for the next five or six decades.” No Mandate Given He also pointed out that Prime Minister Mulroney not only wasn’t given a mandate during the last federal election to pursue free trade with the U.S. but he even solemnly promised during the 1983 Tory leadership campaign that his government wouldn’t pursue it. At the time Mulroney had said free trade, ‘‘affects Canadian sovereignty and we will have none of it, not during leadership campaigns or at any other time.”” _ Pilkey warned that free trade would undermine Canadian sover- eignty and economic independence. ‘‘We’d be hostages in our own house,” he said. He lashed out at the prime minister’s recent attack on free trade’s opponents, whom he described as “‘timid and insecure’’. ‘Everything we’ve seen that considers the effect free trade will have on manufactur- ing, jobs and the economy is on the down side,”’ Pilkey said. The federation’s research and other sources predict free trade will devastate the furniture industry, printing, food processing, breweries, clothing, paper manufacturing and others. ‘“‘There will be a few winners but there will be a lot more losers,” Pilkey said. ‘‘Mulroney wants to take us to a ‘survival of the fittest’ kind of economy. He’s even said that those who are incapable of competing will have to go by the boards. That may be OK for private entrepreneurs but what about the average Canadian?” Coalition Building The Feb. 13 kick-off was actually the culmination of a province-wide organizing effort from Jan. 9 to Feb. 4 directed at the same 20 com- munities the federation plans to hold its anti-free trade forums in. The idea was to move the labor councils into action in the regions and to encourage them to establish local coalitions with groups outside of labor including teachers, churches, women, the unemployed, anti- poverty groups and others. In addition to planning their local forums, they would also lobby municipal councils, the media and community groups to support the fight for jobs and against free trade. Pilkey said the reports he’s received on that aspect of the campaign have been good and that he expects the results of this coalition building to emerge during the forums which begin in St. Catharine’s Feb. 18 and wind up in Ottawa on April 17. Rally in Toronto Likewise, the province-wide anti-free trade coalition the OFL was called to develop by last November’s convention is expected to emerge out of the campaign. Such a coalition has already been formed in Toronto. Initiated by the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, it has attracted support from various groups in the community including trade unions and the Metro Toronto Labor Council. It’s planning a public forum/cultural evening for March 17 at Massey Hall. Pilkey said the campaign will cost the federation around $150,000 but — when the parallel campaigns being conducted by other unions, such as the United Auto Workers are taken into account, the total cost may eventually touch the half-million mark. During the regional forums, the federation will be distributing lea- flets, posters, buttons and other information to the affiliates in addition to the information and research that has been prepared for the com- munity meetings. The campaign will also include a province-wide radio advertising blitz. 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 19, 1986 ‘Free trade could cost us Canada’ UAW takes issue to members The United Auto Workers is gearing up its membership for an all-out fight against free trade and to ensure that every possible rank and file member is mobilized to take part in the OFL’s demonstra- tion for jobs and against free trade, April 26. The UAW is literally sending a message to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney: ‘‘Free Trade Could Cost Us Canada’’. Thousands of post cards have been distributed to UAW mem- bers across Canada to be for- warded to the prime minister urg- ing the Canadian Government not to pursue free trade with the U.S. In addition the members are writ- ing their MPs and MPPs to sound them out on whether they support free trade, what they think its im- pact will be on their communities, which plants in their ridings might be affected, and seeking their views on how Canadians can be sure of existing social programs and economic and regional development programs won’t be - taken away from them. Of particular interest to auto workers is the elected member’s position on possible U.S. de- mands to weaken the Canada- U.S. Auto Pact. Local unions are also being urged to lobby municipal councils to pass resolutions demanding the federal government halt any free trade talks and to send the resolu- tions on to Ottawa. The UAW has ‘NVUELSYEETEESHETADUEREEEGEESEEGUESUDUEEUEESPEU DED EEEDCOOEESTEEEUED PEED SEGHOEOUOUOSEOUUOADEGLUSOOTEOOEEGTOGOUESSEEGAHEDCOSOOEEOUL GM blackmails trim plant workers WINDSOR — General Motors, holding the jobs of 1,000 of the trim plant’s 2,500 workforce here as bait, has tried to pressure the United Auto Workers into agreeing to a no-strike pledge for the Canadian plant. While UAW president Bob White denied last week that such a request was ever made to the union by GM, a company spokes- man told the media it was the union’s refusal of the suggestion which prompted GM’s decision to shift effectively about 1,000 jobs to the U.S. by mid-1987. The company plans to restrict the sales of trim and upholstery from the Windsor plant only to GM facilities which have a back- up source of supply. In the event of a Canadian strike, GM doesn’t want the Windsor plant to shut down U.S. operations. Ina letter to newly-appointed GM president George Peapples, Feb. 10, White charged that the company had no sound reason for its decision which could mean cutting the trim plant’s workforce in half. While GM is playing games with the press over its reasons for the decision in Windsor, White pointed out in the letter that in fact the company wanted the trim plant workers to surrender certain Canadian holidays for U.S. ones including their Thanksgiving, July 4, and Martin Luther King Day. The union refused. White cited the $7 an hour wage difference between GM’s American and Canadian workers; the glowing praise the com- pany usually showers on its Windsor workforce; and the fact that contrary to the U.S. record where workers can legally strike during a contract period, GM will have only lost two weeks production from strike action over the past 17 years, to expose the emptiness of the auto giant’s excuses for the decision. CUPE Janitors ready to strike TRURO — The province’s school janitors and bus drivers have set Feb. 19 as a strike deadline with the representatives of Nova Scotia’s 11 provincial school boards. The workers, mem- bers of the Canadian Union of Public Employees are demanding parity in wages and benefits in the school boards where CUPE represents them. | saRUTEETENUEEEEEUEUEOUANUEEEEUURSEEQUUEGESUOUESSOUTEESUQUENEDERSECOCUTEEEQENESEEQONGOSNOSIEGOQUOGESOUELEGGOCUCEOEROUAEEEER committed itself and its mem to full support for and parti tion in the OFL’s province campaign. From Feb. 3-19 the union? been holding meetings with leaders throughout Ontari familiarize them with the paign. Meetings are also pla for Quebec workers and tho: western Canada. ; Each UAW local is being 4 to survey its local manageme! the effect free trade will have, their jobs and their plants. | quesionnaire that is being P local managers and compe executives asks whether support free trade, what i they think it will have on collective bargaining and ot sues, and what alternatives, they propose to free trade. For its part the union has a& understanding of how free ™ will impact on Canadians. }¥ gues that some 281,000 Onl? and 446,000 Quebec jobs Wo immediately be threatened. © auto pact would be under atl? while U.S. branch plants Wt no longer have any incenti™ maintain operations here. Free trade would put pressures on collective ing, with Canadian emp pressing for conditions mat inferior, largely non-union tions in the U.S. The ce U.S. wages and benefits become the ceiling in Canaé union predicts. Social programs would be astated, as the “‘level field’ to equalize competi tween the two countries achieved. Canadians woul their right to manage theif economy and indepene® would thus be lost as the co in effect, became the Sist state. department, Bob White u out support for the OF UAW campaigns. ‘Believe me, this issue ( trade) affects all of us’’, he “There is no section of our which is immune, and it is important that all union le# ship participate.”